Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter had some bad news for the gathered reporters.
“While I know you are all expecting final details today concerning this arrest, today is not that day,” he said. “Today is not that day. This investigation is far from complete, and we will not jeopardize its integrity by releasing documents or information before its proper time.”
There will always be some tension between the news media’s role in keeping the public informed and a police agency’s role in protecting an investigation.
Still, Oct. 31, 2022, was not the day law enforcement authorities should have been releasing information about the long-awaited arrest of a suspect in the deaths of two Delphi teenagers.
That announcement should have come days earlier, on Oct. 26, the day authorities actually made the arrest and put the suspect in jail. But police did not make the announcement that day.
Nor did they make it the next day, the day they should have made available for public inspection a daily log listing the department’s activities from the day before.
Police also did not release information the next day, Oct. 28, the day Ron Wilkins, a reporter for the Journal & Courier in Lafayette, filed a public records request. Nor did they release it the day after that, the day Wilkins’ request was denied.
By the time police finally acknowledged they had made an arrest, the suspect had been in jail for five days. He had made an appearance in court, and a judge had sealed the probable cause affidavit, the document on which his arrest was based.
This is not the way the American system of justice is supposed to work.
Days after the news conference, Wilkins filed a complaint with the Indiana Public Access Counselor, and that office issued a ruling Feb. 10.
Maddeningly, the state police responded using an argument the access counselor had rejected more than two years earlier when a reporter for The Herald Bulletin sought a copy of the agency’s daily log. They argued that while the law requires creation of such a log within 24 hours, it does not require that the log actually be made available for public inspection. Instead, they insisted, the law allows public agencies 21 days to respond to records requests and that same time period should apply here.
In the Delphi case, Luke Britt, the access counselor, said again what he had said before: The law requires police agencies to maintain a public record of their activities, and it stands to reason that record should be readily available to the public.
Britt also rejected a second argument, that sealing court records complicated the role of police agencies in releasing information. He pointed out that a police log isn’t a court record and thus isn’t covered by a judge’s seal.
Britt shouldn’t have to keep repeating himself for the state police to get the message.
They are charged with enforcing the law. They shouldn’t also be flouting it.
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