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Records/Archives in the News Part 01 01/13/00
The Post and Courier (South Carolina) 12/12/99
Information access in Low country not always easy
Associated Press 12/12/99
The biggest law breakers are the law enforcers
________________________________________________________________
The Post and Courier (South Carolina) 12/12/99
Information access in Low country not always easy
by Linda L. Meggett and Warren Wise
<SNIP>
When it comes to compliance with public information law in the Lowcountry,
most sheriff?s departments audited this fall had plenty of room for
improvement.
Law enforcement agencies, local governments and school districts were all
part of this year?s statewide Freedom of Information Act audit by The
Associated Press and the S.C. Press Association. Some offices scored high
marks - most county council and school board clerks gave access to public
information without hestitation.
But the agencies that seemed to have the most difficulty meeting and
understanding their legal requirements were sheriff?s departments. When asked
to provide information specifically covered by South Carolina?s Freedom of
Information Act, most of the sheriff?s department officials encountered
during the audit had problems. Their most common explanation: No one has ever
made that kind of request before.
Sitting behind a desk with a computer on one side, Deputy Jodi Taylor
politely asked if she could help the visitor in the sheriff?s department
lobby.
The reporter asked to see the county crime reports from two days earlier.
Taylor said they were in the computer and the county doesn?t keep paper
records. She asked if the visitor had a specific street address or a case
number and said she couldn?t help without either.
When pressed for the information, she left to get a supervisor.
The visitor repeated his request to Capt. Alan Beach, who asked, ?Are you an
attorney?? The reporter, who had been asked his name but never specifically
his occupation, said no. ?I?m a citizen asking to see the records under the
law.?
?You?ll have to file a Freedom of Information request for a specific case,?
Beach said.
The reporter asked if he could show Beach a copy of the law that says such
requests are not required for incident reports.
The reporter said he just wanted Beach to read the law, which says crime
reports or incident reports must be made available immediately to anyone who
shows up to request them.
Beach looked at the law, handed it back to the reporter and walked away.
?File a request,? Beach said.
The reporter then read the law to him while Taylor, now joined by another
deputy, hovered near the desk and computer.
?We?re not required to release the information without a specific request,?
Beach said. ?We have 15 days to respond.?
Leaving the room, he said, ?File a request.?
The reporter never saw the incident reports.
Sheriff Travis Avant said Friday he was not aware of changes in the law and
acknowledged the department made a mistake.
?Obviously, we need to do a little bit of training under the new law,? he
said. Changes in the law went into effect in July 1998. Many of the changes
specifically addressed access to incident reports.
Before he said the department made a mistake, Avant had said the department
can withhold incident reports from a person not involved in a case if it
feels the report?s release would hurt a case.
?We?ve held off from giving reports to the media for several days because we
felt that would jeopardize the case,? the sheriff said. Such a policy
violates the FOI Act.
?If it?s not the victim or the complainant or the suspect or a witness, they
may be required to fill out a Freedom of Information request,? he said.
That?s also a violation of the law.
Avant said the reports the reporter requested were available in another
location, but the officers never directed the visitor there because the
reporter couldn?t cite a specific case number or street address for the
incident reports he needed.
That?s not what the law says. Anyone who walks into a law enforcement agency
is supposed to be able to look at every incident report filed within the past
two weeks.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Sgt. Tony Riley denied a reporter access to Berkeley County?s jail log, which
by law must be made available for public inspection during regular hours of
operation. Jails are supposed to maintain the logs for the preceding three
months.
Said Riley: ?The only way to review the jail logs was to have Sheriff Wayne
DeWitt tell me.? Then he said, ?The only way you?re coming behind this gate
(near the booking area) is if you?re under arrest or being escorted, and I
see no reason for you to be escorted.?
When shown a copy of the law, Riley took a quick glance but continued to deny
access to the logs.
In a later telephone interview, Riley?s supervisor and jail administrator
Capt. Cliff McElvogue said, ?If I had been there, I would have gone and let
you see it.?
