Minnesota Reformer Getty Images. If plumbers spent as much time giving each other awards as journalists, the streets would be flooded with water spewing from unfixed pipes. That said, I’m proud that the I hope in some small way it catalyzes a movement for better access to public records. (And obviously a better police department.) There’s no more important role for the free press than scrutinizing state power, and no institution is invested with more power than the police, who can legally detain and kill their fellow citizens. Public records are perhaps the most vital tool to scrutinize the institutions that most need it — when we use them, we have a real time snapshot of government actions and correspondence, rather than relying on at-times unreliable sources with faulty memories and mixed motivations.