By STEVEN JUPITER
I had a conversation this week with someone who’s recently moved to the area and begun reading The Reporter. It’s always useful to get feedback from readers, and it can be especially illuminating to get the perspective of a newcomer who isn’t wedded to any particular way of doing things.
When she learned of my involvement with the paper, she asked why we run the Police Log. We ended up having a collegial debate about its purpose, and it seemed an interesting conversation to share with the broader readership.
First, I must acknowledge that the Police Log that we publish covers only the town of Brandon. But it’s certainly a discussion that any of our readers can join, as the relevant issues may be of interest to the wider community.
We get the Log directly from the Brandon Police Department (BPD) every week. It comes to us in raw form, almost as a spreadsheet, and we convert it to a format we can print. Our policy has been to convey all the information that BPD provides, which includes the streets on which incidents occur (but usually not street addresses) and names of individuals who have been arrested. If no arrest occurs, no names appear. And the names of juveniles never appear in the Log, not even in the material we receive from BPD.
The discussion I had with our new neighbor revolved around the practice of including the names of those arrested. Sometimes, she pointed out, people end up arrested simply because they had a bad day and the arrest doesn’t reflect who they generally are. Is it fair to announce this lapse to the entire community? It seemed, she felt, a bit like gossip.
It’s absolutely a reasonable concern. Sometimes people get into heated arguments that escalate to the point where someone calls the police because things became physical or because personal property was damaged. Sometimes in these situations someone does end up getting arrested. If this happens in Brandon, the arrest appears in the Log and therefore in The Reporter, name included, and the entire community becomes aware.
I’m not insensitive to this argument. I completely understand that one bad day shouldn’t tarnish someone’s reputation in town. It may also be true that some people will hesitate to call the police in threatening situations if they fear the publicity a potential arrest might trigger, especially in domestic conflicts. But even given these valid concerns, I think the Police Log serves an important purpose, one that would be diminished if the names of those arrested were omitted.
Primary among these purposes is transparency. Our law enforcement agencies must be transparent. BPD keeps a log of its daily activities so that the Brandon community is made aware of what it does, what it deals with, and who among us is affected by their decision to arrest. The authority to arrest is discretionary. The police make that determination based on whether they believe a law has been broken. In some cases, the decision is clear cut. In others, it’s a judgment call that needs to be justified.
But in order to know whether that authority is being wielded wisely and lawfully, we need to know when and why and against whom it’s being wielded.
Now, the police are going to record the names of those they arrest regardless of whether we print them. Of course. And those records are public records that any citizen has the right to access. The question is simply, “Why publish those names in the local paper?”
The answer, at least from my perspective, is simply that the police should not be able to arrest anyone without the community’s knowledge, even if it’s after the fact. Most people are not going to seek out that information on their own, despite their legal right to it. Releasing the names of those arrested lets the community know who has been the target of police action and why.
The Reporter certainly has the ability to decide whether to withhold information from the Police Log, but I have generally chosen not to exercise that power. As a policy, I believe it is better to provide more rather than less information.
However, there was a situation where I believed that the inclusion of a certain piece of information about someone who had been arrested was irrelevant to the alleged crime and that publication of it would serve only to needlessly aggravate what already seemed an incendiary situation. The name of the individual who was arrested appeared in the Log but another piece of information the police provided about that person was withheld, though it would be available to anyone who sought out the raw police records.
That wasn’t an easy decision, but I still believe it was the correct one, because the purpose of the Log is neither to rile nor to shame. It’s to inform the public and to ensure that law enforcement knows that its decisions are being observed by the community it serves. The piece of withheld information did not shed light either on the alleged crime or on BPD’s own actions.
I also want to emphasize that none of this is a critique of BPD. Chief Kachajian and BPD have been forthcoming and professional in all of my interactions with them. These arguments would apply to any police department we received information from.
Judging from the general feedback we get from the community, the Police Log is a popular and appreciated feature. That said, not everyone will see the Log the same way. We understand and respect those other perspectives, but for the time being we do believe that our current practice is the appropriate one.
