JUVENILE CRIME OFTEN HAS MEDIA AND COURTS AT ODDS

Imagine a horrible crime, the kind that makes a community question its values, wondering how it could have happened here. Pretend that the person arrested for the crime is the boy who lives down the street.

Should his name be published or broadcast by local media?

Now, let's say that the boy arrested for the crime is your son. Is the answer to the question different?

Area police agencies and mass media say battles between them over information have been few over the years. But in a cases like the one described above, perceptions of what exactly is in the public's best interest tend to split.

Police say they'll release whatever the law requires them to, while media editors say that the laws often aren't as clear as they should be.

"We start with the premise that everything is an open record," said Sgt. Carl Kinnison of the Cape Girardeau police. "If it turns out not to be, then we have to understand why it's an exception."

Typically, exceptions are made for children 16 years and younger, and victims of violent crimes.

When crimes involve sexual activity or violent behavior, police keep victims' names a secret although laws don't make them, Kinnison said.

"This is especially the case with a victim of a violent offense," he said. "It could jeopardize the safety of the victim."

Some fail to understand that victims have rights, too, said Cape Girardeau County Sheriff John Jordan.

Media generally hold by this unwritten rule. But serious crimes involving juveniles, or sex crimes within a family can create questions as to what is right.

When parents are involved in a sex crime with their children, it's best to do what protects the children, said Joni Adams, managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.

She recalled one instance when a father had sexually abused his children. The man's name was published, but not the fact the victims were his children. A relative later came to the paper, worried people would figure it out and that the children would suffer further.

"As a smaller community, it makes it harder," Adams said. "Sometimes the dividing line between black and white is shades of gray."

When a 16 year-old boy was kidnapped by friends who then terrorized him and tied him to a cross last Spring, little information was made available by police because everyone involved was a minor, Jackson Police Chief Marvin Sides said. But with few facts available, many area residents began to come up with their own ideas, Sides said.

"Because so many things couldn't be released on it, the incident took on a life of it's own," he said. "Sometimes people's perception is greater than the reality."

Larger law enforcement agencies in the region tend to provide more information, since they usually are more aware of the laws that open and close records, Adams said.

Ultimately, the release of crime details is a matter of trust between media and law enforcement, said Jean Maneke, legal advisor to the Missouri Press Association. Some media get more information than is allowed by law because of a good relationship, she said.

"But many others with poor relations result in less information being released than is legally permitted," she said.

Law enforcement agencies around Cape Girardeau have been very helpful to the media compared to other regions, said Terry Hester, operations manager for the Zimmer Radio Group's Cape Girardeau stations.

"It's not that often that we're faced with a controversial situation," said Hester, who been with Zimmer Radio since 1988. "But when we are, everybody has to be at the bargaining table. That's the best avenue to get out news about crime."

Michael Beecher's reporters got little cooperation when a 14-year-old boy shot and killed three classmates in Paducah, Ky., in 1997.

"Even though we consider ourselves local media in Paducah, we had real difficult problems getting information," said Beecher, news director for KFVS-Channel 12.

Reporting on juvenile crime records and news coverage of minors need to be rethought considering the evolution of youth crime in the past 10 years, he said.

"The dialogue moves to a different level when we deal with law enforcement on juvenile issues," Beecher said. "You could call their view conservative, which might be an understatement."

At times, it is the reporter's fault that information is not printed or broadcast, Beecher said.

"A lot of reporters don't know their communities or the law," he said.

From a legal standpoint, only the courts have an obligation not to publicize names of those involved in crimes, Maneke said.

"The laws and the courts limit what police can say because they are in effect working for the courts," she said. "The media is not."

State laws allow that the name of an individual who has been charged with a crime is public information.

"We are required to release names," said Sgt. Carl Kinnison of the Cape Girardeau police. "But for the most part, the name isn't printed until a charge is filed."

When police write reports on a crime, two kinds of records are created. An incident report contains the basic facts, such as a person's name, the time of day and the place of a crime. An investigative report goes into minute details of a crime. Although it is not available to the public during an investigation, it can be released when an investigation is complete, said Morley Swingle, Cape Girardeau County prosecutor.

Police may maintain records as part of an active investigation indefinitely, which keeps them closed. Once a case is made inactive, it becomes a public record.

If a case has not been solved, police are under no obligation to declare a case inactive, Maneke said.

Booking tapes for DWI arrests would never be released by Cape Girardeau police unless a judge issued an order, Kinnison said. This is because it is an item of evidence, he said.

Some make the mistake of thinking that police and prosecutors pass along information about every crime to the media, Swingle said. But many times, publicity about a crime results simply from a reporter reading records that are available to everyone, he said.

"We have had people get really mad at the prosecutor's office for releasing names when we hadn't," Swingle said.

Over his 15 years covering news in Southeast Missouri, Beecher said information from some sheriffs' departments moves in ebbs and flows, depending on the season. "We tend to get tips during elections, then it gets quiet," he said.

If information about a homicide investigation is offered by someone outside the police department, police will not give it official acknowledgment, Kinnison said.

Two types of documents that are available to the public more immediately after a crime are arrest warrants and the text of charges filed by a prosecutor, Swingle said.

Although tape recordings of 911 calls are made available in some other states, Missouri keeps them closed.

"Even though Missouri has made it illegal, everyone in Cape has probably heard the O.J. (Simpson) tapes," Swingle said.

Changes in "sunshine laws" over the past two years have opened more criminal records to the public. Probable cause affidavits have become a source of more detailed information about crimes, the prosecutor said. These affidavits are presented to judges by prosecutors in order to clearly show why an arrest warrant should be issued, he said.

Even though not all segments of the public understand its value, Beecher maintains that journalists have a duty to make their communities aware of what's taking place around them, even if it's ugly.

"The sheriff works for the public, and so do we, in a sense," he said. "I think journalists have a priestly duty to defend the right to know."