In 1998, the San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) began requiring officers to fill out reports any time they had to use force, a big step toward tracking when and why police resorted to strong-arming residents of the state’s then-third largest city. Members of the public, including reporters, could already access incident reports and offense reports—which had been public by law for decades—but these new documents could offer a more detailed look into how officers were reacting to tense situations.
That same year, a young San Antonio Express-News reporter named John Tedesco asked to see the use of force reports, but the department declined. SAPD had tucked these particular reports away in confidential files, separate from officers’ main personnel files, shielding them from the prying eyes of the public.
This secret file, commonly referred to as the “G-file” because of the subsection of the Texas Local Government Code that created it, was meant to be a repository for what lawmakers considered to be the most sensitive law enforcement and fire department personnel records, including those related to unsubstantiated misconduct complaints. Under Texas open records law on the books since 1973, Police officers’ general personnel files are public, but the G-file has served as a carve-out since the late ’80s.
