Justices Say Police Can Withhold Certain Records

Police departments are not required by the state’s public records act to disclose internal documents about criminal investigations, including traffic stops, even if there is no prospect of charging someone with a crime, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday.

The high court ruling, which applies to information gathered during investigations but not to arrest reports, will make it more difficult to monitor law enforcement, advocates for public interest groups and the media said. They noted that now civil rights lawsuits will have to be filed before police documents can be obtained through discovery motions.

Tom Newton, general counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., said the court has placed a “cloak of secrecy on all matters of law enforcement.”

“How can anyone find out what law enforcement is up to--good, bad or ugly--unless they tell us?” Newton asked.

Monday’s case was brought by Elgin Haynie, who was stopped and handcuffed by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy July 1, 1999, before it was determined he had committed no crime.

Minutes before the stop, the Sheriff’s Department had received a report that three male, Asian teenagers were seen getting into a blue Ford van carrying what appeared to be pistols or squirt guns.

Haynie, who is black, was driving a blue Ford van with three teenage Latina passengers. Haynie said he was injured during the stop.

Haynie sought records and recordings about his stop before filing a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Department. The department, saying police investigations are exempt under the state public records act, refused to turn over the documents and recordings and instead released a “summary of the event.”

According to the sheriff’s summary, Haynie had to be handcuffed because he became “argumentative.” After he was released, he tried to injure himself by striking his hands against the pavement, the Sheriff’s Department said.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied Haynie’s request for the records, but a Court of Appeal ordered the trial judge to determine whether the records Haynie wanted existed, and if so, to order their disclosure.

Overturning that decision, the California Supreme Court said the Sheriff’s Department’s records of the incident fall within an exemption for criminal investigations because Haynie was stopped “for the purpose of discovering whether a violation of law had occurred.”

In Haynie’s case, Justice Marvin R. Baxter wrote for the court, “We have no reason to believe that the deputies who stopped Haynie were not investigating a report of what they believed might be criminal conduct.”

The court also said government agencies are not required to disclose whether they even have the records a member of the public has requested.

“Requiring a public agency to provide a list of all records in its possession . . . has the potential for imposing significant costs on the agency,” Baxter wrote.

He added, however, that police still must turn over documents related to crime prevention and public safety “that are unrelated to either civil or criminal investigations.”

Barrett S. Litt, who represented Haynie, said the ruling will prevent the media and public interest groups from determining whether police agencies are engaged in racial profiling by analyzing patterns of traffic stops.

“The real blow is to public access, the right for interested people to see what it is that government is doing,” Litt said.

He complained that the court had interpreted criminal investigations so broadly that it will apply to most police records.

“I would say it is a pretty sweeping decision, and not a decision that reflects what the legislative intent was,” Litt said. The Legislature passed the public records act during the 1960s.

Steven J. Renick, who represented Los Angeles County in the case, said the decision was broad because traffic stops “are probably at the far end of what you would consider an investigation.”

But the decision is “not a carte blanche that anything a police officer does can be protected,” Renick said.

Daniel Tokaji, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said the ruling “strikes a serious blow to the principle that government should operate in the sunshine.”

The decision in Haynie vs. Superior Court will force members of the public to bring civil rights lawsuits against police agencies to learn about police abuses, said Tokaji, who wrote an amicus brief in the case for the ACLU.

“It is very unfortunate,” Tokaji said. “In the city of Los Angeles, we have seen disastrous consequences of allowing the LAPD to operate behind a veil of secrecy in the Rampart scandal.”

Newton, the top lawyer for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., said the ruling was the latest in a string of court decisions that have limited public access to law enforcement records in California.

He noted, however, that Gov. Gray Davis recently signed a state law that says government agencies should assist members of the public in public record searches by helping them identify what records exist. He said he did not know how much the law might limit the impact of Monday’s decision.