By John Woolfolk
San Jose Mercury News
CALIFORNIA — San Jose’s Sunshine Reform Task Force, formed three years ago in the heat of a mayoral race in which open-government reform became a defining issue, has called for the City Council to adopt some of the state’s most far-reaching public access policies for police records.
But the council Tuesday is expected to largely turn down the task force’s final recommendations. And Mayor Chuck Reed, who championed sunshine reform as a candidate, has helped lead the charge against the proposal, citing concerns from law enforcement.
Bitterly disappointed civil libertarians, journalists and citizen activists who supported the task force’s proposal say the final recommendation by the council’s Rules Committee, which Reed leads, would actually promote greater secrecy.
“It’s a false reform,” said Skyler Porras, San Jose director for the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s not like we’re being offered half a loaf. It’s a mirage of a loaf. What it does is dupe the public.”
Police, prosecutors and some victims-rights advocates argued that despite the task force’s efforts to protect victims and investigations, the proposal to open most arrest reports and many other records would hinder crime fighting. They worried that victims and witnesses would be reluctant to come forward for fear of exposure, despite the fact that such materials routinely are made public in places such as Dallas and Miami.
Reed has defended his commitment to open-government reforms, noting that the city has adopted most of the task force’s recommendations. In regard to the more complicated issue of police records, he said he’s tried to balance the public’s interest in greater disclosure with safety and privacy concerns.
“The central problem is that a half-dozen law enforcement organizations around the state and county said it was a bad idea,” Reed said. Police Chief Rob Davis and Santa Clara County District Attorney Dolores Carr personally came before the Rules Committee during the yearlong review of the proposal and urged that it be rejected.
But Reed insisted his committee’s recommendation to the full council still advances public access. The proposal calls for guidelines for following state records law so requests for information are “not dependent upon the whims of the public information officer,” he said.
He added that the public would be able to ask the Rules Committee to overturn denial of such records as 911 dispatch tapes. “That’s something new,” he said, “that’s real reform.”
At least some on the council say San Jose can do more than the mayor’s committee recommends. In a joint memorandum Friday, council members Ash Kalra, Nora Campos and Kansen Chu said the task force’s recommendations are “for the most part reasonable and can be practically accomplished” and suggested the committee proposal is a sham. The city, they wrote, “should look at policies which open access to law enforcement records rather than talking about sunshine while creating a reality focused on the status quo.”
The 15-member sunshine task force, which includes Mercury News Managing Editor Bert Robinson as well as representatives of businesses, labor and community groups, produced an initial set of recommendations in 2007. The council largely approved those proposals, which concerned such things as posting officials’ calendars online and making city reports available well in advance of meetings in which they are to be discussed.
A second set of recommendations concerning public records proved more controversial. The task force had called for automatically releasing most city records, but the council in August refused to go that far, voting to let officials decide whether to withhold documents except in a few categories such as the budget, where they are routinely available already.
The task force’s remaining recommendations concerning police records have been the most contentious. They would make public most police records, with general exceptions to protect personal safety, privacy and ongoing investigations; there would also be specific exemptions to protect sex crime victims, witnesses and juveniles. Police argue that any policy that automatically makes some of their records public can put victims and witnesses at risk of accidental exposure.
The guidelines recommended by the mayor’s committee attempt to clarify ambiguous areas of state records law, such as what details of a crime must be released.
But critics say a blanket privacy exemption in Reed’s guidelines, which was demanded by the district attorney, would let police withhold even more than state law allows. Reed argues it simply restates what is already in the state constitution.
The task force also called for the police and fire departments to produce quarterly statistical reports detailing key aspects of their operations, as they have done occasionally in the past. The fire department would produce reports on service performance, and the police would document use of force, vehicle and pedestrian stops.
The committee did not reject the idea outright but instead urged waiting until next year, when a new fire records system is operational and a police consultant recommends what types of reports would be most useful.
Ed Rast, the task force’s chairman, said there’s a strong public interest in greater access to police records but that the city has been unusually resistant to providing it.
“In the past, we were able to work out good compromises, but unfortunately, that’s not happening with these issues,” Rast said. “Other cities are doing some of these things, therefore we don’t see why we can’t.”
Copyright 2009 San Jose Mercury News