This is the shit that keeps my blood pressure high.
Subject: FYI - Some police departments keep names of those arrested secret
Some police departments keep names of those arrested secret
| Written by Shereen Skola
WAUSAU — Some police agencies in the
state are withholding the names and other information about people they arrest,
looking to a little-known Illinois court case with potentially far-reachingimplications for Wisconsin residents.
The change in policy stems from a privacy case in
which a federal court ruled that police violated a man’s privacy when they
wrote information obtained through the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles on
a parking ticket left on the man’s vehicle. The case, Senne v. Village of
Palatine (Ill.), is the root of what Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin
Freedom of Information Council, calls an “emerging crisis” in Wisconsin.
“This overzealous interpretation of a federal court
ruling creates a huge problem with the ideal of an open society,” Lueders said.
“We now find ourselves with the potential for secret arrests. The police could
now deprive you of your liberty, and not even say who it is they’ve arrested.
The court couldn’t possibly have intended this.”
So far, the Marathon County Sheriff’s Department and
Wausau Police Department are among 16 municipalities statewide that are
redacting personal information on police reports; the Rothschild Police
Department and Everest Metro Police Department have not yet followed suit.
The new rules, which went into effect earlier thismonth in Wausau and Marathon County, prohibit the release of any personal
information obtained from a driver’s license, but not from a state-issued
identification card. “Personal information” includes names, addresses, phone
numbers, photographs, and medical or disability information.
“So, if two people are arrested and one has a driver’s
license and one has a state ID card, police can give you the arrest information
for one person but not the other,” Lueders said. “That’s crazy.”
So far, Wisconsin appears to be the only state using
the Illinois ruling as a reason to keep arrest information secret. Under the
new rules, if you’re involved in a crash, you can’t even find out who hit you.
And the lawsuits are just beginning.
Erring on the side of secrecy
Marathon
County Corporation Counsel Scott Corbett said
municipalities are acting on the recommendation of insurance companies
thathave advised them to “err on the side of caution” and comply with
the Driver’s
Privacy Protection Act, or DPPA. The 1994 legislation, passed largely to
prevent stalkers and would-be murderers from accessing public driving
records,
prohibits the disclosure of personal information without the express
written
permission of the driver.
Corbett said the new redaction policy is derived from
the idea that the DPPA supersedes Wisconsin’s open records law, which requires
all governmental agencies in the state to conduct their business with
transparency.
“I am very much aware of the policy and tradition in
this state with regard to open records, but insurers are indicating that this
is the nature of the law,” Corbett said. “Of course, it doesn’t help that the
case this is based on came out of Illinois, where they don’t have the same
privacy laws we do in Wisconsin.”
Where does that leave the public? In the dark, Lueders
said.
For example, the city of Wausau on April 13 arrested a
man accused of playing bumper-cars down North Third Street in a pickup truck,
bouncing off at least three vehicles parked on the side of the road. The
driver, who was suspected of being drunk, was detained by witnesses until
police arrived and took him away.
His name still has not been released to the public,
prompting speculation that police are covering up the name of a prominent local
official caught driving drunk — though police say that is not the case.
Lueders,
who is sharply critical of the new rules,called such policies a
“dangerous position to take” in light of the state’s open
records law.
“Insurers advising departments to err on the side of
secrecy? In a judgment call, you err on the side of openness,” Corbett said.
A not-so-simple parking ticket
The court case that spawned the policy changes wasfiled in August 2010 after a police officer in Palatine, a suburb of Chicago,
wrote a simple parking ticket and left it on Jason Senne’s windshield. Senne
sued the village for about $80 million. The lawsuit alleged that by leaving the
ticket, which included Senne’s name and other personal information, the village
violated Senne’s rights under the DPPA.
Originally,
Senne’s case was dismissed in federal
court; that decision was reversed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
7th
District in a 7-4 decision. Jurisdiction for the appeals court extends
to
Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. The village has petitioned the case to
theU.S. Supreme Court, but it’s unclear whether the justices will review
the case.
Despite Wisconsin’s strong history of transparency in
government, it appears to be the only state using the case to restrict
information, Lueders said.
“It appears Wisconsin is alone in this,” Lueders said.
“Even in Illinois, where the case originated, they aren’t redacting.”
The legal debate
A
2008 opinion by Wisconsin Attorney General J.B Van
Hollen is the basis for at least one lawsuit that challenges the
redacting;that case is making its way through the Wisconsin court
system. Van Hollen’s
nine-page opinion cites dozens of cases to support its opinion that the
DPPA
was not intended to restrict public access to information under the
state’s
open records law.
“From at least the time of the Magna Carta and the
formalization of the writ of habeas corpus, the concealment of the reason for
arrest has been as odious as the concealment of the arrest itself. It is
fundamental to a free society that the fact of arrest and the reason for arrest
be available to the public,” Van Hollen wrote.
Robert
Dreps, an attorney with Madison-based law firm
Godfrey and Kahn, represents a newspaper at the center of the legal
battle. In
a lawsuit filed March 13 in St. Croix County, the New Richmond News
allegesthat the city of New Richmond violated open records laws when the
city’s police
department began redacting personal information earlier this year.
“Under the Open Records Law ... it is the declared
policy of this state that every citizen is entitled to the greatest possible
information regarding the affairs of government,” the complaint reads.
Van Hollen has declined to weigh in further on theissue, Corbett said, until additional court cases are decided.
Next steps
One thing is clear — the fight isn’t over yet. Corbett
said he and other attendees at a May 2 statewide corporation counsel meeting
will discuss the matter with insurance representatives.
“This issue is not settled,” Corbett said. “For now,
we’re balancing the best we can.”
A call Friday to Wausau City Attorney Anne Jacobson
seeking comment was not returned.
The changes affect more than media requests for
information. Drivers involved in crashes, for example, will no longer be able
to obtain information on other drivers involved when they request police
reports after a crash, Wausau Police Capt. Bryan Hilts said.
“It’s a major administrative problem for us, too,”
Hilts said. “Every time someone comes in and asks for a police report or an
accident report, someone has to spend the time blacking out all that
information. The time adds up pretty quickly.”
Lueders said members of his organization are hopeful
the courts will rule soon and “put an end to this nonsense.”
“We’re hoping the New Richmond case will bring sanity
back to Wisconsin,” Lueders said. “We hope the courts act promptly.”
