I'm going to explain this as simply as I can because you're not the only person here that believes this is some sort of travesty. Every citizen's name and address is already published and available as a matter of public record.

Right now, if I knew enough about you to have two pieces of identifying information I could, without ever leaving my house, have a full dossier of information on you in a matter of minutes including but not limited to age, address, wife, children, mother & father, siblings, their children, traffic citations, convictions, liens, loans and thru which company, past addresses, any property you own and from whom you purchased or sold to, any pictures of you on social media, any publicly viewable posts, etc you've made for at least the past 10 years on the internet.

That's for free. And some states, counties, municipalities offer more or less.

If you've moved around a lot, getting all that information is going to be a little more difficult, but, for $40.00 I can get all that information and more using an information broker which is available to anyone online.

I know this because of the type of work I do and have done both of which require a certain bit of knowledge about public database searches.

In the case of police officers, that public information is not accessible publicly for anyone to see in the same manner that it is for you or me. It's also not available through standard search via information brokers. Their information has certain protections because of the type of work that they do. That comes from State laws that chooses to shield that information.

So, a newspaper offering to release information on a cop that has broken the law convicted or not is a real issue for police officers. But, for the general public, the treatment is no different than anyone John Q. Public. Oh? You've been accused of rape and you've been arrested? Well, you're name is known. So is your arrest record which is going to include name, age, gender, ethnicity, probably the city/county/state you reside in. You know, at least enough information to identify you. With that anyone is able to pull your public records, find out where you live and go over to your house and harass you or worse.