Texas Law Would Make Law Enforcement Misconduct Records More Secretive

The state G file law would close up certain open records at APD (art by Zeke Barbaro / Getty Images)

Texas lawmakers are considering bills that would allow law enforcement agencies throughout the state to hide certain disciplinary records from public view and create an avenue for the Austin Police Department to regain secrecy they lost when Austin voters approved the Austin Police Oversight Act in 2023.

The bills (House Bill 2486 and Senate Bill 781) would require all law enforcement agencies (city, transit, university and school district police departments, sheriff’s offices, and state law enforcement agencies) to create a confidential personnel file for each officer within the department. Records in that file would not be accessible by “any other agency or person” (unless the officer is applying for a job at a different agency). Worryingly for jail advocates, the bills would include jail officials, which would hamper the independent investigation of jail deaths required by the Sandra Bland Act.

Texas Jail Project’s co-founder and Executive Director Krish Gundu explained to a committee last week that outside agencies – like a city police department or the Texas Rangers – would not be able to access the full personnel file for jailers involved in a jail death investigation.

The file would contain, among other records, complaints against officers that did not result in disciplinary action. That can include unfounded allegations but also complaints that were proven true but went undisciplined. The bills would essentially create a mirror of the “G file” provision of state law that is available to Texas cities interested in providing police officers and firefighters with unique job protections (voters in cities wishing to adopt these protections have to do so through an election; Austin voters did so in 1948).

The difference is that the confidential G file records are something police officers and firefighters opt into through an election.

Austin justice advocates engaged in a protracted fight with city officials and local and state police union leaders over the Austin Police Department’s G file, which Austin voters eliminated by overwhelmingly adopting the Austin Police Oversight Act two years ago. Eventually, the advocates won, and the city and Austin Police Association signed a labor contract that ensures APD will not maintain a G file for the five-year term of the contract.

The bills were introduced following the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement’s Sunset Commission recommendation in 2023 that lawmakers introduce legislation to standardize peace officer personnel records. At the House and Senate committee hearings, supporters said the bills were designed to prevent release of personal information of officers (Social Security numbers, home addresses, family member names, etc.) and evidence from misconduct investigations that did not result in discipline. Supporters of the secret personnel file argue that release of unsustained complaints could cause reputational harm to officers.

But the bills appear to also come in reaction to Austin’s move to eliminate APD’s G file. Per testimony offered at a hearing in the House’s Homeland Security, Public Safety & Veterans’ Affairs Committee on March 26, it appears that police union leaders view the bills as an avenue to undermine the contract and restore the secret personnel file at APD.

“We don’t want to be like the city of Austin,” Jennifer Szimanski, who serves as deputy executive director for the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (the statewide police union), told the committee. A former Austin police officer, Szimanski went on: “If we pass this bill, Austin police officers will one day very soon come right back into this provision [of state law] that they’ve had for decades.”

CLEAT did not respond to our questions about Szimanski’s testimony, but her statement implies that CLEAT or the APA could use the new law to file suit against the city in an effort to restore APD’s G file.

State Rep. Cole Hefner, author of HB 2486, also signaled that the bill was motivated by the battle over the G file in Austin. “Personnel files for Texas law enforcement officers have become a political pawn in recent years,” Hefner said when laying out the bill at the Homeland Security, Public Safety & Veterans’ Affairs committee meeting. “Confidentiality should not be dependent on which law enforcement agency ... you are employed by.”

But at least some of the records (like sensitive personal information) are already exempted from release to the public by the Texas Public Information Act. And in Austin, when G file material has been released to the public – specifically, complaints of misconduct that did not result in disciplinary action – exonerating evidence was released along with the allegation. For example, we reported on a complaint that was filed in 2020. Through public information request, we received the complaint alleging misconduct, but we also received records from the Internal Affairs investigation disproving the allegation and were able to review body-worn camera footage of the incident in question.

Members of the House committee showed little interest in exploring drawbacks of the legislation. Senators in the upper chamber’s Criminal Justice Committee appeared more concerned, however. Sen. Boris Mills, the Houston Democrat who previously worked in law enforcement, expressed deep concern over how the bills would reduce police accountability and transparency.

“The way this bill is written,” Miles said, at the March 25 committee meeting, “it’s going to put complaints further and further underground and buried.”

Both bills were left pending so lawmakers could address concerns raised during each hearing.