He said that if the reporter had identified herself, it would have been
easier. ?I think my people were being very protective in not allowing just
anyone in the facility. We have to put you in a place you are safe and secure.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
Capt. James Gethers ran interference for clerks who didn?t know the law
required immediate public access to incident reports. But he didn?t provide
the reports the same day, and when pressured to do so said, ?You tell the
FOIA to call me.?
When the paperwork became available the next day, it was a summary, not the
actual crime report.
DeWitt said this type of request was ?brand new? to his employees.
?I can assure you you?ve opened some eyes. All will know henceforth,? DeWitt
said. ?I don?t guess anyone usually comes in to see.?
At the St. George detention center, a female voice over an intercom said that
the only way to get through the gate was to give your name and have some form
of identification.
Once the reporter complied, the first gate opened. Lt. Arnold Pastor met her
at the second gate to ask her about why she wanted to see the information. He
insisted on knowing the woman?s employer.
Raising his voice, standing inches away and staring directly into her eyes,
Pastor demanded the information. Citing the law, the reporter refused three
times to provide the name of her employer. Participants in the statewide FOIA
audit were instructed to avoid identifying themselves as reporters, but not
to lie about it. In accordance with those instructions, the reporter
ultimately identified herself as an employee of The Post and Courier.
Once Pastor knew the reporter?s identity, he was accommodating and allowed
her to see the jail log. ?You brought suspicion by not initially identifying
yourself,? he said. ?No one else has come here and done that.?
Sheriff Ray Nash said the St. George detention center is a secured facility
and the staff is not accustomed to handling that kind of request. ?We get
very few requests except from reporters.
?You threw them a curve. Those requests are usually handled in the main
office (in Summerville),? Nash said. ?They probably don?t know what the FOIA
covers.?
Nash admitted he?s never dealt with the issue in St. George. ?We?ve never had
a need. You have found a hole, a problem we need to address from a training
standpoint. I need to get a mechanism in place to accommodate people who have
similar requests,? Nash said. ?We don?t want it to get around that you?ll get
the third degree here.?
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
The Charleston County Sheriff?s Office provided some information after the
reporter reduced the scope of the request and officials sorted through some
initial confusion.
It?s not normal for people to come in and ask to see crime reports for the
entire county, said Charleston County Capt. Sherry Bardsley. Most people who
come in ask for one specific report. But the law requires that crime reports
for at least 14 days be available for public review.
If they need an accident report, that?s no problem. But when somebody wants
75 to 100 reports, that?s time consuming, she said.
?If I could narrow it down, I would try to do that. It?s not a matter of not
wanting to give it to you, but I don?t see them stopping their job to get it
together because you want to see it,? Bardsley said.
?We don?t keep ours on a log once we put it in the computer. Those are
original reports. I don?t want them to get lost,? she said.
Crime reports are readily available in the lobby for reporters to review.
Although Bardsley never refused to provide the documents, after several
attempts to narrow the scope of the county reports, the reporter reduced her
request to only those reports covering the West Ashley area.
Said Bardsley: ?All I was doing was trying to help you because it was a lot
of information.? The request was to review the reports collected in one day.
Spokesman Mitch Lucas, who assisted with a request at the jail, said the
average employee doesn?t know what the Freedom of Information law says.
?We have 700 employees and about 260-270 detention officers. Where the
confusion came in is when they tried to help you. If you?d ask if so-and-so
was in the jail, they?d tell you. If someone wants to leave money, they can
tell what the procedure is. You confused me. No one has ever come up and
asked to see the log,? Lucas said. ?The next time someone comes in for
information, they?ve been told to just refer them to me.?
Jail log information is kept on computer, Sheriff Al Cannon said. It would be
difficult to allow public access to computers to review the logs.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
At the city of Charleston Police Department, a reporter asking about incident
reports was referred to five different people before one of the officers
finally asked, ?Are you with the media??
After being shown to the documents, the reporter asked for a copy of an
incident report involving theft of tools.
?Why don?t you just copy the information like reporters usually do?? the
officer said.
After the reporter insisted, she made a copy and blacked out the street
number, the victim?s name and telephone numbers and the complainant?s name.
She stamped the photocopy, a public document, in big red letters: OFFICIAL
USE ONLY.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
The survey of compliance with South Carolina?s Freedom of Information Act
involved 363 requests for records, most of them from Sept. 29 through Oct. 1.
