J. Terry Norris is executive vice president of Georgia Sheriff's Association. In Georgia, sheriff's offices have complied with open records laws only 50 percent of the time, according to a statewide survey, a statistic that Attorney General Thurbert Baker called disappointing. ASSOCIATED PRESS

Officers often violate state open records laws

Web posted December 13, 1999

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 Officer says adherence to law improving
 Many police agencies want written request for records

By Cassandra Lindsay
The Albany Herald

Officers don't accept many excuses when writing a ticket, but they certainly have plenty of excuses themselves for breaking the law when it comes to providing public information.

``No sir, not even our news media looks at those,'' said Columbus police Officer Howard Hughes when asked to see the previous day's incident reports.

``What we keep in his office is not public information,'' said Fulton County sheriff's Lt. Donald Ferguson.

``Next time, tell your paper to send one of them women reporters,'' was the send-off Telfair County Sheriff David T. Williams gave a reporter who left empty-handed.

``What are you looking for? You just come in here off the street with a pen and paper in hand ... asking to see incident reports and our log. ... It's very kind of funny,'' a Worth County Sheriff's deputy, who refused to identify himself, said before refusing to release the report without the sheriff there.

State law mandates that law enforcement agencies release incident reports to anyone who asks. In a statewide survey, only 50 percent of sheriff's offices and 63 percent of police departments complied with the Open Records Act. Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker called the survey results surprising and disappointing.

The incident report includes the basic facts about the crime: who the victim is, who witnesses are, who the suspect is, what property is missing and an officer's written account of what happened. It is an open record under state law and should be released.

More than just the media can be affected when officers refuse to release incident reports. Neighborhood associations sometimes try to get access to reports to determine if there's a pattern of crime in their neighborhood. Most insurance companies require a police report be submitted in theft cases.

``There had been some rapes in the area, so our neighborhood association decided to get copies of the incident reports so they could report back to the neighborhood about some of the characteristics of the suspects,'' said Gerry Weber, legal director of the Georgia branch of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Everyone has a right to see the reports and get copies, but that doesn't mean it's easy to negotiate the law enforcement bureaucracy to get to the reports. Surveyors were questioned about who they were, why they wanted to see the reports, asked where they worked, sent from one office to another and even subjected to criminal background checks.

In Jefferson County, sheriff's Maj. Charles Gibbons made copies of a surveyor's drivers license, asked him whether a sheriff in another county could vouch for him and called his boss at the newspaper. When Sheriff Gary Hutchins got to the office, he let surveyor Jason Smith, an Augusta Chronicle reporter, see the incident reports but refused to let him make copies without a written request.

``Any record that's public, the public has access to it. We don't try to deny them access as long as they have some kind of request, identify themselves and we know who they are. Then they're welcome to it,'' Maj. Gibbons said in a later interview.

Officers should let anyone who wants to see a report see it and should not conduct background checks before releasing incident reports, said Jeff DiSantis, a spokesman for the Georgia attorney general's office.