Iowa City review board questions officer-identification numbers in police reports, asks chief to study alternatives

Members of a civilian review board in Iowa City spent the bulk of their meeting discussing whether the officer-identification numbers the police department includes in internal use-of-force and complaint review reports could be reverse-engineered to identify individual officers.

The board asked the Police Chief to examine alternatives — such as rotating or lettered identifiers — and report back at the next meeting. The chief said the department assigns persistent, non-badge numbers for internal tracking but acknowledged the potential for a determined person to link numbers to officers and said staff could change the system if the board preferred.

The discussion began after a board member asked for clarification about language in the use-of-force review reports, noting that some months labeled injuries as “superficial” while another month used the term “injuries.” That prompted questions about whether identifying numbers tied to officers appear in other documents the public could access. “When a person files a complaint, they know the name of the officer because they name the officer,” the Police Chief said, noting that complainants can later disclose an officer’s identity if they choose. The chief added, “We can easily change it to officer A, officer B, officer C.”

Board members raised two separate concerns: that persistent internal numbers (which the chief said are not badge numbers) remain the same across reports and therefore could be used to track repeat complaints, and that copies of chief’s reports sometimes go to complainants and could be circulated beyond the department. One board member said the risk of re-identification was small unless someone had access to “that other information” but urged caution. Another noted the board’s earlier push, during the Black Lives Matter protests, to provide the public with indicators showing repeat complaints against the same anonymized identifier; the city council then declined that larger disclosure.

The Police Chief said internal tracking uses officers’ real names and that other city offices — for example, the city attorney’s office and the human rights department — sometimes review unredacted reports during their own investigations. The chief and board members agreed it would be useful for the board’s and chief’s reports to use the same identifier system for consistency. The board asked the chief to consult with command staff and provide background and options at the next meeting.

The board moved the discussion about specific personnel and sensitive details into an executive session later in the meeting, then returned to open session and continued routine business. No change to the department’s public-release practices was adopted at the meeting.

The board’s chair asked the Police Chief to follow up and bring historical context or any past rationale for the current numbering system to the next meeting so the board could decide whether to recommend a change.