Last week, police arrested a 15-year-old boy for bringing a gun to Sweet Home High School.
From our perspective, everyone did an outstanding job responding to this threat, details of which are in our report on page 1. Officials quickly identified the suspect and removed him from a classroom as the high school went into lockdown and similar security measures were employed at the Junior High and Boys & Girls Club.
Only one thing is missing from our story: Official sources, the ones with whom we verify information you read in this newspaper, have refused to give us the name of the boy who was arrested for bringing a firearm to school.
Our Police Department chose not to release the name based on a change in department policy a couple of years ago. Per that policy, it now falls upon the Linn County Juvenile Department to release the name. In this case, that department has not responded to our request for the name. At this point it will be old news by the time we hear back.
SHPD is not the first to do this. Others in this county are farther along on this path, bolstered by a corresponding decline in local newspaper staffs that have been one of the major forces in holding the keepers of such information accountable to the law and the public they serve.
Why is this important? Are we simply nosy journalists, looking to sensationalize a story that has turned heads in the community – and once again brought the TV crews to town? Or are there bigger issues in this shroud of secrecy that has slowly descended on our community?
Prior to this recent shift, The New Era made it a policy to name all suspects, even young ones. Our reason was this: Those who are arrested and charged with a crime impact you, the public, on a number of levels.
When a crime impacts the public and public resources are necessary to respond to it, that’s the public’s business. The crime prompts a response by law enforcement officials you are paying for, and prosecution by attorneys, judges and jury members you also pay for. Public safety is the most basic reason for government, as explained clearly by Thomas Jefferson the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
In this particular case, the alleged actions took place in a school paid for and operated by the “public,” where members of the “public” send their children every day. Members of the “public” have a right to know who is accused of bringing a gun to school and thereby accused of committing a crime against the “public.”
The problem is that the information flow has been stopped when we get to the “whodunnit.”
Law enforcement should never take place in secret. When police make an arrest, it should be public – always. While we certainly don’t believe our Police Department would ever arrest someone and put that person in a dark hole, the history of the world shows clearly, repeatedly, what can happen when police start operating secretly in their day-to-day operations, withholding information from the public they serve. It’s bad policy.
That’s why we have the Bill of Rights. The founders of this nation weren’t ludicrously phobic. They lived in a world where such things actually happened, where there were secret police, where people rotted away in the Tower of London – the kinds of things that happen today in other countries, where journalists get killed by thugs.
The court process should not take place in the dark any more than law enforcement. Without a name in this particular case, we – and you, the members of the public in Sweet Home – will be unable to learn the result of any court processes involving this 15-year-old boy. The court could simply cut the kid loose for no reason, if it chose to, and no one would be the wiser. Only bureaucrats would know what happened.
The way things stand at the moment, the public will never know the result of this case, officially at least.
A crime is a crime, whether allegedly committed by a 15-year-old or a 50-year-old. The age of the perpetrator doesn’t change the results. The victim still feels threatened. The victim is still robbed. The victim is still dead.
There’s a lot of debate over whether a young person, still developing in many ways, should have to face the consequences an adult would for the same actions.
Many of us can recall life at age 15. We had thoughts, energy, not always channeled in healthy directions. We made impulsive choices, took often ill-conceived actions, some of them public, some not; some serious, some not.
It wasn’t that long ago when even the large newspapers across the state reported police activities, we could find our names in the paper, reported to the public, for the tiniest traffic violation.
We recognize that there are competing concerns here, but bad behavior produces consequences that aren’t always convenient or comfortable, as any of us who have caused a car wreck can attest.
Making mistakes is part of growing up. Unfortunately, in this case, it was a mistake with very serious consequences. But, the public has a right to know when such a mistake impacts them – financially, legally, morally, socially – even in our age of ultra-protective parenting and large, sensitive egos.
When official lips are sealed in a case like this, that doesn’t involve an ongoing investigation or some other justifiable reason for withholding information, it creates an awkward situation. Most of the students, staff and parents at the high school know the name of the accused. It flew around through the student body in minutes.
