The Salt Lake Tribune has scored a win for campus transparency in what attorney Michael O’Brien called the “first round” in a fight for police records from Brigham Young University.
An SPLC investigation reveals how Texas' private institutions are using a provision of the state's open records law to delay the release of police reports.
Indiana's attorney general has thrown the state's influential weight behind a lawsuit seeking access to police records at Notre Dame, whose attorneys claim the private institution is exempt from the state public-records act. Sports network ESPN is trying to make Indiana the third state this year to declare private-college police reports open for public inspection.
A year ago, Jordan Bradley detailed in the SPLC Report how student journalists at Otterbein University have had difficulty gaining access to campus police reports.The troubles started in 2011, when the Ohio school's security team was converted into a commissioned police force, said Hillary Warren, who advises The Tan & Cardinal. Then, campus police began responding to incidents that city police once handled. At first, campus police didn't release any records, even those required under the Jeanne Clery Act, Warren told us.
When two high school students walked into their local police station and asked to see a public record, they were given what one of them called “the runaround.” But they stuck it through 'til the end, and that end was a scoop that later ended up on TV and radio stations across Cleveland.
Call it deja vu. Sort of.