Pennsylvania State Police v. Office of Open Records
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania
No. 741, C.D. 2009
September 16, 2010
The Commonwealth Court determined that incident reports of the Pennsylvania State Police are exempt from disclosure under the Right to Know Law’s criminal investigation exemption.
Background
Donald Gilliland, the managing editor of the Potter Leader-Enterprise newspaper, submitted a Right to Know Law request to the Pennsylvania State Police seeking a complete incident report for a crime that occurred in Potter County.
The police denied the request, stating that the report was exempt under the law’s criminal investigation exemption. Gilliland appealed to the Office of Open Records, which held that the incident reports should be disclosed because they are effectively police blotters and had been accessible under the old Right to Know Law.
The police appealed to the Commonwealth Court.
Commonwealth Court Decision
The Commonwealth Court reviewed the incident report in question and held that it “constitutes a criminal investigative report” that is not public under the new law’s criminal investigation exception.
In a prior case, the court defined “investigative information” to include “information assembled as the result of any inquiry, formal or informal, into a criminal incident or allegation of criminal wrongdoing and may include modus operandi information.” In this case, the incident report contained notes from interviews with victims and witnesses and information about the status of the investigation, all of which was “assembled as a result of an investigation into a criminal incident.”
The court further noted that the reports contained the name and address of the victim, which constitutes “victim information” and is also exempt under the law.
The court rejected the argument that the incident report was a “police blotter,” which the RTKL expressly states is publicly accessible.
The court said that it “cannot make determinations about whether a given document is a public record merely based on the name or title of the document; we must consider, instead, the content and nature of the document.”
According to the court, a police blotter is a “chronological listing of arrests” that usually includes just the name and address of the individual charged and the alleged offenses, while the incident report provides far more information.