Michigan Prosecutor Releases List Of Police Officers Caught Lying

A prosecutor in Michigan has made good on her plan to release a list of police officers who have been punished for lying on the job, according to Blavity.

County Prosecutor Kym Worthy released the first list last week featuring the names of police officers who are unable to testify in court due to having lied on the job, according to Detroit News. She intends to produce a list every quarter.

The list is known as the Giglio-Brady list and it outlines the names of the officers and their misconduct.

The police officers on this list were determined based on officers who were labeled “Giglio-impaired.” That’s a term that local prosecutors in Michigan use to refer to the police officers who have disciplinary issues related to lying on their records. Because of the ruling on the U.S. Supreme Court case, Giglio v. United States in 1972, prosecutors have to tell defense attorneys about any police officer with a history of fabricating information.

“Because trials will begin again mid-August and September, we thought it was important to send this out to our prosecutors and defense attorneys,” Worthy told Detroit Free Press. “There are currently 35 officers on the list. We are taking the additional step of releasing the list to the public because, in an era of criminal justice reform, it just makes sense. We will repeat this process quarterly and expect to release an updated list in September.”

Although Worthy is making the list public, the list will exclude police officers who have been reprimanded for smaller infractions like lying on their time sheet.

Detroit Police Chief James Craig is on board with the releasing of the list. He said he has “always welcomed transparency,” and added that “under this administration, if a police officer is found guilty of making a false statement, that’s a termination case. This is a position I’ve taken for a while now.”

“I just had a conversation with a group of activists a few days ago, and they asked me about the Giglio issue. I told them: I can’t undo a decision that was made before I got here; if an officer was found guilty of untruthfulness and was only suspended, contractually, I can’t go back and fire them,” he said.

“There have been instances where I’ve modified the work assignments of officers with truthfulness issues. You can’t have them doing reports because they’ll be challenged. You can’t have them making arrests because they’ll be challenged.”

Craig also spoke on police officers who may leave their jobs as a way of escaping accountability for infractions like falsification.

“If you make a decision to resign while you’re under investigation, we can’t administer discipline,” Craig said. “But what I can do is make a note on their file that they retired under charges. That way, if that officer were to apply to another police department, they would know that the officer didn’t just retire, but they retired under charges, and it would then be up to that hiring agency if they wanted to do a deeper background check.”