Ohio Cities, Newspapers Argue Over Release of Police Photos

By: (AP) Attorneys for newspapers suing for photos of uniformed police officers told state Supreme Court justices Tuesday that recent changes to Ohio's open-records law should not prevent the release of the photos.

"A police officer's name and image is not private, it's not personal," said Fred Gittes, a lawyer representing The (Youngstown) Vindicator. "We don't have KGB police forces and secret forces here."

At issue is a 2000 change to the law that exempts from disclosure any record identifying a person's occupation as a police officer, firefighter, or emergency medical technician.

Attorneys for The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer and The Vindicator argued that, if interpreted literally, the law would make it impossible to identify any police officers.

But Thomas Anastos, assistant Cleveland law director, said information such as officers' names and photos still could be obtained by suing or filing a complaint.

Justice Paul Pfeifer questioned whether that wasn't an extreme course of action.

"It's probably not the greatest outcome in the world in terms of what we all anticipate nowadays as far as availability of information," Anastos replied. "But when you balance that against all the reasons why specific information should not be given out as a public-records request, the choice has been made by the people who make the policy decisions."

Pfeifer said identifying specific officers can be important, especially when they're accused of wrongdoing.

"It's not insignificant whose face is in the newspaper when some officer has done something very bad," he said. "That face distinguishes the officer who has done something bad from all the rest of the hardworking officers."

The 2000 law updated legislation from a year earlier that banned the public from receiving personal information about police officers, including their addresses, phone numbers, and the names of family members.

The newspapers, backed by other media organizations including The Associated Press, argue the broad exemption goes against a centuries-old tradition obliging people with police powers to be clearly identified to the communities they are hired to protect.

Public "confidence in the legitimacy of the coercive authority of the police requires that the public be able to learn the identity of most police officers on demand," David Marburger, a Cleveland attorney and open records expert, argued in court papers. "State-sanctioned anonymity of law enforcement officers is a sudden and arbitrary break with vital democratic tradition."

Justice Maureen O'Connor pointed out on Tuesday that police officers are required to identify themselves in many ways, from wearing a uniform to providing their names and badge numbers upon request.

"How is the public barred from verifying that a man or a woman is in fact a police officer?" she asked.

Gittes said it could be difficult to identify an off-duty officer involved in an incident without the ability to seek a photo or other information later.

Cleveland and Youngstown, backed by police groups including the state chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, argue that photographs are part of an officer's personal information, which has already been exempted under the law dealing with addresses and family members.

They also cite other problems with releasing photographs, from endangering officers who may one day go undercover to the lack of relevance the photos have for documenting city business.

There is "no possible monitoring of the business of the city that could be gained by studying an array of the faces of the city's police officers, and there are no insights into the workings of the Division of Police that could be drawn from the images," Anastos wrote in court documents.

Iris Guglucello, Youngstown law director, argues that releasing photos would violate officers' constitutional right to privacy. Exempting them, she says in court papers, also is consistent with lawmakers' intent to protect information that, should it become public, could endanger police.

The Vindicator had requested a photograph of one of Youngstown's police officers. The Plain Dealer asked for pictures of officers, including three individuals honored at an awards ceremony.

Marburger noted that the city invited press photographers to an event honoring the three officers but denied the release of their official pictures.