State and Local Stories
A bill that would allow all Virginia law enforcement officers’ names to be withheld from the public would be the first of its kind in the country, police accountability and open records advocates say. The proposal by Sen. John Cosgrove, R-Chesapeake – SB552 – excludes the names of law enforcement and fire marshals from mandatory disclosure under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and makes them a personnel record. Cosgrove said he worked on the bill with the Fraternal Order of Police and the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police. He acknowledged that officers’ names could be secret “under the broadest scope of that bill.” The bill is part of a growing movement inside the law enforcement community to shield officers from scrutiny after a rash of controversial police shootings around the country prompted protests and increased focus on officers, said Samuel Walker, professor emeritus of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska Omaha and a longtime law enforcement scholar.
Virginian-Pilot
Senate Bill 552 is supposed to be a simple piece of legislation, designed to protect law enforcement. But its wording, particularly when paired with the existing application of Virginia's loophole-filled Freedom of Information Act, concerns open government advocates. The bill's key sentence is this: "The names and training records of law-enforcement officers as defined in §9.1-101 and fire marshals as defined in § 27-30 are considered personnel records and excluded from mandatory disclosure pursuant to § 2.2-3705.1." Put in plainer English: The government, presented with a Freedom of Information Request, doesn't have to identify law enforcement officers or fire marshals by name. But FOIA requests can be, and often are, verbal. Sometimes governments treat simple questions as formal requests. Would this bill, for example, allow officers to refuse to identify themselves to drivers pulled over on the side of the road? Supporters, including sponsoring state Sen. John Cosgrove, say absolutely not. Press advocates aren't sure how the bill would be applied. "One of the problems with the bill is its vagueness," Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition of Open Government, said in an email. "It’s also a problem that it does not jibe with common practice, which is to use officer names in congratulatory press releases, when an officer talks to the press, or when they talk to students in school, for example."
Daily Press
Should the government be allowed to keep the names of police officers secret from the news media and public? A bill moving forward in Virginia would do that, and it’s drawing sharp criticism from open records advocates who say the names are an important tool in keeping watch over whether police departments are hiring problem officers with taxpayer money. Supporters say handing over the lists of names would put officers and deputies in danger at a time of what they describe as growing contempt toward law enforcement. “It used to be that there was a healthy respect for law enforcement,” said Republican Sen. John Cosgrove, the bill’s sponsor. “Now they’ve become targets of opportunity.” While officers have been threatened, particularly in high-profile cases, opponents call the bill an extreme reaction to an unlikely scenario.
Roanoke Times
BVU officials failed to disclose extensive bonus programs in information provided for its annual audit reports, a former auditor testified Thursday. In addition, a current member of BVU’s accounting department revealed that employee expenditures on BVU credit cards were previously done on the honor system, during the third day of the federal trial of authority Chief Financial Officer Stacey Pomrenke. She is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit tax fraud, three counts of making false statements, three counts of extortion, one count of program theft, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and six counts of wire fraud. Pomrenke previously pleaded not guilty to all charges, while six others charged in the case pleaded guilty and were sentenced to prison. Richard Linnen, a certified public accountant and partner in the auditing firm of Brown Edwards & Co., said BVU management never informed him about cash reward programs for cable TV box recovery, gift cards for birthdays or other taxable perks.
Herald Courier
National Stories
U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday they would turn over more than 1,000 pages of CIA documents to attorneys for five men charged with plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. Defense lawyers for the men, held at a U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have fought for years to gain access to records about how their clients were treated by the Central Intelligence Agency. All five contend they were tortured in secret CIA prisons before arriving at Guantanamo in 2006. A U.S. Senate report in 2014 harshly criticized the CIA's interrogation program and said suspects had been tortured in secret facilities worldwide. Chief Prosecutor Brigadier General Mark Martins promised to deliver more than 1,000 pages of documents for judicial review by March 22, followed by hundreds of additional pages by the end of the summer.
Reuters
Editorials/Columns
Where to begin? Let’s start with the fact that this bill was introduced in direct response to a newspaper investigation into why police officers who are fired for misconduct are permitted to simply go work for another agency. Does Sen. Cosgrove believe that cops who are fired for corruption, misuse of force, or illegal acts should be able to find work at another police agency? Why doesn’t he want the public to know when and how often this happens? Another Virginia state senator actually cited “ISIS terrorism” as a reason to keep the identities of police officers secret. For the record, Cosgrove claims membership in his local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police and has been named Legislator of the Year by the FOP and the Virginia State Police Association. He has received campaign contributions from the latter and the Virginia Sheriffs Association. The notion that “our culture has changed” is also wrong. As we’ve documented over and over again here at The Watch, policing has been getting safer for decades.
Radley Balko, Washington Post
In 2014, a reporter at the newspaper requested access to that record, which the OES compiles from records submitted by all the clerks of court from throughout Virginia. While that database was once readily available to the public, the request was denied. The curious argument made by the OES was that it was not the custodian of the record, a critical designation under FOIA, and that the newspaper would need permission from each of the clerks to review the records. The OES collects those records from court clerks. It built and maintains the database, which is in Richmond. But somehow, according to that office, it is not the custodian of the record and cannot be compelled to grant the public access to it. That sounds like something out of an Abbott and Costello routine, but the OES maintained that position despite a ruling in the Daily Press’s favor by the state’s Freedom of Information Advisory Council and in the face of a lawsuit filed last year by the newspaper. Lo and behold, that intransigence was rewarded this week when Newport News Circuit Court Judge David Pugh ruled against the paper, saying that court clerks were the only custodians of the record. Case dismissed. That may sounds like an overly technical bit of legalese, but citizens are the ones who lost, whether they know it or not.
Virginian-Pilot
We were particularly disturbed by what we heard from representatives of Virginia's circuit court clerks court representatives during Tuesday's hearing: They acted as if this data was their personal property, and not public information. A lawyer for a majority of the elected circuit court clerks of this state representing the clerks kept asserting that the clerks owned this information. Attorney William D. Prince IV repeated this line several times, and Solicitor General of Virginia Stuart Raphael, the top litigator in the Office of the Attorney General, seemed to accept his assertion at face value. The clerk from Arlington County even went so far as to state he was elected to prevent embarrassment to some people from these public records. Repeatedly, the clerks argued that they had a right to keep the database out of public hands if they felt their predecessor in office had done a sloppy job of record keeping. They didn't mention that those records are publicly available for anyone to see.
Daily Press