nothin New Haven Independent | State Legislators Ready To Reverse FOI…

State Legislators Ready To Reverse FOI Restrictions

Marcia Chambers Photo

State Sen. Ed Meyer (D- 12th) long a defender of the public’s right to know, believes that a law hastily adopted last June in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school murders is a danger to our history.” He said he would oppose a task force’s recommendation to continue the law when the legislature votes this session. 

Once government decides to cover up what it is doing, whether it is police or school officials or state senators, then it absolutely attacks our democratic system, democratic with a small d,” he said in an interview on the Branford Eagle’s BCTV cable show

Meyer was one of only two senators to vote last June against Public Act No. 13 – 311, which significantly restricted public access to crime photos and 911 calls in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shootings. Other members of the Branford delegation, Rep. Lonnie Reed (D‑Branford) and Rep. Pat Widlitz (D‑Branford and Guilford), voted for the bill. But in recent interviews, they said that after reflecting on the way the new law was adopted and its far-reaching effects, they have changed their minds.

Reed, who is chair of the Energy & Technology Committee, said 911 calls and police crime photos should remain open to the public. Widlitz, who is co-chair of the powerful finance committee, said all 911 calls, now closed, should be public. She has clearly changed her mind on 911 calls. She said she is still weighing whether crime photos should be public; she is leaning toward disclosure.

At the outset of the legislative session Senate President Pro Tempore Don Williams also changed his mind. He told the Hartford Courant he will vote to keep 911 calls public. 

Meyer said he is in favor of keeping public the release of crime photos, especially homicide photos. The legislature voted last year to keep homicide photos secret or private if the photo could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of the victim or the victim’s surviving family members.”

After he voted against the law last June, Meyer sent out a famous photo of a nude young girl and other children running on a road near Trang Bang after they had been burned during a South Vietnamese Air Force napalm attack.

He also sent out photos of prisoners at German concentration camps. These photos, he said, changed the course of history. 

State Sen. Anthony J. Musto, who represents Trumbull and Bridgeport, is the only other senator to join Meyer. For those of us in government to conceal information from our citizens because we think the information is disturbing sets a dangerous precedent,” he said in June. The presumption should always be in favor of full disclosure, no matter how horrific the incident.”

Reed and Widlitz Reconsider

In an interview yesterday, Widlitz said she now sees no harm in releasing 911 calls. They are important in establishing improvements in procedures and in reacting to emergencies. I have no issue with that at all. It’s the photographs,” she said referring to the police photos taken during the Newtown tragedy.

She said she is also thinking about whether to bar all crime photos from disclosure. She said she viewed the task force’s work as a time for legislators to step back and think about the repercussions of their actions.

Last year my vote was to give some time to this issue, not to react at the last minute as parents were very emotional and we were out of time.“ In fact, the House voted on this bill on June 5 at 2 a.m. The Senate voted on it at 1:34 a.m. The governor signed the bill into law that day, the day the session ended. 

Widlitz indicated concern that the ban on crime photos now applies to all homicide photos. As for the Newtown photos, she drew a comparison to them and to Holocaust photographs. Holocaust photos were horrendous and very painful to look at, but they tell a story, they tell a story that formulates public policy going forward,” she said.

She said the same principles may someday in the future apply to the Sandy Hook massacre.

At some point in the future some of the Newtown photos could be used in the context to promote more reasonable gun control legislation on the federal level. When people actually see what these assault weapons can actually do to a child, and to an adult…” she said, trailing off before finishing her sentence.

We had to give ourselves some time to consider the repercussions of our actions. We have had time to do that. It is still difficult but I am rethinking these issues.” 

Rep. Lonnie Reed reflected on her vote back in June and said she had now changed her mind. 

Freedom of Information access needs to be protected. During the years I worked as a journalist, there were times when I used crime scene photos, internal police reports, timelines and other filed away memos and documents to challenge and disprove the official version of events. One involved the use of a police drop gun to implicate the wrong shooter in a killing that turned out to be a revenge crime. Studying the placement of the gun relative to the bodies in crime photos helped tell the real story.”

Reed observed that there were some sketchy people and organizations” that now masquerade as legitimate media. Their objective is to shock, not to tell a deeper story, and they have zero sensitivity or code of journalistic responsibility. That has to be acknowledged; but even given those excesses, I am convinced that the truth and the public are best served when FOI is protected. I will argue against and vote against restricting FOI in any way,” she added. (Widlitz is also concerned about the Wild West” of the internet.)

