Good law enforcement is important to all of us.

In a series of stories over the past year, the 10News Investigative Unit exposed serious problems with understaffing, salaries and response issues facing the San Diego Police Department.

Again and again street cops came to 10News because they trust us. And we trust them to protect us -- to keep our homes and streets safe.

They deserve our respect for the dangerous job they do.

But this 10News I-Team report is about another serious issue involving law enforcement, not just the City of San Diego but across the entire state.

Have police agencies, with their extraordinary power, forgotten who they work for?

Do they know who pays the bills for one of the most powerful elements in our government?

Do citizens have the right to know what their police department is up to?

Fair questions and we put them to a fair test.

A 10news team was trained by Californian’s Aware -- Calaware -- to be part of a massive audit of police and sheriff agencies, as well as the California Highway Patrol.

10News joined 30 other newspapers and television news organizations in the largest government agency audit in history.

The purpose was to test if the police agencies would provide certain public records as required by state law.

All the journalism organizations had the same questions, both oral and written -- we all performed the audit on the same day.

You are seeing it here first, on 10News.com

One thing to bear in mind as you read and watch what we found -- many times the points of contact were not sworn police officers.

Instead, they were administrators or clerks, whose actions reflect agency policy -- written or otherwise.

What did the 10News Digital Correspondents uncover during the audit?

Find out how your police agency compared with others in San Diego and across California.

For more information on Digital Correspondent Michael Gleeson’s North County Audit, click on NCTimes.com to see the story by Dave Downey.

-- J.W. August, 10News Managing Editor