Editorial: Law enforcement putting up barriers over incident reports

A decade ago, the Baylor University football program had gone rogue. For several years, players committed sexual assaults, rapes and other crimes. School officials helped cover up these crimes.

But they had help.

It's unclear to this day whether some in the Waco (Texas) Police Department bowed to pressure from the university or simply took it upon themselves to hide the crimes of the athletes who were, to be sure, bringing big money to the university and the city.

What is crystal clear is the police department implemented a standard operating procedure with regard to allegations against Baylor athletes.

A young woman contacts police, accusing a Baylor football player of raping her. Police take her statement and begin to investigate.

The original incident report — the first public document of the allegation, a document state law declares an open public record — would not be public. No one, including the local news media looking for such matters, would know of the allegation.

Months later, after prosecutors had finished their work and charged the player with a crime, as if by magic, that original incident report would surface in court documents.

Yes, the incident would eventually come to light. Yes, the system would punish the player. Yes, the victim would receive justice. And, yes, the player would play the entire season before trading his Baylor green uniform for an orange jumpsuit.

Why does the cesspool that was the Baylor football team come to mind now?

Some law enforcement agencies in Southeast Missouri have appointed themselves the same judge and jury as Waco Police Department did.

Cape Girardeau Police Department officials universally refuse to release incident reports. Period. End of story. They say they are to judge whether releasing information would harm the people involved. They have invested lots of time, money and energy into programs to lessen the harm of domestic violence incidents and help those suffering from mental health issues.

Those are laudable goals.

However, state law does not grant such carte blanche report-shielding power to the police department.

But Cape Girardeau Police Department is not the only public information offender in the area.

Recently, a Southeast Missourian investigation into an alleged incident involving a Chaffee (Missouri) High School student and a teacher resulted in Chaffee Police Department refusing to acknowledge whether a report had even been generated. Our reporter asked for the date of such a report, if it existed, and the reply was crickets.

One other example of officials charged with providing public information: Two requests for law enforcement records at the county level (Cape Girardeau County) included the question: Why do you want this information?

Missouri state law is clear on the matter of incident reports. These reports are open public records. And nowhere does the law address why it matters when someone requests the information.

Make no mistake, we appreciate the work local law enforcement do for our communities, even seeing much of the work of local officers as heroic. They have an extremely difficult job. But on this issue, the bureaucracies of a number of law enforcement agencies in this region — funded by our tax dollars and dedicated to protecting and serving the public — are getting it wrong on a regular basis.

To be clear, an original incident report differs from an "investigative" report. An investigative report likely includes information regarding suspects and criminal activity. It helps law enforcement personnel build a case against suspects. The law absolutely should shield investigative reports from the public, allowing law enforcement agencies to do their work.

But state law differentiates an incident report from an investigative report for good reason.

The public has every right and a potentially significant need to know what's going on in the community.

Quoting Missouri state law: "Incident report", "a record of a law enforcement agency consisting of the date, time, specific location, name of the victim and immediate facts and circumstances surrounding the initial report of a crime or incident, including any logs of reported crimes, accidents and complaints maintained by that agency"; "Investigative report", "a record, other than an arrest or incident report, prepared by personnel of a law enforcement agency, inquiring into a crime or suspected crime, either in response to an incident report or in response to evidence developed by law enforcement officers in the course of their duties."

There are provisions allowing law enforcement agencies to withhold information in certain circumstances, but throwing a general no-release blanket over incident reports obviously defeats not only the spirit but the letter of the law.

As the public's representative, when confronted with public servants who thumb their nose at the law, news media have two options.

One, we can bring the public's attention to their intransigence and encourage the public to ask their elected and appointed officials why these policies are in place.

Two, we can enter the legal arena and compel these agencies to comply with the law. No one wins in such an instance.

We take our job of reporting the news seriously. We take great offense when someone puts up barriers to us doing so. Unfortunately, some of those putting up barriers are taxpayer-funded law enforcement agencies deciding for the rest of us what they will and will not tell us.

That cannot stand.