So, as reporters, we could simply report that hearsay. But when national-level media, the big boys, did so after the Boston Marathon bombing, they got it wrong. They posted the picture of an innocent person. That’s why we steer away from online gossip, from anonymous sources, in reporting and verifying your news.
Sure, we’re 99.9 percent certain the student body, staff and parents are right on the name that’s being freely shared.
On the flip side, on the .1-percent chance the students, staff and parents are wrong about who was arrested, that person would never really get a chance to clear his name.
The confirmation that they have it right or wrong should come from the officials who arrested and are prosecuting this case. And we shouldn’t be having to write this editorial.
The bottom line is we, the public, all have a right to know who is accused, whom a jury or court has convicted of a crime, what has been done to serve justice. All of that should be very clear to us. The writers of our Constitution, who, again, were very familiar with excesses in this area, knew the importance of that.
What concerns us is that, apparently, in the interest of maintaining good will and protecting the sensitivities of young perpetrators, we’re ignoring it.
If this particular juvenile should happen to be acquitted, none of us will ever know, and an innocent person would be stigmatized anyway.
Why do these agencies withhold the names of juveniles, particularly after they’ve been accused of a fairly significant offense?
Search us. Oregon law does not prohibit them from informing us; it’s a policy that they’ve adopted and is permitted by state law. And to get past it, our – your – only option is to go to court to try to get a judge to rule that their decision isn’t in line with public interest, which requires tremendous time and resources that would require significant sacrifice on the side of reporting all the other local news that isn’t going to stop.
One more point: The problem we’re describing here is just the tip of the iceberg of a constant threat to you, the public.
Government, including in Oregon, likes secrecy. Officials ultimately serve the public and, if the public isn’t happy, heads roll. So it’s safer for them to cover their backsides, and a lot of the time that involves sitting on records that should be, by state or federal law, open to the public. Then we have the increasing rise of privacy concerns and laws, which can be cited by officials in taking public records restrictions beyond the parameters intended by the law.
The Oregonian newspaper, in particular, has invested significant time and resources – money – in attempts to get access to public records, often because agencies are loath to divulge what they’re involved with.
This isn’t just a local concern, in Sweet Home or Linn County. It’s a statewide issue.
In early 2018, Gov. Kate Brown selected Ginger McCall to be Oregon’s first-ever public records advocate in the wake of the scandal that ended the political career of Brown’s predecessor, John Kitzhaber.
McCall was, by all accounts, the perfect person for the job. She brought nearly a decade of experience in Washington, D.C. on Freedom of Information Act issues at the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the federal Department of Labor to her job. She was smart, well-versed in the world of open public records. She was dynamic.
Six months into her job, McCall issued a report stating that government agencies in Oregon charged “highly discretionary” fees for public records that were “a perennial source of animosity, confusion and frustration for public bodies and requesters alike.”
She noted a “very large” number of exemptions cited by officials in refusing to release documents and constant delays in their production.
Then, last September, McCall abruptly resigned, describing adversarial conditions at the hands of the governor’s staff.
In short, the climate surrounding public records in Oregon is often not conducive for any citizens – not just journalists – who want to know what is going on, what their public officials are up to.
We’re not suggesting that our local government officials are holding back-room meetings to scheme how they can pull the wool over the eyes of the public. We work with them every day, and we have no reason to think that.
The system has opened this door. It allows officials to withold the names, and since it’s more convenient to avoid potential liability or criticism related to releasing names, that’s what they’re doing.
However, the principle of freedom of information in a democratic society is vital and they are, consciously or unconsciously, violating that. Secrecy should be a last resort, always, in government.
Back to basics: Want to stay out of our police log? Avoid behavior that’s against the law. It’s what our newspaper staffers have told our own kids.
Yes, you’re innocent till proven guilty in a court of law and we’ll treat you that way. If we learn you’re found innocent, we’ll report that. If you’re not, well, there are consequences, and we’ll report that too.
But when public officials start trying to decide what we should and shouldn’t, we’ll protest, like we’re doing now.