Outside of actions that exclusively benefit the politician (generic abuse of power, bribery, etc), that would be an impossible threshold to clear in a represent

Outside of actions that exclusively benefit the politician (generic abuse of power, bribery, etc), that would be an impossible threshold to clear in a representative democracy - given the whole prevention-of-majority-tyranny raison d'etre. But what we have here is nakedly self serving and at the expense of everyone who isn't them: they're refusing to release records on the grounds that they're "highly embarrassing" and capture their state of "emotional/mental distress". The only way that one could argue that it isn't self serving: by forcing them to comply with the law you establish a precedent that would discourage police departments from cowardly doing nothing as children are murdered - because the knowledge that they can't sweep their misdeeds under the rug would pressure them into doing their jobs. I look forward to hearing that argument, and how this is actually a selfless act - heroic even, in service to all future feckless cops.