North Carolina isn’t making progress on police reform. It’s going backward.

In the wake of mass protests in 2020, police reform in North Carolina seemed to be on a good path. But it has stalled.

Worse, the state has gone backward when it comes to transparency in law enforcement organizations, according to reporting by the North Carolina News Collaborative, a partnership among 23 newspapers across the state.

A change slipped into last year’s budget deal could make it harder for the public to find out about “bad apples” in police and other law enforcement agencies. More specifically, it could make it harder for the public to track law officers dismissed for violations at their old jobs who then pop up at new agencies.

As part of reform efforts, the state created a database that keeps track when an officer in North Carolina uses force that kills or badly injures someone. Good so far.

But legislation since then has concealed from the public just about everything in the database, including the officers’ names; whether an investigation found use of force justified; and what discipline was received by officers in unjustified shootings.

This privacy fence was erected in a criminal justice reform bill, Senate Bill 300, that passed last summer. We are somewhat troubled, too, by who helped erect the fence: Sen. Danny Britt, a Republican who has represented officers under investigation for shooting civilians as part of his work for the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association, an influential group that serves as a quasi-union.

Then, a provision slipped into the 628-page state budget in November required all the information to be kept secret and bars even local agencies from releasing the data. The budget passed with strong bipartisan support and was signed into law by Gov. Roy Cooper.

The change in law has already been used by state officials to shield past data on police incidents, say reporters with the News Collaborative. It is unclear whether local agencies that do release information, such as names, after incidents of use of force will be prevented from doing so.

Republican Rep. John Szoka of Fayetteville, who worked on a key house committee for police reform, told a reporter that officers are public servants, not elected officials, and should have a right to privacy. He said putting all incidents out to the public will make them trials of public opinion.

Democrat Josh Stein, who is attorney general, said state personnel privacy laws would make him hesitant to release officers’ names in the database. However, he said he’s open to looking at avenues for more transparency.

Of course, our state’s protections for personnel records for public employees are among the most stringent in the country; it is another area where more transparency is sorely needed. But a bill to shed light on these records did not go anywhere in the legislature last year.

We must stress: It does not have to be this way. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are clearly so accustomed to the dark veil cast over public records that they sometimes cannot see that there may be a better way.

We believe some version of an approach suggested by Sheriff Alan Cloninger of Gaston County would be appropriate. He told a reporter with the News Collaborative names could be released when an investigation is over. Meanwhile, he believes local law enforcement and the courts are best to decide on what information they want to release in a use-of-force incident.

The late Hubert Peterkin, a well-respected Hoke County sheriff and police reform advocate, was so trusted on both sides of the reform debate that he delivered the eulogy for George Floyd, an N.C. native whose killing by Minneapolis police galvanized the nation. That Floyd’s family would entrust a law officer to speak at their loved one’s funeral shows that trust can be built between police and the Black community.

We do not know how Peterkin, who died unexpectedly in October, might have stood on a police database, or how it should be used.

But we do know how he felt about transparency: He saw it as a vital tool of sound policing. He said the days were over for the “blue wall of silence.”

We hope state leaders take on more responsibility in helping turn that dream into a reality.