Iowa Open Records Act: Police Use-of-Force Reports Are Not “Confidential Personnel Records” Under § 22.7(11)

I. Introduction

In Harvey L. Harrison v. Lisa Mickey, in her official capacity as Open Records Coordinator and City of Des Moines, Iowa (Iowa Sup. Ct. Mar. 14, 2025, amended May 15, 2025), the Iowa Supreme Court addressed whether routine police “use of force reports” must be disclosed under the Iowa Open Records Act, Iowa Code ch. 22, or may be withheld as “personal information in confidential personnel records” under Iowa Code § 22.7(11)(a).

The requester, Harvey Harrison (a retired attorney and founder of a nonprofit focused on racial disparities), sought the 387 individual use-of-force reports referenced in the Des Moines Police Department’s publicly issued 2020 summary. The City resisted disclosure on multiple grounds over time, but in litigation ultimately relied primarily on § 22.7(11) and Iowa Code § 80F.1(20). The district court ordered disclosure of the officer-authored reports, allowing redaction for certain officer injury/medical information and rejecting the City’s statutory defenses. The City appealed.

The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the officer-completed use-of-force reports are factual incident reports, not “confidential personnel records” or in-house performance evaluations, and that § 80F.1(20) does not apply because these reports are not “statements” given in response to complaints.

II. Summary of the Opinion

  • § 22.7(11) does not exempt the reports: Des Moines police use-of-force reports, as initially completed by line officers, are “reports of facts, not evaluations of employees,” and therefore are not “personal information in confidential personnel records.”
  • Scope of production is limited: The disclosure obligation applies to the reports “as initially completed by the officer,” not later supervisory impressions, analysis, recommendations, or discipline-related materials.
  • § 80F.1(20) does not apply: That provision protects an officer’s “statement” in response to a complaint and related interviews/disciplinary materials; it does not cover routine use-of-force reports generated whenever force is used.
  • § 22.7(5) investigative exception not available on this record: The City’s attempt to invoke “fact-intensive” scenarios (ongoing investigation/clear and present danger) failed because it was not supported below and, in any event, the reports largely contain “immediate facts and circumstances” typically outside the confidentiality portion of § 22.7(5).
  • Possible other redactions not foreclosed: The Court did not rule out targeted redactions (e.g., juvenile-protection issues), but affirmed Harrison’s entitlement to the 2020 reports subject to the discussed qualifications.

III. Analysis

A. Precedents Cited

1. Iowa Open Records interpretive framework

  • Mitchell v. City of Cedar Rapids, 926 N.W.2d 222 (Iowa 2019): Cited for standards of review and, substantively, to underscore that basic incident information is ordinarily disclosable and that courts may require production of law-enforcement reporting without protective orders. The Court used Mitchell to reinforce that § 22.7(5) does not sweep in “date, time, specific location, and immediate facts and circumstances,” and to highlight the weakness of generalized law-enforcement confidentiality claims.
  • Iowa Film Prod. Servs. v. Iowa Dep't of Econ. Dev., 818 N.W.2d 207 (Iowa 2012): Referenced for the standard of review and interpretive approach to chapter 22 questions.
  • ACLU Found. of Iowa, Inc. v. Recs. Custodian, Atl. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 818 N.W.2d 231 (Iowa 2012): Used for both standard-of-review and substantive comparison. The Court contrasted disciplinary records (confidential as “in-house job performance” information) with use-of-force reports (non-evaluative factual documentation). ACLU Found. also supplied the Court’s categorical approach where a record is truly job-performance/disciplinary in nature, making a balancing test unnecessary.
  • Milligan v. Ottumwa Police Dep't, 937 N.W.2d 97 (Iowa 2020): Quoted for the principle that the Act embodies “a liberal policy in favor of access to public records,” framing exemptions narrowly.
  • Clymer v. City of Cedar Rapids, 601 N.W.2d 42 (Iowa 1999): Cited to illustrate the line between public fiscal/governmental information (e.g., salary, leave) and personal/safety-related identifiers (e.g., addresses), and to emphasize that disclosure should not reveal personal medical conditions or professional evaluations. The Court relied on Clymer to support limited redaction (here, officer injury/medical treatment fields) while still ordering production of the core factual report.
  • Ripperger v. Iowa Pub. Info. Bd., 967 N.W.2d 540 (Iowa 2021) (Mansfield, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part): Cited for the broader transparency rationale: open-records law is not only to expose illegality but also to “bring to light the need for different laws and policies.” This was particularly salient in the post-2020 public debate on police use of force.

