Sheriff to stop limiting records access

The Beaufort County sheriff says he'll give the media reasonable access to crime reports on weekends and holidays after the South Carolina Attorney General's office said limiting access to weekdays violated the state's open records law.

The Island Packet of Hilton Head and The Beaufort Gazette had objected to a new policy Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner adopted in November that blocked the media from looking at reports on weekends and holidays when administrative office are closed. Reports are processed by administrative staff who work Monday through Friday, Tanner said.

In response to the newspapers' objections, Tanner requested an opinion from the state Attorney General.

That opinion, which was released Tuesday, stated that the state's Freedom of Information Act requires reasonable access to incident reports at night, on weekends and during holidays.

The Charleston area has its own struggles with information on crime reports.

The Post and Courier last month objected to the Charleston Police Department blocking names, addresses, phone numbers and other important details from crime reports, after years of releasing the reports in their entirety.

Attorneys from the South Carolina Press Association said the practice violated the state's open records laws. Such action makes it difficult to help people make informed decisions about safety in their communities and how law enforcement uses their tax money.

Since the dispute, police have stopped using such a heavy hand in redacting information from incident reports. In some instances however, they have continued to omit information that press association lawyers say the public is entitled to.

At the Folly Beach Public Safety Department, officials said because of an employee being off for the holidays, the office will have no police reports for the media for the rest of the week.

Tanner said Wednesday that because Beaufort County crime reports are processed Monday through Friday, the media wasn't getting much new information by looking through reports on the weekends.

Only the front page of new reports was available, which contained the most basic information on a case, he said. Reports also were available on cases that had been cleared by an arrest, an exception or those that were determined to be unfounded.

But he said he plans to comply with the opinion, which isn't legally binding, by allowing the media to contact an officer who is on duty on the weekend and to make arrangements to review reports.

He's willing to provide reasonable access to reports, he said, but the officer's law enforcement work comes first.

"He's not going to stop working a traffic wreck to let a reporter in to look at reports," Tanner said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Reach Diane Knich at 937-5491 or dknich@postandcourier.com.

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