NEW: State Police Dispute ACLU on Records
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
State Police Superintendent Col. Steven O’Donnell is defending new rules on the release of public records and disputing charges by the ACLU that the state agency is undercutting the open records law.
At issue is whether witness statements are considered public documents. The State Police are saying that they are not while the ACLU insists that they should be.
But in an e-mail to GoLocalProv, O’Donnell said State Police are actually increasing public access to their records. While witness statements are not automatically public records, he said State Police will make some of them available to the public. “We are proposing to further allow access (more not less) to public records by releasing witness statements relating to motor vehicle accidents except for those involved in crimes,” O’Donnell said.
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Arrest reports are already public documents as are police narratives with “proprietary information” redacted from them.
But a witness statement “is a separate document that is different from an arrest report which is clearly a public record,” O’Donnell said. “Regarding witness statements stemming from an incident or arrest, we do not believe they are public records and never have. We will release these statements to those whom the statement was taken, only if no exemption applies.”
The Rhode Island ACLU is at odds with that statement, claiming the reverse has always been the case. In written testimony prepared for a hearing next week the ACLU says: “t is simply incorrect that witness statements are not considered a public record. No category of police record—whether witness statements or any other type of document—is per se exempt from disclosure under APRA‟s law enforcement records exemption.”
The ACLU says it’s important for witness statements to be available to the public to “make sure that proper procedures are being followed by law enforcement agencies.”
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