Proposed bill would keep some Newtown crime records private

HARTFORD, Conn. — A plan by Connecticut officials to withhold some Newtown school shooting records from the public would be another blow to government transparency, which has taken hits in other states in recent years, advocates for freedom of information laws say.

The proposal is in a bill privately crafted by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s office, the state’s top prosecutor and legislative leaders. It would allow authorities to withhold from the public photographs, videos, 911 call recordings and other records depicting the physical condition of any victim of the Dec. 14 shootings, unless the family gives written permission.

The legislation would bar the release of emergency responders’ audio transmissions but allow the public to view transcripts of the recordings at a cost of 50 cents a page. The bill also would limit disclosure of the death certificates of the 20 first-graders and six educators killed in the attack to immediate family members only.

Media groups and advocates of public records laws worry the bill, which is pending, would set a bad precedent by exempting specific incidents from FOI laws. They say it would encourage other crime victims to ask the state to limit disclosure of records now routinely released to the public, and it appears to make the Newtown killings more important than the dozens of other killings in Connecticut each year.

They also question the bill being drafted in secrecy and not being subjected to the public hearing process like other bills are.

“If you hide away documents from the public, then the public has no way of knowing whether police … have done their jobs correctly,” said Sonny Albarado, city editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and board president of the Society of Professional Journalists, a free press advocacy group based in Indi- anapolis.

“It sets a tone where it makes it easier to hide other things, and the public suffers, in my view,” Albarado said. “Obviously, the mass murder of 26 people is a very horrific crime. But 26 people die regularly in most large towns within a few weeks or within a few months and we don’t express the same kind of horror and we don’t afford those victims or the perpetrators any kind of anonymity.”

The society and other media groups have noted their opposition to the bill in letters to Malloy, and several newspapers in the state have published editorials criticizing the legislation.

Malloy is defending the proposal, saying that the state wants to protect and respect the wishes of relatives of the Newtown victims and that the bill applies only to the Sandy Hook shootings.

Parents of some Newtown shooting victims said at a news conference at the state Capitol on Friday that one of their main concerns was photos of the massacre scene being posted online.

“I’m fully supportive of an open and transparent government, but I can’t understand how distributing graphic photos of murdered teachers and children serves any purpose other than causing our families more pain,” said Dean Pinto, whose son, Jack, 6, was killed in the school shooting.

“Unfortunately, newspapers are no longer the only disseminators of information,” he said. “The world of information has changed substantially over the past few years and our Freedom of Information laws need to adjust to the times. There are many who lack the common sense and decency of mainstream media (and) who will freely use these images for their own disgusting purposes.”

Albarado, the society president, said there have been efforts in many states in recent years to restrict the release of public documents.

“I see, overall, just a general effort to erode FOI laws and public records laws throughout the country,” he said.