COLUMBUS COUNTY, NC (NewsReporter) — For the past three weeks, the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office has refused to release reports of criminal activity as it had done previously in accordance with North Carolina law.
Prior to Sept. 4, CCSO emailed an arrest report and incident report nearly every weekday to various media outlets in Columbus County, southeastern N.C. and northeastern S.C.
Starting Sept. 4, the office’s public information officer stopped including incident reports in the email, although she continued sending arrest reports. On Sept. 8, the email included a note stating, “Columbus County Sheriff’s Office is implementing a policy change in regards to incident reports. Additional information will be emailed to you in the near future.”
The sheriff’s office has not sent The News Reporter a copy of the new policy; however, the sheriff and his chief deputy have told the newspaper that they do not intend to provide any information about unsolved or open cases because it could interfere with investigations.
In a Sept. 11 phone interview, Sheriff Jody Greene claimed that missing out on grant money to combat elder abuse and victims’ fear of having their names in the newspaper justified his reasoning to stop sending out incident reports to media outlets.
“Well, right now that’s how it’s going to be, because we had meeting after meeting, and for you to get grant money, you’ve got to show a problem,” Greene said. “Well, I know there’s elder abuse going on in our county, but last year we had zero reports of it, and one of the big factors of it is, ‘Is my name going to be put in the paper?’ They don’t want the embarrassment of their name and their family’s information being put out in the public.” Greene continued, “Stuff like that hurts the county in getting grant money because that’s the money that we live off of.”
In follow-up communications with the CCSO, Chief Deputy Aaron Herring cited N.C. General Statute Chapter 132-1.4, subsection D, which says “A public law enforcement agency shall temporarily withhold the name or address of a complaining witness if release of the information is reasonably likely to pose a threat to the mental health, physical health or personal safety of the complaining witness or materially compromise a continuing or future criminal investigation or criminal intelligence operation.”
However, the CCSO’s new policy conflicts with state law, according to attorney Amanda Martin of Raleigh, who is representing The News Reporter, Tabor-Loris Tribune, WECT and WWAY in the matter.
In a letter Wednesday to Columbus County Attorney Amanda Prince, Martin cited N.C. General Statute Chapter 132-1.4, which under subsection C lists the information that shall be public records, which includes “the time, date, location and nature of a violation or apparent violation of the law reported to a public law enforcement agency.”
Martin said that citing subsection D of that statute to deny releasing any incident reports is mistaken.
“That subsection does not create a blanket authority for wholesale withholding of criminal information and criminal records. Rather, subsection D allows only the temporary withholding of just the name and address of a complaining witness,” Martin wrote.
Martin’s letter asks that CCSO resume sending incident reports, barring which, legal action will be taken.
While Greene did not respond to the media’s request for comment, the sheriff’s office did post the following statement on Facebook Friday morning:
All citizens, we wanted to clear any accusations of our office not following the public records law. A story done by the News Reporter suggests that we are not releasing public information. We have recently changed the process of releasing information as follows. In the past we would release incidents reports everyday that contain victim information to include, names, addresses, property stolen or damaged, and more. Due to this information being printed in the local papers our citizens began declining to file reports because they did not want their information in the paper for all to see. Also, the fact that the incidents reported would currently be under investigation,state law says that we can protect the integrity of the investigation and the victims by temporarily holding these types of records until the case is closed. We are currently releasing all arrest records, in custody records, and any other information requested by any media outlet. The News Reporter has suggested that they will file a lawsuit to gain access to reports made by citizens so that the information can be printed in their paper. We have had several cases that have been tarnished by releasing information too soon. We will always follow the law and in this matter the law allows us to protect your information as a victim until we can make an arrest in your case or close the case. Also, the News Reporter can get information from the Clerk of Courts Office for any case were an arrest has been made to include all the information they need for print. We have nothing to hide, we want to make sure we do all we can to serve our citizens in the safest way. We thank you all for your support.
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