Attorneys are seeking to amend a lawsuit over the release of undercover law enforcement names to a class action against the board that licenses peace officers in Minnesota.
The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association initially filed the suit last week, after learning the identities of 257 undercover officers had been made public. The lawsuit says their safety is at risk and investigations could be comprised.
“We are deeply concerned about the grave consequences of this breach,” said Chris Madel, attorney for MPPOA, in a Thursday statement. “The identities of these officers were exposed in a colossal violation, endangering not only the officers but also the communities they serve.
“The stories we are hearing from the affected officers are heartbreaking,” Madel’s statement continued. “These officers have had to change their lives over the last few days out of fear caused by the actions of the POST Board.”
The lawsuit, filed in Ramsey County District Court on behalf of the affected officers, alleges the POST Board violated the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act.
A local independent journalist, Tony Webster, requested public information from the state’s Board of Peace Officers Standards and Training in August. He said in a statement last week that the POST Board “explicitly” told him they’d removed undercover officers’ names from the dataset they initially released to him.
The POST Board director notified Webster last week that he’d “inadvertently sent me data identifying every undercover officer in the state,” Webster wrote. He said he waited to make a public comment until a database on the website of the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit organization, was updated to remove the undercover officers’ names.
Erik Misselt, POST Board executive director, said that upon “becoming aware of the issue, the POST Board promptly notified the data requestor and other recipients of the data of the incident and requested the data be destroyed. The POST Board also promptly notified all affected officers and their Chief Law Enforcement Officers of the incident and the POST Board’s steps to stop any further dissemination of the data.”
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About 49,000 officers were listed in the response to the data request “and the dataset did not directly reveal or indicate those officers’ statuses as undercover,” Misselt wrote. “The POST Board recognizes the sensitivity of this issue. POST has been and will continue to work diligently to address and resolve concerns in connection with this incident.”
Webster wrote last week that the data had been “distributed to news organizations, and it was downloadable by anyone. … It is likely distributed beyond any assurance of effective recall.”
The lawsuit resulted “in an immediate injunction to prevent any further unauthorized release of data,” the police association said in a Thursday statement. “The amended complaint … now seeks a permanent injunction for the POST Board to adopt stronger measures to ensure future protection of sensitive law enforcement information, including greater oversight and accountability within the Minnesota POST Board, as well as financial compensation for the harm caused to the affected officers.”
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