Improving transparency and media relations in high-profile police cases

The Brechner Center
Sep 3, 2018 · 4 min read
“man in uniform holding baton and shield” by Ben Koorengevel on Unsplash

In an encounter with police, a civilian is shot. The shooting immediately provokes understandable and urgent questions — was it necessary, or could it have been avoided? — and without prompt and complete disclosure by law enforcement, a skeptical community simmers with suspicion.

It’s a scenario playing out dozens of times each year, across America, where according to statistics compiled by The Washington Post, 987 people lost their lives in confrontations with police last year.

The tension between law enforcement’s instinctive reticence and the public’s need for answers has been amplified by well-publicized cases of documented or suspected police excesses — cases like the 2014 death of Chicago teenager Laquan McDonald, shot 16 times by a police officer who now faces first-degree murder charges.

The ease of sharing images of police confrontations on social media has raised the stakes for police not just to make careful judgments, but to explain their judgments to a nationwide audience of eyewitnesses.

Seattle is familiar with the anguishing reexamination process when officers make split-second decisions to take lives. Questions persist over the need for deadly force in a pair of June 2017 incidents: The fatal shooting of 30-year-old Charleena Lyles by Seattle police, and the shooting death of 20-year-old Tommy Le by King County sheriff’s deputies.

After communications failures in the Le case exacerbated community tensions, the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information was asked to look at how the King County Sheriff’s Office can improve its information-sharing practices. The report was requested by King County’s Office of Law Enforcement Oversight in hopes of avoiding a repeat of missteps in the Le case, where police allowed an erroneous initial report — that Le was armed with a knife — to persist for days uncorrected, further traumatizing an already-grieving family.

Our recently published report, “Transparency and Media Relations in High-Profile Police Cases,” attempts to distill the best practices at law enforcement agencies around the country. Our review concluded that, while King County’s policies are comparable to those widely used elsewhere, much more can be done to institutionalize a “push, not pull” attitude toward volunteering the most information allowed by law.

Inadequate public disclosure is neither a new problem nor one limited to Seattle.

In the McDonald case, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration shortsightedly chose to fight a doomed court battle to withhold incriminating dash-cam video proving that police lied when they claimed McDonald was shot while lunging at an officer with a knife.

Similarly, Charlotte’s police department resisted disclosing video of the September 2016 shooting of 43-year-old Keith Scott, claiming disclosure would hamper their investigation. Only after two nights of violent protests, during which one person was killed, did police relent and disclose the footage, which confirmed their account that Scott refused commands to drop his gun.

With each such case, the urgency of full and timely disclosure of the circumstances of police shootings grows harder to ignore. When police acted justifiably, transparency diminishes the risk of backlash. If police did not act justifiably, transparency ensures that official misconduct isn’t swept under the rug.

Because a generation raised on YouTube will not be satisfied by comforting platitudes, the Brechner Center recommends that King County, and all law enforcement agencies, reexamine the way they disseminate information to the public. Among the recommendations in our 33-page report:

● Mistaken information should be prominently corrected, including explaining to the public how the mistake happened, as quickly as possible.
● In high-profile cases, police should push out regular updates through social media, even if only to assure the public when to expect more complete information.
● At least one officer empowered to answer media questions should be immediately reachable at all times, to avoid breakdowns when a designated Public Information Officer takes the weekend off or goes on vacation.
● Up-to-date statistics about matters of public importance, such as how often police use force and how complaints of excessive force are resolved, should be volunteered through “open data” portals without waiting for a freedom-of-information request.

We also recommend modernizing department policies to make officers unmistakably aware of the legal rights of journalists at crime scenes. These include a court-recognized right to shoot photos and record video of police doing their work in public, and a federal privacy statute that forbids seizing or searching journalists’ recording devices.

These measures, we believe, will help police rebuild trust with those whose cooperation can prevent and solve crimes.

In a recently published investigative report (“Murder with impunity: Where killings go unsolved”), The Washington Post contrasted how police agencies like Atlanta’s that successfully cultivate community relations succeed in closing difficult homicide cases at rates markedly higher than those, like Los Angeles, where a climate of tense distrust persists.

Transparency is not just good for public confidence; it’s good for effective policing.

Frank LoMonte and Linda Riedemann Norbut are faculty members at the University of Florida’s Brechner Center for Freedom of Information, www.brechner.org, a research center focused on improving public access to government records and data.

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Government transparency and the storytelling power of civic data

The Brechner Center

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The Brechner Center is an incubator for initiatives that give the public timely access to the information necessary for informed, participatory citizenship.

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Government transparency and the storytelling power of civic data

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