Jan. 18—The Kettering Police Department is following other Ohio departments in refusing to release information surrounding police shootings, including any records identifying an officer who shoots a suspect. Go here for the full story from reporter Lynn Hulsey.

City officials claim the recently enacted Marsy’s Law prevents them from identifying police officers who consider themselves victims after shooting a suspect. They have also claimed their officers are exempt from disclosure because they are uncharged suspects, since the shootings were reviewed by grand juries that declined charges.

Here are five things to know about this issue:

1. Not just names: Records released by Kettering police about the police shootings redact not just the names of the officers, but also narrative descriptions of what happened before, during and after the shootings that wounded two suspects. Police cite Marsy’s Law and other public records exemptions.

Here is one page from the records released in one shooting:

2. Not just Kettering: The Columbus Dispatch filed a lawsuit against Columbus police over that city withholding information on officer-involved shootings citing Marsy’s Law. It has also been used in other states that have Marsy’s Laws, as well as other departments in Ohio.

3. Not intended: The group behind Marsy’s Law says this was not what the law was meant do do. “When reviewing the conduct of an on-duty law enforcement officer who has used physical force, the right to privacy of their name must quickly yield to the public’s right to know,” said Marsy’s Law for Ohio in a statement to this news outlet.

4. Marsy’s Law: Marsy’s Law was passed as a pair of state constitutional amendments in 1994 and 2017, but didn’t go into effect until an enabling law was passed this year. A man who campaigned for the two amendments, and the state lawmaker behind the enabling law — who represents Kettering — both say the law never expressly intended to apply to on-duty police officers who shoot suspects.

5. City’s response: In response to efforts by the Dayton Daily News to obtain the information using Ohio public records law — including sending a letter from the news outlet’s attorney — Kettering city officials say if the law intended to exempt police officers, it would have said so.

They point to the Ohio Constitution, which after Marsy’s Law defines a victim as “a person against whom the criminal offense or delinquent act is committed or who is directly and proximately harmed by the commission of the offense or act.”

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