When a police officer stops a car, enters a private home, detains someone in public or otherwise acts for the first time in a matter of police business, that action is, under law, recorded in an initial police report. And that initial report is, under law, accessible to the public.
However, in a case currently before the Court of Appeals of Georgia, the City of Sandy Springs argues that same “initial” information may be hidden from the public if police simply give the report containing the information a different name—such as “supplemental.” The ability to rebrand an “incident report” as a “supplemental report” is allowing police in Georgia to conceal information that should be available to the public, including time, date, location, biographical information of those involved, and factual circumstances of an incident.
The Georgia First Amendment Foundation strongly disagrees with this “shell game” practice, which significantly restricts the public’s ability to properly monitor police responses and crime statistics. GFAF has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, Appen Media Group Inc. v. City of Sandy Springs, urging the appellate court to reverse a trial court decision and end this secretive police practice.
GFAF’s brief centers on three points:
- Reports containing initial police incident information are public under the Georgia Open Records Act. GFAF contends that the City of Sandy Springs’ practice of putting initial police incident information in a “supplemental” report and refusing to produce it in response to open records requests is contrary to the General Assembly’s edict that “initial incident reports” are public.
- Initial police incident information is widely regarded as public by legislatures and courts throughout the country, which have “consistently determined that the public’s right to access initial incident reports includes reports relaying the factual circumstances observed by an officer responding to an incident or call.”
- Less restrictive means are available to protect police interests in safeguarding information about active investigations. “To the extent the City claims that the supplemental reports contain investigative information—as opposed to initial incident information—this only provides a basis to redact the reports, not withhold them entirely,” GFAF states, noting that government records frequently contain some information that is public and some information that is exempt from disclosure and may be redacted under the law. Such redaction is a legal tool long available to the City of Sandy Springs and any government entity in Georgia.
In urging the Court of Appeals to reverse the trial court decision, GFAF ultimately argues that “the nature of the requested information—not the title of the report in which that information appears—is what determines whether or not it is public.”