It involved 14 newspapers and 54 journalists and University of South Carolina
journalism students. Each of the state?s 46 counties was visited.
The surveyors were told not to volunteer their names or say who employed
them. If asked for their names, they were told not to lie, but to ask why
their name was necessary to access public records.
The point was to see how the average person without a press card would be
treated, said Bill Rogers executive director of the South Carolina Press
Association, which tabulated the results.
?As a general rule, it?s ... none of the government?s business who is asking
for a record,? said Jane Kirtley, a University of Minnesota media law and
ethics professor and former head of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of
the Press. ?It doesn?t matter who is asking for them.?
State law says jail logs, crime incident reports and meeting minutes must be
available for immediate inspection. If auditors were asked to return later
for the information and got it, that was counted as providing the records.
The law allows as long as 15 days to respond to requests for expense reports
and school superintendent contracts. Some requests yielded records
immediately. Only requests that were unanswered or did not produce records
were counted as denials.
<SNIP>
____________________________________________________________
Associated Press 12/12/99
The biggest law breakers are the law enforcers
by Jim Davenport
<SNIP>
COLUMBIA - The sheriffs and jailers sworn to uphold South Carolina?s laws
most often violate the ones that say jail logs, crime reports and similar
records are supposed to be open to the public.
Legislators decided that giving you access to those records was so important
that last year they amended the Freedom of Information Act to require that
law enforcement authorities make jail logs and crime reports available
immediately, if you ask for them.
Willfully failing to follow the law is a crime, with a fine of up to $100 or
as long as 30 days in jail for the first offense.
But when journalists and journalism students tested to see if at least one of
those records was available in every county, 44 percent of the time the crime
reports were withheld. Those reports - aside from being needed for some
insurance matters - can let people know if their neighborhoods are safe.
Jail logs that list who is behind bars were withheld in one out of every
three cases. But those logs may be the most important records for public
access to ensure that we don?t become like some countries ?where people just
disappear? after arrests, said lawyer Jay Bender, who has helped craft the
state?s open records laws.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
The testing was coordinated by The Associated Press and the South Carolina
Press Association. Jail logs, crime reports and meeting minutes were included
because the law specifies that you have the right to walk in and look at
those.
Jail logs must be available on demand for three months, crime reports for two
weeks and meeting minutes for six months. Most of the testing for crime
reports was done at sheriff?s offices, though some city police departments
also were included.
Those doing the testing did not identify themselves as journalists and
journalism students because they wanted to be treated like any other taxpayer
who wanted to know how his or her government operates, said Bill Rogers,
executive director of the South Carolina Press Association.
What they often got was a grilling about who they were and why they wanted
the information.
<SNIP>
<SNIP>
The head of the state sheriff?s association, however, put the onus back on
those doing the asking.
?This was done in a confrontational way rather than going in and asking
politely for something,? said Jeff Moore, executive director of the South
Carolina Sheriff?s Association. Moore says he now has reminded departments
that jail logs are public records.
?I didn?t realize that citizens had a behavior requirement in the law to ask
for public information,? Bender said. ?We?ve already paid for it. Do we have
to be polite, too??
Union County Sheriff Howard Wells said not knowing who was asking unnerved
his staff. Wells said another law enforcement department even tracked down
where a reporter from the Herald-Journal in Spartanburg worked by tracing her
license plate.
Law officers should know to whom they are giving records to protect crime
victims or their families from being harmed, Moore said. ?They tend to balk
at giving out information - too much information,? he said.
It?s also likely to cost you more than a journalist to see what your tax
dollars already have paid for, though the law says the fees must be the same
for everyone. And it says costs must be reasonable, primarily based on
copying and searching costs, and it encourages no charge at all for matters
of public interest. The Georgetown County Sheriff?s Department, for instance,
will charge you $3 for a crime incident report. Journalists get it for a
quarter.
Greenville County charges a flat $6 for crime reports, no matter how long,
except crime victims get a free copy. The rates were set by the county
council.
<SNIP>
PETER A. KURILECZ CRM, CA
PAKURILECZ@AOL.COM
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