Portsmouth Police Redact Police Report

Columbus lawyer Mark Weaver, a media-law expert who represents local governments and educates police on their public-records responsibilities, believes state law and court rulings are clear.

Police incident and offense reports must be released

immediately and without redactions.

“It's well settled by the courts that police departments should not redact information from an initial incident report using the confidential law enforcement investigation exception,” said Weaver.

Yet, Dispatch reporters, and presumably the public, continue to encounter police agencies that don’t know the law -- or don’t care what it says.

The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that incident and offense reports, and underlying statements and interviews, are not confidential investigatory records because they initiate an investigation and are not part of an investigation itself. The same applies to 911 call recordings.

And, such police reports must be released immediately upon request, the court says. (And, even drafts of documents, including police incident reports, are public records if they have been shared between at least two people.)

Further, no information -- including the names of victims, uncharged suspects and juveniles (except victims of child abuse) -- can be redacted with the exception of Social Security numbers and information provided by a children services agency.

(Randy Ludlow. "Police duck the law on release of incident reports.

The Columbus Dispatch. November 27, 2013) 

I requested a copy of a police report (Incident Report) from the Portsmouth Police Department about a menacing incident (2903.22 M1) I called into 911 on May 23, 2015. Although I requested prosecution of the perpetrator, the City Solicitor's office declined to pursue the charges. The reason given for declining prosecution -- one man's opinion versus another's. Read my GOB entry of a few days earlier to get more details.

The incident report I received on May 28 contained no description of the incident whatsoever -- no statements by parties and no police notes. I asked Police Chief Ware's secretary, the lady who made the copy of the report on the 28th, why my copy of the report contained absolutely no information about the incident, and she informed me the office was not allowed to release that description. Mind you, I made the 911 call myself five days earlier.

Just in case anyone needs a clear definition of redaction, to redact is a verb that means "to blot out, censor, cut out, delete, edit, edit out, erase, excise, expunge, extirpate, make deletions, redraft, revamp, rework, rewrite, strike out, or work over."

Without a doubt, the incident report I received from the police had been redacted. Why? Is the Portsmouth Police Department ignorant of the law (which I have always been told is no legal defense) or is it the department just doesn't care about equality of justice? My guess would be the latter. I wonder why I, in particular, am not privy to the information I requested about the incident I reported?

I believe I know the answer to my own question -- the incident was deemed "Clearance B -- Prosecution Declined" because the chain of command was under direct influence to drop the charges. Now, even if I receive a full un-redacted copy of the supposed "original report," I have no way to prove exactly what, if anything was written on it at the time of filing or what was added or deleted sometime later. I also have no proof of how the redaction was achieved in the first place.

To say I am devastated by the deception is an understatement. This evident political and legal chicanery cuts deep into the heart of a longtime Portsmouth resident. I know one thing for certain: someone, or perhaps a group of individuals, does not want me to obtain the complete police report.

To live with this lack of trust in my own city officials is very disconcerting; however, it does support many, many stories of bad dealings with the local government others have shared with me. If you read this blog, you have noticed lately, my pen has been full of bitterness for a place where there is no equality of justice. That place is Portsmouth, Ohio.

I have the right to express my opinion, and I adhere to the doctrine that the pen is mightier than the sword. I write what I believe. Just recently I congratulated authorities for stepping up against crime in general. Perhaps, I should have never said a word that might have given someone the idea I had been duped by the system. Admiration requires mutual respect. When a government of public servants usurps my rights, their smiling faces hide lies, and I can only conjecture about the cause of the deception and the reason for the breech of my legal license.