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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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