Ohio Supreme Court upholds decision to reject newspaper's request for cops' names...

OFF THE WIRE
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- An Ohio Supreme Court ruling on Thursday could make it more difficult for the public to obtain information about police officers.
The court unanimously upheld a lower court’s decision to deny the Cincinnati Enquirer’s public records request for the names of officers wounded in a Cincinnati motorcycle gxxg shooting in 2010.
The police officers were involved in a gunfight with the Iron Horsemen, an outlaw motorcycle gxxg, outside a Cincinnati bar. Two police officers were hurt and a prominent member of the gxxg was killed.
The court ruled the officers’ names are not public because they have a constitutional right to privacy. Ohio’s public records law shields records if their release would violate state or federal law.
“Officers have a fundamental constitutional interest in preventing the release of private information when disclosure would create a substantial risk of serious bodily harm, and possibly even death,” the court’s opinion said.
The Cincinnati police chief at the time, Thomas Streicher, said it is not unusual for motorcycle gxxgs to retaliate against police when a gxxg member dies in a gunfight with police, according to court records.
Jack Greiner, a lawyer for the Enquirer, said the court’s ruling will make it easier for police departments to withhold officers’ names from the public. He said the threat to the officers, which factored into the court’s decision, was based on hearsay testimony and should not have been considered.
“This holding, which allowed the Cincinnati Police Department to withhold the names on really no admissible evidence of an actual threat of harm to the officers, is going to give police departments and chiefs a lot of discretion to withhold information going forward,” Greiner said in an interview.
The court’s opinion, written by Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, said there was credible evidence of a “perceived likely threat that the Iron Horsemen motorcycle gxxg would retaliate against the wounded officers for killing the gxxg’s national enforcer.
“This was supported by Streicher’s historical knowledge of the circumstances, past instances of threats made by the Iron Horsemen against the Cincinnati police, and the confidential information confirming the threat against the officers,” the opinion said.
The state’s high court took up the case after the Enquirer appealed the Ohio First District Court of Appeals’ decision in September 2011.
Dennis Hetzel, executive director of the Ohio Newspaper Association, said he understands the court’s desire to protect police officers. But the decision follows a troubling trend of establishing more and more exemptions to the public records law, he said.
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2012/05/ohio_supreme_court_upholds_dec.html