THE DAVID FINN FILE
David Finn became a South Bend police officer on July 20, 2022. In the twenty-eight months that followed, his name entered three different systems of record. A Michigan sheriff's file holds a pursuit that ended with a man dead after a Taser — a Taser WNDU confirmed was Finn's. An Indiana court docket holds an animal-cruelty conviction: filed, tried before a judge, guilty, paid. And a third event — a November 2024 arrest that a prosecutor's office described to reporters in detail — holds no public docket at all.
This file prints each of those at exactly its evidentiary weight. What is decided is labeled decided, with the docket's own numbers. What is reported is labeled reported, with the reporter's name on it. What is not in any record yet is labeled missing, with the records request that settles it named underneath. David Finn was convicted of animal cruelty on November 15, 2024 — that is a court's finding, not an allegation. The November 2024 arrest is an arrest as reported; no charge from it appears in the public docket, and this file does not invent one.
KEEP READING — THE PUBLIC COURT RECORDS
Every file in this series is built the same way: public records, exhibited in full, and nothing in them that the paper does not say. Finish one file, and the next is waiting — the loop does not close.
THE WHOLE SHELF — CHOOSE BY CATEGORY
The Shawn Apps File — 13 appointments, 6 terminations for cause, 4 waiver denials — the academy’s own ledger, and the departments that kept hiring him.
The Aaron Knepper File — the sergeant in his own department’s log, case 25-6153, and seventeen years of paper behind one line.
The Ryan O’Neill File — The sergeant who shot Eric Logan — cleared for the shooting, a convicted felon for the month before it, and barred from public employment by his own plea.
The Tim Corbett File — The homicide commander from the police-tapes fight — now a $90-an-hour school investigator with no end date on his contract.
The Timothy Barber File — Pleaded guilty to child seduction and official misconduct — four years imposed, all but two days suspended — and the state took twenty-seven months to revoke his certification.
The David Finn File — YOU ARE HERE — A cruelty conviction on the docket, an arrest with no case beside it, a Board that cut his pay — and a death in Michigan still waiting on its file.
The John Szuba File — A Goshen fire sergeant charged in November 2026 — the case as filed, a not-guilty plea, and a decade of service on the city's own paper.
The Mike Schalk File — The council president, on tape — and the 1985 record underneath it.
The Sharon McBride File — The DuComb Center director the county fired in 2024 — and the sworn deposition that put her District 3 seat in question.
The Dave Wood File — Handed the mayor’s chair by a party caucus in 2010 and unchallenged on the ballot since 2019 — and the stop of his son that never made the log.
The Vicki Becker File — The 2003 discovery letter that left two internal-affairs files out of a murder case — and the exoneration that came 19 years later.
The Pete Agostino File — Roseland’s town attorney since at least 2000 — no contract, no appointment vote, and no pay figure anywhere in public.
The Nikki Lopez File — Found dead at 32, labeled a natural death by 5:36 AM — and a prosecutor who says no agency ever called her.
The Mishawaka FOP Lodge 91 File — A police lodge’s decade of deficits in its own tax returns, the staffing deal it co-wrote, and its official Facebook account in the reaction list of File No. 1.