Connecticut must help crime victims without eroding the public's right to know what the police are doing, the ACLU of Connecticut told a state task force on Wednesday.
The Task Force on Victim Privacy and the Public's Right to Know is considering changes to the state's Freedom of Information law to protect the privacy of crime victims, and its deliberations include whether changes made in the last legislative session should be extended or modified. Those changes excluded crime scene photographs and certain 911 recordings from disclosure under state Freedom of Information law.
At a hearing Wednesday in the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, the task force heard from a number of media companies and organizations seeking to restore access to that information and to protect access to other details about criminal investigations. They were joined by representatives from the Society of Professional Journalists, the New England First Amendment Coalition and the ACLU of Connecticut.
David McGuire, staff attorney for the ACLU of Connecticut, told task force members in written and oral testimony that access to government documents, particularly from police, is crucial to the organization's work protecting individual constitutional rights. He described, for example, how the ACLU-CT's examination of death certificates showed that a high proportion of the people who died after being Tasered by police in Connecticut were African American or Latino.
"This racial disparity is a matter of great public concern. We hope the information we uncovered will bring attention to this issue and help us find a way to eliminate the disproportionate use of Tasers on people of color," he said.
McGuire also described how the ACLU of Connecticut needed details from police reports, including the names of individuals, to determine the accuracy of statistics on police use of force.
"Hiding this information would not protect these individuals, or the public at large, but it would certainly obscure police misconduct," he said.
