Wisconsin police departments must weigh the public interest in deciding whether to release their records and cannot simply deny access to information by saying a matter is under investigation or has been referred to prosecutors, says a state attorney general’s office opinion reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
State law presumes that people should have as much access as possible to public records and that only in exceptional cases may access be denied, the opinion said. Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said that some police departments routinely deny records requests by the public by saying a matter is still under investigation or has been referred to a prosecutor’s office. “Now, if they’re not going to release something, they need to have a valid public policy reason,” he said.