Police Plan to Release Josh Jacobs Investigation Records. What That Means for His Exempt List Status.
The Hobart-Lawrence Police Department plans to release some of its records from the Josh Jacobs investigation. Attorneys for people named in those records have told police they intend to ask a court to block it. Jacobs remains on the NFL commissioner’s exempt list and cannot practice or play in games.
Those three facts, reported Tuesday afternoon, describe exactly where this sits. A public-records process moving slowly, a legal effort to slow it further, and a running back whose season is suspended while both play out.
What police say they can release
The department has identified three categories it believes can be released with redactions: police reports, body-worn camera recordings and squad camera recordings. Whether surveillance video will be released is unclear. FOX 11 requested surveillance video showing part of the altercation at Jacobs’ Hobart home.
For now the department is temporarily withholding all responsive records while a statutory waiting period and any court proceedings run their course. It has said the hold is not a denial, which is a meaningful distinction. The records exist, the department has determined some of them can come out, and the delay is procedural rather than a refusal.
A court moved this along. The department completed a review ordered on Sept. 24 and determined some records could be released. On Oct. 5 it notified the people named in those records, which were obtained through subpoenas and search warrants.
The legal pushback
Attorneys for people named in the records have informed police they intend to seek court orders blocking disclosure, including of broader investigative records. No filing has been confirmed and no hearings have been scheduled.
There are no direct quotes from either the police department or the attorneys. The reporting paraphrases both sides, so what each party will actually argue in front of a judge is not yet public.
Where the case and the player stand
Jacobs pleaded no contest to misdemeanor battery and criminal damage to property over a May incident involving his girlfriend. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt. That is the full extent of what is established on the record, and anything beyond it, including what any video does or does not show, is unknown.
The NFL is also pursuing evidence in the case, including the video. That is the thread connecting a records fight in Wisconsin to the football question, because the exempt list has no fixed end date. A player on it sits while the league decides when that changes.
Green Bay said on Oct. 12 that it still has “no updates” on when Jacobs might return. That reads less like evasion than an accurate description of a team with no control over the timeline.
The defensible stance here is about process rather than about any person. Open-records law exists so the public can evaluate how police handled an investigation, and privacy protections exist for real reasons too, including for people who never chose to be part of a public story. A court will decide where that line falls, and it has not been asked to yet.
What should not get lost is the part already settled. Jacobs is unavailable indefinitely under a league mechanism with no published deadline, while the documents that might inform the league’s decision sit under a hold nobody can date. Both clocks are running on schedules the public cannot see.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
