Request By:
Mr. James Hite Hays
Shelby County Attorney
501 Main Street
Shelbyville, Kentucky 40065
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; Carl Miller, Assistant Attorney General
You have requested an opinion of the Attorney General as to whether a sheriff's department is required by the Open Records Law to release information that a crime was committed and reported to it if the victim of the crime has requested that information not be released to the press. In this case the crime was burglary and the Sheriff's Department refused to provide any information concerning the crime to the local newspaper.
The preamble to HB 138, 1976, which enacted the Open Records Law, codified as KRS 61.870-61.884, contains the following:
"Government is the servant of the people and not the master of them; . . . access to information concerning the conduct of the people's business is a fundamental and necessary right of every citizen in the Commonwealth of Kentucky."
Secret police activity without some overriding justification is repugnant to the American system of government. Consequently, when a citizen reports a crime to the police he may generally expect that the news media will learn of the report. The press has its own standards of what it considers news worthy and what it considers should not be published. For example, the press voluntarily withholds the names of juveniles accused of crime although there is no law requiring it to do so.
KRS 61.878 exempts from the requirement of mandatory public disclosure certain types of records. There is no exemption for police incident reports or records which simply show that a crime was committed and reported to the police department. In OAG 77-102 we opined that the "police blotter" or police "incident report" is not exempt from public inspection.
In regard to your particular question, the Sheriff's Department is the servant of the people and if a citizen wants the services of the Sheriff's Department to investigate a crime, he cannot expect that the matter will be kept secret. It is our opinion that the Sheriff's Department must allow public inspection of any records pertaining to the reporting of a crime except records which might disclose information which would endanger the life of the police officer or an informant as exempted by KRS 17.150.