The Portland Police Department is finally promising to obey state law and
make its daily log available to citizens
Portland's police logs are going
public. Sort of.
For at least the last eight years, the Portland Police
Department has refused to allow citizens to examine the daily police blotter.
But, following a Freedom of Information Act request by CBW for access to the
public portions of the log, the cops are apparently going to change their
policy.
In a letter to CBW, the city's lawyer, Gary Wood, wrote that
department officials told him the police intend to start releasing a daily
report listing the names of arrestees, the time and location of the arrest, the
charge and the name of the arresting officer.
But, according to Wood, not all arrests will be made public. The names of
minors and those of "individuals who were arrested but against whom charges were
dropped on the same day or night" will not be included, he wrote.
Wood said
he has no idea when the new police blotter will be released or why the
long-standing policy of not having one was changed.
Police attorney Beth Poliquin and Chief Mike Chitwood didn't return calls
seeking comment.
In 1989, Poliquin told the Portland Press Herald that state law gives the
public the right to know the names of people arrested and the charges against
them. In recent years, however, Poliquin has told CBW that under Maine's
Criminal History Record Information Act, the police are not obligated to release
the information.
That's news to the Maine Attorney General's Office.
"We don't do secret
arrests in this state," said Charles Leadbetter, an assistant AG. "[The blotter]
is an open document, and nothing should be confidential. The purpose behind it
is to provide insight into what the police department has done within the last
24 hours."
While some criminal-history information is protected, mainly the
name of the person calling the cops, the names of victims and investigatory
details, Leadbetter said the rest of the information should be disclosed. "The
rules of the road are there," he said. "The intent of the Legislature was not to
use this statute to abuse the public's right to know."
As for the plan to
keep confidential the names of people arrested but released, Sig Schutz,
a Portland media lawyer (whose firm represents CBW), said whether the arrest
stuck or not, the incident should still be in the police blotter and available
for review. According to Schutz, state law mandates that police agencies create
a written record for each person delivered to jail for detention of any period
of time. "Presumably, that means even if someone is released within minutes of
arrival," he said, "there should still be a [public] record of it."
That's not the way the city has been operating. All information about arrests
and incidents is screened by Detective Lt. Joe Loughlin, then disseminated to
the media. The reason for that policy, Poliquin told CBW in August 2001, was
that reporters preferred to get their information directly from Loughlin.
That situation may be acceptable to some news organizations, but the police
blotter is not intended just for reporters. "It's so the public can determine
what is my police department doing," said Leadbetter. "That's what it's designed
to do, to provide the public the opportunity to look at police actions."
By
Chris Barry - Casco Bay Weekly
Preti Flaherty has offices in Portland, Bath and Augusta, Maine, Concord, NH and Boston, MA. With more than 80 attorneys, the firm counsels clients in the areas of business law, energy, environmental, estate planning, health care, intellectual property, labor and employment, legislative and regulatory, litigation, technology and telecommunications.
