Another PDA application: Tacoma News Tribune: "Police misconduct is the public’s business"

FYI, another application of the Public Disclosure Act. AY

http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/story/5140678p-4677062c.html

Police misconduct is the public’s business

Tacoma, WA - August 31, 2005

Police misconduct is the public’s business

THE NEWS TRIBUNE
Published: August 30th, 2005 12:01 AM

A Thurston County judge could have been more emphatic Monday about the public’s right to know how Tacoma officials dealt with allegations of police corruption in the aftermath of David Brame’s murder-suicide.

But at least Superior Court Judge Gary Tabor didn’t side with the two police unions that want to bury forever the records at issue.

Tabor will revisit the issue Sept. 16, after the city employees named in those records have been formally notified. By then, we hope, he will understand why it is so crucial that the citizens of Tacoma have some basis for judging whether the city appropriately disciplined or failed to discipline those 33 employees, most of whom are police officers.

In any event, it was deeply gratifying to see the City of Tacoma engaging this battle for the first time on the side of the public’s right to know.

The records in question relate to the State Patrol’s administrative investigation of the Tacoma Police Department, which was launched after a criminal investigation prompted by Brame’s self-destruction had turned up evidence of corruption in the department’s highest ranks.

The WSP wrapped up that administrative investigation a year ago April. Then-City Manager Jim Walton followed with his own disciplinary inquiries. In all the time since, the public has learned next to nothing about what came of those inquiries. Except in three cases (one involving his predecessor, Ray Corpuz), Walton treated the results the way the police unions wanted them treated – as a state secret.

But Walton’s successor, Eric Anderson, has blown into town like a gust of fresh air. Last week, he looked at the documents, looked at the state’s Public Disclosure Act, and agreed with this newspaper that the citizens had a right to see the records. The case landed in Tabor’s courtroom Monday after the unions intervened.

Tacoma Police Union Local 6, which represents most officers, and Local 26, which represents captains and lieutenants, understandably want to protect their members from embarrassing disclosures. But there is a paramount public interest in the release of these documents.

To illustrate, one of the allegations in question concerns the appearance of three Tacoma police officers at a court hearing over Crystal Brame’s attempt to divorce her police chief husband.

This actually happened. And it should be obvious that a contingent of high-ranking officers should not have appeared at a civil proceeding they had no part in – mounting an intimidating show of force on behalf of their chief. Crystal was terrified in the final weeks of her life, in part because of her husband’s ability to deploy TPD officers against her.

What did Walton do about this? The public has no clue. It never will have a clue if Tabor ultimately agrees with the unions. They want the city’s disposition of this and most of the other allegations permanently kept from the citizens.

Considerations of privacy can sometimes outweigh the imperative to disclose. But those considerations can only prevail under the law when the release of documents serves no legitimate public interest.

That’s not the case here. If Tacomans have no claim to learn and evaluate how their city officials responded to misconduct in their police deparment, then Tacomans have no claim to know anything about how their government operates.