Thanks to a new policy, Michigan State Police have an inconsistent approach to death.

It didn’t use to be that way.

Typically, when they were at the point in an investigation where it was appropriate and they could be sure of the facts, our state police could be counted on to share those facts with the public. And those facts included the names of the people who had been killed.

Now, when someone is killed, they refuse to disclose the identity of that individual – except when, inexplicably, they do.

In one recent situation, a man was struck by an unmarked Michigan State Police vehicle and died at the hospital. Statements from various elected officials agreed it was “tragic.” Video footage of the incident was released in the “spirit of transparency” and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, according to Bridge Michigan reporting, called it “unacceptable.”

But acknowledgements of tragedy and gestures of transparency were not evident when state police investigated the death of 41-year-old Brandy May Neibert, who was shot to death when the Northern Michigan Mutual Aid Task Force Emergency Response Team tried to execute a search warrant in Norwich Township.

Nor were they apparent in the Jan. 27 death of Jake Turner, a 35-year-old Kalkaska man who was shot to death in a deer blind by state troopers after an alleged domestic violence incident.

Turner was found slumped over a loaded gun. Neibert died with a knife in one hand and a pot lid in the other.

In both cases, law enforcement agencies involved in these incidents wouldn’t release the names of the dead until weeks after they had been killed. Most of the information about these tragedies was obtained through Record-Eagle reporter Elizabeth Brewer’s dogged pursuit of Michigan Freedom of Information Act records.

When they introduced this new policy of nondisclosure, state police said they wanted to be “a modern police agency.” They wanted to give us good customer service. But what we’re getting, instead, is confused.

Our state police don’t seem to understand that their role is not to serve customers; their role is to uphold the laws and keep the peace.

We realize that our police, deputies, troopers and conservation officers face death every day. In some cases, they have to act fast to protect their own lives. This doesn’t make what happens any less tragic, as tragedy ripples past blue lines, into families and communities — on all fronts.

It’s important to realize, too, that information reported promptly to the public in the aftermath of a death is fundamental to understanding what happened – and in trusting that information.

Dealing with tragedies requires a cool head and a keen eye. State police could always be counted on for their professionalism and sober mien, not for jabbering about customer service and modernity.

To those of us who have dealt with state police officers our entire careers, we know them and we respect many of them. This so-called policy is, frankly, shocking. It doesn’t fit. It feels like public relations, not policing. It feels wrong.

And now, apparently applied at whim, it is poorly reasoned.

Our request is heartfelt: Reconsider this policy. It obviously was a mistake to apply it in a recent case because it was not observed. The reasons behind that decision to forego it are almost certain to happen again. That is yet another indication that it’s poor policy.

Dispense with it now.

— Traverse City Record-Eagle