2. The core § 22.7(11) personnel-records cases

  • Des Moines Independent Community School District Public Records v. Des Moines Register & Tribune Co., 487 N.W.2d 666 (Iowa 1992): The “landmark” § 22.7(11) case. The Court there held that essentially in-house job-performance investigation documents were exempt as “personal information” in personnel records and articulated the important principle that “the nature of the record is not controlled by its place in a filing system.” In Harrison, that filing-system principle was used against the City: storing use-of-force reports in a restricted professional-standards location does not make them confidential personnel records if their content is fundamentally factual.
  • DeLaMater v. Marion Civil Service Commission, 554 N.W.2d 875 (Iowa 1996): Distinguished because it involved evaluative material (test scores) and the Court employed a balancing approach to separate disclosable from nondisclosable components (scores versus identities). Harrison invoked DeLaMater mainly to show that the prior personnel-record cases concerned evaluation-related information, unlike the routine factual incident reports at issue.

3. Authorities on amici and waiver

  • Iowa Ass'n of Bus. & Indus. v. City of Waterloo, 961 N.W.2d 465 (Iowa 2021): Used to reject the amicus State of Iowa’s attempt to obtain a remand/balancing analysis not sought by the City—amici ordinarily cannot raise new reversal grounds.
  • Mueller v. St. Ansgar State Bank, 465 N.W.2d 659 (Iowa 1991): Cited for the proposition that an amicus cannot revive waived arguments. This reinforced the Court’s refusal to reopen § 22.7(5) fact development.

4. Out-of-state use-of-force disclosure cases (persuasive authority)

  • City of San Antonio v. San Antonio Express-News, 47 S.W.3d 556 (Tex. Ct. App. 2000): Persuasive support that use-of-force reports are “administrative in nature,” used to track force, and not personnel files merely because professional standards receives them.
  • Prisoners' Legal Services of New York v. New York State Department of Corrections & Community Supervision, 98 N.Y.S.3d 677 (App. Div. 2019): Treated incident reports authored as part of routine duties as “memorialization of an event,” not documentation of discipline proceedings.
  • State ex rel. Journal/Sentinel, Inc. v. Arreola, 558 N.W.2d 670 (Wis. Ct. App. 1996): Required disclosure of factual portions of deadly-force reports while allowing redaction of supervisory calculations, recommendations, and certain personal identifiers. This closely paralleled the Iowa Court’s line between factual reporting and evaluative add-ons.
  • Thomas v. Hall, 399 S.W.3d 387 (Ark. 2012): Emphasized that a later investigation does not transform an initial routine officer narrative into an exempt evaluation record—an idea the Iowa Court adopted to defeat the City’s “self-review” framing.

B. Legal Reasoning

1. The Court’s classification of the records: factual incident reporting vs. evaluation

The central move in the Court’s reasoning was record characterization by function and content, not by downstream use. The City argued the reports were “self-review” because supervisors evaluate them for policy compliance and they can lead to discipline. The Court rejected that logic because it would effectively allow agencies to convert broad classes of operational records into confidential “personnel records” simply by routing them through a review chain.

The Court relied on the form and required content of the use-of-force report: it is oriented to “basic facts of what happened” (who/what/when/where/why), not prompts to critique performance, propose alternatives, or self-assess correctness. The report is also required “when possible” before end of shift—timing inconsistent with a reflective evaluation exercise and consistent with contemporaneous documentation.

2. Frequency and purpose: routine documentation, not complaint-driven discipline

A key factual anchor was that the reports are routinely generated whenever force is used, and in 2020 only about 1% resulted in internal disciplinary complaints. The Court treated that as confirmation that the report is not itself a disciplinary or evaluative record; rather, discipline is contingent and arises, if at all, later in a separate process.

The Court also accepted the chief’s statement that a “primary purpose” is accountability, but noted additional uses like training and annual trend analysis— further supporting the conclusion that these are operational records about incidents, not personnel evaluations about individuals.

3. Preventing “filing-system formalism”

The City emphasized restricted storage within professional standards, but the Court applied Des Moines Independent Community School District Public Records v. Des Moines Register & Tribune Co. to reiterate that a record’s open-records status “is not controlled by its place in a filing system.” This foreclosed an easy path to confidentiality: an agency cannot make a record exempt merely by segregating it or limiting internal access.

