Jeb Phillips, The Columbus Dispatch
Locals may know Sgt. Earl W. Smith’s face even if they don’t know his name. As public information officer for the Columbus Division of Police, he’s on television and in the newspaper more in a week than most people are their entire lives.
That’s why Donald Rumsfeld’s guide to dealing with the media sits on top of Smith’s file cabinet.
Smith says the defense secretary’s guide -- four ways of responding to a reporter’s question -- is a joke. Some reporters aren’t so sure.
The four options are:
1. “I know and I will tell you.”
2. “I know and I can’t tell you.”
3. “I don’t know.”
4. “I could answer that, but I won’t.”
Columbus reporters get No. 1 sometimes. But they feel as if Nos. 2, 3 and 4 are more common. Smith’s boss, Chief James G. Jackson, prefers it that way.
“You guys in the media have a habit of publishing too darn much information,” Jackson told a reporter last week.
This is where Smith finds himself -- answering to a man who doesn’t want “too darn much” information published, while answering to reporters who want as much information as possible.
Smith is the division’s public face. He says he is the “conduit” for news from police to the people. But he can also be the first filter of information, the first obstacle for a reporter.
“There are days I wish I was doing something easier, like parachute testing,” Smith said. “I thought you could do this all as a Kumbaya. Well, you know what, welcome to life.”
But if any officer could get police and reporters singing around a campfire, Smith isn’t a bad choice, say those who work with him. He speaks with a voice common to an easy-listening disc jockey. (Before he was an officer, he was a car salesman.)
A 24-year veteran of the division, he knows the officers and they respect his experience, homicide Lt. Mary Kerins said.
And even if he doesn’t know the answer to a question, he’ll talk to you.
“He’s not very hard to reach,” said Nancy Burton, a reporter for WCMH-TV (Channel 4). “He answers his pager and cellphone. That’s the most important thing in a PIO, just to be available.”
Smith, 49, became a patrol officer in 1978 after spending time volunteering with the division. Healso has been a detective and a community liaison. He became the public information officer in 1998 because he felt he could do the most good in that position, he said.
“A lot of people in areas of the city have no political clout, no financial clout. I have no real voice per se, but you go to different crime scenes, and you run into reporters and you mention things -- ‘Hey, this might be worth taking a look at.’ ”
Smith prefers that his personal life remain personal. When asked why, he pulled out a stack of letters several inches thick.
“This is my stalker mail,” he said. Because he appears on television so often, some people have come to hate him enough to send him death threats. Some love him enough to propose marriage.
“I like it when you put on a mean look, Baby Doll,” wrote one woman after a Smith television appearance. “I’ve got to see you. . . . I need you.”
For a sex symbol, Smith is in a tough job. He is often a reporter’s first contact on a police-related story. All day, he hears: What can you tell me about this homicide? Who should I talk to about this shooting?
He is also the second or third contact when the detectives won’t answer reporters’ questions.
“You call Earl when they’re not in, they’re not willing to talk or they don’t call us back,” said Carol Luper, a reporter for WSYX (Channel 6). “When they don’t want to talk to you, they say ‘Go to Earl.’ ”
Sometimes, he’ll make an introduction or call an officer at home for a crucial bit of information. But sometimes, he said, he runs into brick walls.
“I’m a police sergeant,” he said. “I don’t run the police department. I am not a celebrity. I have to work from a position of people’s willingness to cooperate.”
Take the recent case of a serial rapist operating just east of the Ohio State University campus. Some within the division didn’t want to call the four sexual assaults this summer the work of one man, Smith said. Others, including Smith and Sherry Mercurio, his civilian partner in the public information office, thought the division didn’t have a choice.
“It’s not necessarily to benefit the reporters,” he said, “but you have to let people know this person is operating.”
The division decided to call the man a serial rapist and release a description.
But Lt. Dave Perkins of the sexual-assault unit didn’t give reporters everything they wanted. He talked generally about how the rapist operates but wouldn’t say exactly what the rapist said to persuade women to open their doors, or whether he always used a weapon.
Smith and Mercurio agreed with that decision.
“You get crackpots out there who will call in and say, ‘I did this,’ ” Mercurio said. “You have to keep certain information back because you have to differentiate between who actually is the suspect and who isn’t.”
So Smith sits in his eighth-floor office, right next door to the chief, on the phone with reporters, and tries to balance.
“It’s an interesting job,” he said.