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The West Valley City Council has voted unanimously to publicly release police internal affairs investigation records related to the 2012 officer-involved shooting death of Danielle Willard.

Council members issued an order Tuesday overturning an earlier decision by city attorneys and administrators to deny a Salt Lake Tribune records request. The staff had asserted that details of the probe into former Detective Kevin Salmon were private and protected.

Mayor Ron Bigelow said the decision to overrule administrators was an easy one after reviewing the records at issue.

All council members "felt as strongly as I did that you need to release information wherever possible. The argument that they hadn't completed the investigation … didn't seem to be the deciding factor," he said in an interview Wednesday.

"Generally speaking, if there is clearly a compelling reason — and I don't mean a made-up one — ... that's in accordance with the law, then we would, of course, keep them from going public. But we couldn't find that, so we said we need to release these records. It's better for the city, it's better for the public to have the information in front of them."

City Manager Wayne Pyle has the right to appeal the council's order to 3rd District Court. He said Wednesday he has made no decision.

Salmon and his partner, Shaun Cowley, both shot at Willard on Nov. 2, 2012, during the course of an undercover drug investigation. The two said the unarmed woman had refused to obey their orders to surrender and when she started to pull away in her car, they feared being struck.

Cowley fired the first and fatal shot. He was charged with manslaughter, but a 3rd District judge threw out the case during a preliminary hearing.

Salmon never was charged. A city professional standards review board determined he violated city policy by using excessive force, but the panel disagreed with Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill that the shooting was unjustified.

City attorneys had argued that because the internal-affairs investigation was cut short when Salmon resigned last October, the file was confidential. Publicly disclosing tapes and transcripts of two interviews with Salmon and a recommendation by a deputy police chief about possible discipline, said attorney Martha Stonebrook, would be a "clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy," would interfere with other or future investigations and could have a "chilling effect" on officers cooperating in such probes.

Making those documents public, she argued during a Jan. 6 public hearing, "would allow all kinds of speculation and conjecture as to whether or not the officer or any other public employee actually did what he or she is alleged to have done."

Councilman Steve Buhler, the only attorney on the council, seemed at times skeptical of the city's arguments and questioned the logic of declaring that records of an investigation never completed were private and would permanently remain so.

Tribune reporter Nate Carlisle, in appealing the city's denial of records, noted that many details have come out regarding Cowley's actions because of the court case.

But, he said, "We've not learned a lot about Mr. Salmon's role on that day. We know that the district attorney decided that there was nothing criminal about his behavior but we don't know what Mr. Salmon told investigators and we don't know what West Valley City investigators found."

Pyle has 30 days to decide whether to take the fight to court.

Bigelow said the case hasn't caused any rift in the city, and won't — even if the city manager appeals.

"We love our city manager, he does a great job," Bigelow said. "But we can have differences of opinion, and the system still works."