4. Cabining the order: line-officer content only

Addressing the State’s amicus concern that the order might sweep in “supervisors’ impressions and analysis,” the Court read the record and the district court’s order narrowly: Harrison sought only the portions “authored” by line officers, and he repeatedly disclaimed any request for supervisory review or discipline information. The Supreme Court therefore framed the mandate as: produce the report as initially completed by the officer, not later evaluative annotations.

5. § 80F.1(20): terms of art tied to complaint investigations

The City’s alternative reliance on Iowa Code § 80F.1(20) failed because chapter 80F defines “statement” and “interview” as responses by an officer who is the subject of an allegation/complaint within formal administrative investigative procedures. Use-of-force reports are not prepared “in response to a complaint” as a matter of course; they are created because force occurred. The Court treated these statutory definitions as dispositive.

6. § 22.7(5) and waiver/lack of record support

The City’s “fact-intensive” hypotheticals (active investigation, clear and present danger, juvenile) were not enough to defeat summary judgment. The district court found § 22.7(5) not supported by facts/evidence and effectively waived in the litigation posture presented; the Supreme Court agreed. The Court also stressed that, generally, the City conceded these reports do not exceed “immediate facts and circumstances,” which are ordinarily disclosable under § 22.7(5), and that the 2020 reports were already years old.

C. Impact

  • Transparency baseline for force incidents: The decision establishes that, in Iowa, routine officer-authored use-of-force narratives are presumptively open records and cannot be withheld categorically as “confidential personnel records.”
  • Limits on “process-based” secrecy: Agencies cannot convert operational records into personnel-evaluation records simply because supervisors review them or because discipline might follow.
  • Document design and segregation won’t control: Storing reports in professional-standards files or restricting internal access does not determine chapter 22 classification.
  • Likely litigation shift to targeted redactions: Future disputes may pivot from categorical withholding under § 22.7(11) to narrower, report-specific redactions (e.g., juvenile identifiers, medical information, or truly investigative details meeting § 22.7(5)’s “plainly and seriously jeopardize” or “clear and present danger” thresholds).
  • Practical separation of “incident reporting” from “evaluation”: The opinion provides a workable administrative line: disclose the officer’s initial factual report; withhold or redact later supervisory evaluative content and genuinely private medical/safety information.

IV. Complex Concepts Simplified

“Confidential personnel records” (§ 22.7(11))
Records containing personal information about government employees that are treated as confidential. Iowa cases interpret this to include in-house job performance and disciplinary materials. The key question is whether the record is truly evaluative of an employee.
“In-house job performance records”
Internal documents created to assess, investigate, or document employee performance or misconduct (e.g., discipline files, internal investigative findings). If a record is of this type, Iowa precedent may treat it as exempt without additional balancing.
“Factual report” vs. “evaluation”
A factual report describes what happened (time, location, participants, actions). An evaluation judges whether what happened was proper, recommends discipline, or assesses performance. This case turns on keeping those categories distinct.
§ 80F.1(20) “statement” (terms of art)
Not every written document by an officer is a protected “statement.” Under chapter 80F, a “statement” is specifically the officer’s response to a complaint/allegation in an administrative investigation context.
§ 22.7(5) investigative reports exception
Protects certain investigative materials during ongoing investigations, but explicitly carves out “date, time, specific location, and immediate facts and circumstances,” unless disclosure would “plainly and seriously jeopardize” the investigation or create a “clear and present danger.”
Waiver
A party may lose an argument by not properly developing it with evidence and raising it in the correct way at the district court. Appellate courts generally won’t allow a party—or an amicus—to revive an underdeveloped or waived claim on appeal.

V. Conclusion

The Iowa Supreme Court’s decision draws a firm line: routine police use-of-force reports, as initially authored by the officer, are public records subject to disclosure and are not categorically exempt as “confidential personnel records” under Iowa Code § 22.7(11). Review by supervisors and the possibility of discipline do not, standing alone, transform contemporaneous factual reporting into an evaluative personnel record. The Court also clarified that Iowa Code § 80F.1(20) protects only complaint-based “statements” and interviews within formal administrative investigations, not routine operational reporting. Going forward, Iowa public-records practice in this area will likely focus on narrow redactions and report-specific showings, rather than broad claims that all use-of-force documentation is confidential personnel material.