Laws Made In Haste

Public Act No. 13 – 311 applies to the release of all 911 calls and all crime photos, not just the ones pertaining to the Newtown massacre. The setting for that vote came after some parents of the murdered children appealed to legislators to block photos and 911 calls of the tragedy from release. Emotions ran high that night. There were rumors of a movie, rumors that were not investigated and proved to be untrue. But legislators, mindful of the tragedy and surrounded by Sandy Hook parents seeking privacy, adopted the new law, along with appointing a task force to report back to them. 

Their decision that night is viewed by those who study FOI laws as the most serious attack on public information since the FOI laws were adopted in 1975. At the time, CT’s law was the envy of states across the nation. 

There are 36 members of the Senate and 151 members of the House. Only two members of the House voted against the law. Meyer said that while reversing the task force and the law will require a huge turnaround, it is possible. House Speaker J. Brendan Sharkey, D‑Hamden, has not stated his current views. 

Meyer said that Sen. Williams had changed his views” and his thinking reflects the thinking of others.”

Willliams told the Courant last month: I can tell you right now I’m not in favor of curtailing the same kind of access to the 911 tapes that we’ve had in the past, that Connecticut and really, I believe, all 49 other states have.” He made his remarks on the first day of the 2014 legislative session.

Meyer said the purpose of the task force was to evaluate the law in light of the public’s right to know and that the task force had now reported. Its report essentially upholds the new law. The two dissents came from FOI officials. 

No Open Meetings & No Public Documents

Meyer recalled that when he served in the New York Legislature in 1973, there were no public documents or open meetings laws. This was true in Connecticut as well.
 
Releasing public documents were at the whim of public officials. They could open them up; they could close them down, they could do whatever they wanted to. Public meetings were not open necessarily. They were at the whim of the public official,” he said during the Eagle’s BCTV interview.
 
What we did in the 70’s in both New York and in Connecticut was we passed the Freedom of Information Act, what we called the open meetings law and all of sudden the public had a right to know.” Connecticut has long had one of the nation’s toughest FOI laws, initiated in Connecticut by Governor Ella T. Grasso in 1975.

Meyer relayed his conversation with Sen. Williams on the night of the June 5 vote. I told the senate president that I would be debating against it. He turned to me and said, Ed, please do not speak on this bill. I do not want you to speak on this bill. We must honor the privacy of these families. I don’t want you to speak on this bill.’”

Meyer said he told Williams We don’t want history to repeat itself. Photographs are very important. A photograph of that little girl in Vietnam, who had just been burned by napalm, that photograph changed the world.”

And the photographs of Dachau and the other Nazi concentration camps?” the Eagle asked. 

Yes, I had photographs of Dachau, of concentration camps in Poland and in Germany. I showed them to Williams. And I said 911 calls …. We need them to be public; we need to hold our law enforcement officials accountable.”

Meyer said that in deference and courtesy to the Senate leader, I did not speak. But I did release a written statement that night that I gave to the press. I attached those photos. How important these photos were so that history did not repeat itself,” he added.

We asked Meyer his view now that Williams has changed his mind on the 911 calls. 

Yes, Don is a very reasonable person,” he said, adding he is particularly upset at the task force on this issue, that no 911 calls should be released to the public hereafter. I was very pleased to hear the Senate president disagree with that.”

Meyer observed that among the parents who visited Hartford the night of the vote were some who said the only way we are going to have any honesty is to be open and honest about this. And you stop bad history from repeating itself if you don’t put a big spotlight on it.”

Burden Of Proof Changes

Meyer also noted that the burden of proof to obtain information about 911 calls and police photographs now puts the burden on the public not on law enforcement.

With respect to photographs the task force says you can look at them at the police station. If you want to copy it, you as a journalist want to copy a photo, then you have to make a case that you need it. The burden of proof is on you.”

As for 911 calls, while access might eventually be given, no notes may be taken. 

Meyer reflected on these developments, developments that permit secrecy under the label of privacy. 

I will vote no,” he said. It is very dangerous and what concerns some of us is this is just not a matter of Newtown. The Legislature passed a bill that related to all kinds of crimes, other than Newtown.”

He said he was optimistic that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy would change his mind. He observed during the television interview that the governor was in a difficult situation because he held the hands of the parents whose children had been killed.”

He is also an open-minded person. He could change his position. And hopefully if we reject the task force recommendations he will be with us on it, hopefully.”
###

Sign up for our morning newsletter

Don't want to miss a single Independent article? Sign up for our daily email newsletter! Click here for more info.


Post a Comment

Commenting has closed for this entry

Comments

Avatar for One City Dump

Avatar for Walt