Victims' rights take a beating
If an obscure state commission comprised mostly of non-elected officials has its way, Alabamians may soon be reading news reports on local crimes that start something like this:
According to a police incident/offense report, someone was killed yesterday somewhere in the 200 block of Main Street.
Because the public portion of such incident/offense reports no longer provide victim information, it is impossible to determine the number of victims, their ages or occupations, their gender or race, the extent of their injuries, or the precise location of the crime. Police on the scene referred all questions to the chief of police, who could not be contacted.
That's it. That would be about the only information that the people of Alabama could routinely find out about victims of crimes if changes to the Alabama Uniform Incident/Offense Report used by police and sheriffs' departments around the state are approved.
If these changes are allowed to stand, it could prove to be the biggest setback to victims' rights this state has ever seen. Victims would no longer be real people who would engender sympathy from the public, but faceless statistics and numbers about whom no one outside their immediate families would care - or even know about.
The changes to the I/O reports were proposed last week by Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center Commission, a board supposedly made up of such criminal justice officials as the chief justice of the state Supreme Court and the Alabama Attorney General. But the chief justice and the attorney general and many other members of the commission send representatives in their stead.
Based on a previous attorney general's opinion, law enforcement officials usually release most of the information on the front of the current Incident/Offense reports to the public and news media, although sometimes they black out portions of the front as well. The back portion is usually not released.
But under the recommended changes approved unanimously by the commission, all specific information about a victim or victims would be moved to the back of the form, which would be labeled: "This side of Incident/Offense form is officer's work product and may not be public information."
The changes now must go through the Alabama Procedures Act, which allows for a public comment period on the proposals, so there is still time to reverse this wrongheaded decision. (No one objects to not releasing such information as Social Security or driver license numbers.)
Ironically, the changes were defended as a means of protecting victims. But in the real world, the effect will be just the opposite. Sophisticated proponents of victims' rights would recognize that this is the case.
It is too easy for society to ignore the plight of faceless, nameless victims. The public cannot identify with people who are relegated to the status of a number.
That is the reason that the family Natalee Holloway, the Birmingham teen who disappeared in Aruba, has fought so vigorously to get her face before the worldwide public, to humanize this story. Aruban authorities could have dumped this case in the inactive file long ago if it were not for the sympathy engender by publicity about the victim.
But it isn't just the victims in such high-profile cases who would be hurt. Reporters and editors who can no longer easily identify real people who are victims of crime sprees will tend to write less about those sprees, whether they are home break-ins or robberies or carjackings. Even when such stories appear, the public will be less likely to take them to heart if they cannot identify with specific victims.
Keeping victim identities secret also will make it more difficult for the press to hold police agencies accountable for adequately investigating and solving crimes.
We call on those public officials who have delegated this important decision to their appointees on the criminal justice commission to intervene to reverse it. It is difficult to imagine that Chief Justice Drayton Nabers and Attorney General Troy King, both of whom purport to be supporters of open government and the public's right to know, actually agree with the decision their representatives made in their names. Similarly, several of Gov. Bob Riley's appointees serve on this commission, including the heads of the Corrections and Public Safety departments. Their votes last week fly in the face of their boss's usual strong stance in favor of open government.
This was a bad decision. Alabamians should hope that the officials involved are big enough to admit a mistake and reverse it.
http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051030/OPINION01/510300303/1012/OPINION --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last update: October 31, 2005 at 8:34 PM
Harris showed her stuff
Harris Faulkner came into her own before a national audience during the brief return of "A Current Affair."
We already knew what a fine anchor she is from her time at atrociously managed KSTP-TV. On the national show, she was mostly a reporter but also the primary back-up anchor/host to Tim Green. In fact, she was the anchor who signed off the show Friday night. "It was his choice not to be there," she told me Monday.
"It didn't last long, but it was a fabulous time," she said. "I've never been on anything that was canceled. Local news doesn't get canceled." But, as we know, news anchors do.
"It's been a heartbreaker to see suddenly a newsroom full of people go, We're done, we've got to go find that next thing," Faulkner said. In her time there she had major pieces of the biggest stories of 2005: the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba and Hurricane Katrina.
After another "ACA" colleague landed an incredible interview with Joran Van Der Sloot, a prime person of interest in the missing persons case, Faulkner said she suggested that the show bring back Natalee's mom, Beth Holloway-Twitty. The Van Der Sloot interview, with him taking swipes at the grieving mother, ran on one day, and the next day Faulkner did a "Beth-unplugged" interview.
Faulkner's work on the Holloway case got her TV appearances with Larry King, Rita Cosby, Nancy Grace, Dan Abrams and Joe Scarborough.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/464/5700557.html