Most law enforcement agencies see their duty as to protect and serve the public, and in Augusta and its suburbs, three law enforcement organizations work to do precisely that, but they do not all have the same philosophy or approach to keeping the public informed about their efforts.
The Georgia Open Records Act requires all state, county and city agencies, boards, commissions, councils to make records in their possession available to the press and public – with certain exceptions. For law enforcement, the most relevant exception is when revealing information would harm an on-going investigation. According to the law, public records are documents generated by individuals or groups in public office in the course of doing the public’s business – which generally comes down to just about any document in an agency’s possession. The law defines “documents” broadly to include any printed or electronic materials held by an agency.
Officials at both the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office and the Augusta University Police Department say they choose openness and transparency as their default position when it comes to making information available to the public and the press, only withholding materials when there is a compelling reason.
The Richmond County Sheriff’s Department declined to discuss its policies on openness, transparency and the Georgia Open Records Act, citing on-going open records lawsuits pending between that agency and The Augusta Press. Officials from that agency said that Sheriff Richard Roundtree refused to comment and would not allow anyone from his agency to speak to the Augusta Press on the subject.
For all three Augusta-area law enforcement organizations, toeing the line between sharing information with the media and public while not impeding ongoing investigations can, at times, be a difficult balancing act.
Augusta University Police Chief James Lyon and Captain of Professional Standards Eric “Harry” Smith said oftentimes law enforcement is only keeping certain information under lock and key in order to preserve private victim information or prevent criminals from knowing how successful an investigation is progressing.
“Most of the agencies, at least the ones I’m familiar with, want to be transparent, particularly in the want around making sure we’re providing enough information at the university and the community as a whole,” said Lyon. “Part of the transparency is, when you have an event happen, being open and accountable to the events that have occurred … it is difficult sometimes to toe that line of being transparent and not giving up too much information, because you don’t want to negatively impact the investigation.”
In addition to respecting transparency and wanting to keep the public alert, Lyon said his agency have to consider different factors that require certain information to be kept out of the public’s eye. Those factors might involve protecting statements of suspects and persons of interest in order to corroborate other details of a case or to avoid indirectly and falsely labeling someone as a criminal.
“The other piece, too, is that, while it’s an investigation, sometimes we don’t want to tip off suspects that we may be onto them,” he said. “We also want to maintain the appearances of ‘innocence until proven guilty’; we don’t want to label somebody as a suspect of a heinous crime before we’ve really been able to determine that there is at least reasonable suspicion, if not probable cause for that.”
For those particularly tough cases, Lyon said his office first and foremost abides by the state’s public records Sunshine Laws to ensure lawful concealment or releasement of information.
“We also have an internal legal counsel here at Augusta University, similar to how every police department has a county or city attorney that they consult,” Smith said. “We’re also going to consult district attorneys and the county magistrate office … so we’re going to be talking to those kinds of stakeholders. We’re going to try and take all of those conversations into account to decide what is the best and legal thing to do.”
If they do make a mistake, Lyon said he always wants to apologize outright and inform the public as to when policies were not followed.
“We want to be genuine and transparent,” he said. “I think that goes a long way in building trust with the community that the police department serves. We want to be transparent when things happen – not just when ‘good’ things happen because the police did the right thing, but also when they do not.”
To Lyon and Smith, protecting victims and safeguarding investigative efforts sometimes means information has to be withheld. Not because they necessarily want to, but because they have to.
Referring to the November 2022 case involving college students being murdered in Idaho, Columbia County Sheriff Clay Whittle said he believed police proceedings were a great example as to when and why officers withhold pertinent case facts.
“For a while there, there were pretty bad shots being taken at the law enforcement, because people felt like they weren’t giving the public answers,” he said. “They got ridiculed at first for not giving answers to certain things, but then when it was all said and they caught the guy they immediately released that information.”
For the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, Whittle said abiding by the laws and releasing information to the public is “honestly very simple.” If the information does not compromise the integrity of the case’s prosecution or prevent the capture of a criminal, such as a fact only the victim and the criminal would know, his agency believes it should not be withheld from the public or news media.
For the most part, Whittle said basic incident reports should include information of who, what, when, where and how, because they very rarely hurt an investigation and allow the public to be well informed.
“We don’t have a problem putting out our normal incident report, and in that we try to include as much information as possible,” he said. “The only thing, which is spelled out in the law, [that we withhold] is information that would compromise the investigation … it’s just that simple, and it’s not a hard balancing act.”
To Whittle, withholding information without justifiable reasons can, in fact, hurt police efforts, because it prevents an invaluable partnership with the community.
“Our whole belief here in Columbia County is the more news media knows, the more the public knows,” he said. “The more the public knows, the better off we are, because the public is us. They help law enforcement. The majority of citizens are good people and want to help law enforcement. If they see information that they know we need, through the media and news releases, they will provide it. They do it every day. There are tons and tons of cases out there that were solved by a citizen calling us and giving us a piece of information that we did not have, and they would not have known to give it to us had we not put that information out to the news media.”
Maj. Steve Morris, Columbia County Sheriff’s Office public information officer, said he strives to continuously keep the public informed, regardless of media interest or lack thereof.
“Most every situation, we put the information out to the news media before we are even get called about it,” said Morris. “We know that [news media] is the catalyst of informing the general public of what is going on. It really makes no sense to delay putting that information out there … as far as this agency is concerned, we don’t have anything to hide.”
To him, whether a case involves only citizens, established criminals or deputies, Morris believes the public should know as much as they want to. Following Morris’ lead, Whittle said the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office will continue to be a golden example of transparency, especially when it concerns those within his agency’s employment.
“Because really, in the end, it’s going to get out there. You’re not going to be able to hide something forever,” said Morris. “It may take a day, it may take a week, but eventually – especially if it’s bad news – it’s going to get out there. So, why even attempt to try to hide that?”
Whittle and Morris believe a strong foundation of trust between law enforcement and the public is the only way officers should work, because it promotes beneficial cooperation that solves cases.
“We can’t solve cases by ourselves. Our job is to augment the public, and that means the public is still a part of us. They help us catch bad guys, and we need to keep that in our mind everyday,” said Whittle.
“When something happens inside our agency where my own people have violated the law – which is thankfully few and far between, but occasionally they happen – for us to hold a case under the claim of, ‘Oh you can’t have that information, it’s an ongoing investigation,’ is just really bogus,” said Whittle. “I can do that by Georgia law, if I have an open case, I can refuse to give you information, but it’s wrong.”
