Michigan's local leaders strongly support a law enforcement database for keeping track of officer misconduct, though far fewer are in favor of that database being accessible to the public.
That's a key finding from the latest installment of the Michigan Public Policy Survey conducted by the University of Michigan's Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy, or CLOSUP.
The statewide survey asked both local government and law enforcement officials about their views on accountability among police, including who should have authority to investigate allegations or prosecute evidence of officer misconduct.
More than two-thirds (68%) of local government officials and most sheriffs and police chiefs (88%) and elected county prosecutors (94%) support an access-restricted misconduct database. Only about a third of sheriffs (32%) and a quarter of local government leaders (24%), county prosecutors (29%) and police chiefs (26%) say it should be public.
Support for a database is high among Republicans, Democrats and independents.
"People assume that law enforcement agencies want to avoid transparency, but there is definitely openness to documenting and tracking misconduct," said Debra Horner, the survey's senior program manager.
The survey also asked respondents to share their assessments of local residents' confidence in how misconduct is handled.
Nearly a third of sheriffs and police chiefs generally think residents in the communities they serve are very confident police misconduct will be handled effectively, but less than a quarter of local government officials of all partisan stripes agree. Horner notes the latter group is ostensibly pro-police, given their local government boards and councils are funding these agencies.
"Law enforcement leaders should take that as a signal to think more about how to build community trust in accountability processes," she said.
CLOSUP, part of U-M's Ford School of Public Policy, received survey responses in April-June 2024 from county, city, township and village officials from 1,307 jurisdictions across the state—a 70% response rate. It also garnered responses from 54 county sheriffs, 234 chiefs of police or directors of public safety and 55 elected county prosecutors.
The 2024 wave of the survey program was funded by a grant from the Joyce Foundation.
