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Thursday, March 18, 2010
Ind. Gov't. - "Public records that might forever remain in the dark"
The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has another Sunshine Week report today, this one by Jeff Wiehe. A few quotes:
Except for the required daily disclosure of basic information on suspected crimes, traffic crashes and complaints, Indiana law enforcement agencies can label police reports, videos, 911 recordings and other records as “investigatory” and withhold them from public view indefinitely.Defined simply as “information compiled in the course of the investigation of a crime,” investigatory records can be almost anything.
In a 2009 opinion, former Indiana Public Access Counselor Heather Willis Neal called the investigatory rule “one of the broadest exceptions found” in the Indiana Access to Public Records Act.
The access counselor, who issues opinions on access denials, has concluded that law enforcement agencies for which the rule applies include fire departments with investigative arms.
The city of Fort Wayne has used the exception frequently in high-profile cases.
• In January 2009, various reports were written by Fort Wayne Fire Department investigators and recordings of 911 calls made in the aftermath of a blaze that left three college students dead at an apartment complex on the city’s southwest side.
• Several times between 2005 and 2008, Fort Wayne police were called to a home where a woman claimed her half brother was fathering her children. The man was not charged with incest until 2009, but some of the police reports made in the years before the man’s arrest have yet to be released.
• In December 2007, cameras in Fort Wayne police cruisers captured the death of Jose Lemus-Rodriguez, a 24-year-old man shot multiple times by a rookie police officer after a car chase on the city’s southeast side.
In each case, records have been withheld.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 18, 2010 12:56 PM
Posted to Indiana Government