Paper Wins Court Fight To Make Police Reports Public Suit Intended To Challenge ‘Restrictive’ Policy On Releasing Information, Editor Says

The public has the right to see the police reports and booking photo of an assistant city attorney charged with hitting a Spokane police officer, a judge ruled Thursday.

Superior Court Judge Sam Cozza said Spokane police failed to justify withholding the jail photograph of Milt Rowland and written reports about his arrest.

The decision stems from a lawsuit filed by The Spokesman-Review that said police violated state law by not releasing the reports and photo.

Rowland, 43, was arrested early in the morning of May 30 after residents of a southwest Spokane neighborhood reported seeing someone driving erratically around 2 a.m.

While being led to a squad car, Rowland threw a punch, striking an officer in the jaw, according to a county prosecutor’s reports.

Rowland is charged with third-degree assault, drunken driving and leaving the scene of an accident. He pleaded not guilty last week in Spokane County Superior Court. His trial is set to begin in mid-September.

The Spokesman-Review sought reports written by officers who made the arrest. Police officials said they do not consider those reports or the booking photo to be public records.

Newspaper attorney Duane Swinton said Cozza’s decision supports the newspaper’s view that state public records law requires the release of general police reports.

“The decision suggests that the police and the city cannot give blanket exemptions to incident reports and reasonably related records,” Swinton said.

Spokesman-Review Editor Chris Peck said he hoped the ruling would clarify for law enforcement the fact that the public has a right and a need to know details of who is being arrested.

“A basic responsibility of the press is to keep a community informed about people who are arrested and charged with crimes,” Peck said. “To keep the public informed, we need to have access to police records and photographs. It’s that simple.”

But Police Chief Terry Mangan said the ruling would have no immediate impact on the department’s policy on releasing reports or booking photos.

Assistant City Attorney Rocco Treppiedi said there’s a strong chance Cozza’s decision will be appealed.

If an appeals court grants a stay of Cozza’s ruling, the newspaper would not get the photo or police records until another hearing takes place, Treppiedi said.

Mangan and Treppiedi said they wanted to see a transcript of Cozza’s decision before considering legal options.

“I need to see if the judge made this decision broadly, or whether it was drawn very narrowly, only on this case,” Mangan said.

Peck said the lawsuit had little to do with Rowland and was intended to challenge the department’s “restrictive” policy on releasing information. Peck noted that he has no knowledge that the release of information about arrests has ever interfered with police investigations.

Mangan said the department finds itself caught between conflicting rights. “We feel that investigation reports sometimes must be protected in order to ensure a defendant’s right to a (fair) trial.

“But that conflicts with the media’s right to have information,” he said.

The chief added that he welcomes pushing the matter through higher state courts to resolve that conflict.

, DataTimes