I've never worked for a police department but I have worked in various government agencies. Foia/public records work is absolutely soul crushing work. It's regularly used as a dumping ground for people agencies can't fire but want to get rid of, and promising managers (if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere). You have to herd cats to get every office and division that touched something to propose redactions based on their specialized knowledge, and the person ostensibly leading the collection is probably like a 60 year old man who sleeps at his desk half the day and spends the other half posting political Facebook memes, but he's buddies with various muckity muck senior career managers or union stewards so he's untouchable.

When it's all said and done, and records are sent out the day before the judge is getting ready to sanction everyone involved, you get a call from angry officials upset that no one redacted such and such thing that was super sensitive. But those fuckers signed off on it as being fully redacted.

Its a problem of attitude, unpleasant conditions (at the federal level, the time lines are from the pre-digital era), and borderline abuse by politically aligned groups that shift based on the administration, to fish for any sort of juicy dirt and otherwise just Gum up agency resources.

I would quit before having to deal with the process again. I'm all for accountability but the sausage of it is terribly unpleasant to grind and pack.