A July controversy over the City’s and New Britain Police’s denying access to arrest logs to the New Britain Herald without formal Freedom of Information requests has led to the New Britain Police Department (NBPD) posting a weekly arrest log online at https://pd.newbritainct.gov/safety-prevention/police-blotter.
The link shows arrests made in the city for one week — August 13th through August 19th — in apparently the first log published at the updated police website. The website is a different address from an older NBPD website (newbritainpolice.org) that remains posted at the City of New Britain’s public safety page but is out of date.
The appearance of a week’s worth of August arrests comes after the New Britain Racial Justice Coalition (NBRJC) filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request and a contentious debate arose at the August Common Council meeting over the decision to stop sending the log to the Herald
The refusal of the Mayor’s Office and NBPD to send the logs to the Herald when a reporter requested them drew immediate complaints. In a letter to the editor, former Mayor Don DeFronzo called the move “bad public policy” and called on the Chief of Police and Mayor Stewart to changes their minds. Both the Mayor’s Office and the Chief of Police at first rejected sharing the logs citing a need for time-consuminh formal FOI requests, ending a longstanding practice of local newspapers publishing arrest logs as part of news coverage in just about every community that still has a newspaper.
The Connecticut FOI laws allow authorities to exempt certain information from the public, but only for reasons specified in the statute. These include cases involving the identity of persons under 16 years old or the identification and address of victims of sexual assault, the protection of witnesses or release of information that would be “prejudicial’ to a law enforcement action or ongoing investigation.
Otherwise the public has the right to know about arrests and unlawful activity as they occur.
By using the FOI process the racial justice coalition said it wanted “to restore access to arrest records and ensure that vital information remains accessible to the public.” NBRJC Coalition Director Alicia Strong stated that “the residents of New Britain have the right to know about police activity in their communities without having to cut through bureaucratic red tape. This is an unfortunate step backwards for police accountability in New Britain.”
The public outcry certainly appears to be reversing a decision that damaged transparency in city government.
One week’s log should follow another without much in the way of extra time or effort on the part of the city and without burdening the Herald or citizens with the costs and paperwork of filing an FOI complaint for the right to know.
The Town of Farmington posts a daily report of arrests on its website for public and press consumption and the Herald continues to publish arrest logs from area towns readily provided by the departments.
Once its police blotter page is better known and more visible New Britain will join other police departments in posting arrest logs on a regular basis to comply with the spirit if not the letter of the FOI law.
