Pa. state police, records office battle over crime-scene videos
HARRISBURG - The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records urged a judge Thursday to grant it access to State Police video footage, including from a March shooting on the Pennsylvania Turnpike that left a retired trooper and two others dead.
HARRISBURG - The Pennsylvania Office of Open Records urged a judge Thursday to grant it access to State Police video footage, including from a March shooting on the Pennsylvania Turnpike that left a retired trooper and two others dead.
The State Police department is fighting that request - and two others like it - arguing that its decision to withhold the videos is protected under the law.
The case before Commonwealth Court Judge Robert E. Simpson Jr. focuses on the reach and authority of the Open Records Office, a quasi-judicial agency set up to field and rule on citizen requests for public records and information.
The turnpike shooting occurred March 20 at a toll booth in Fulton County, where police say former Trooper Clarence D. Briggs, 55, attempted an armed robbery and shot and killed turnpike employee Daniel Crouse and turnpike contractor Ronald Heist. Briggs died in an exchange of gunfire with a state trooper.
The York Daily Record filed a Right-to-Know request seeking dashboard and body camera footage of the incident.
The State Police denied the request, classifying the information as criminal investigative records, an exemption allowed under the Right-to-Know Law.
The newspaper appealed to the Open Records Office, which says it needs to review the videos privately to determine whether they should be released. The State Police denied that request as well, arguing that the agency cannot share the footage because the records office is not a criminal justice agency and has no right to the records.
In bringing the case to court, the Open Records Office cited that denial and two others, one involving State Police footage related to a shooting in Wayne County and the other of an incident at the Mount Airy Casino Resort.
Lawyers for the State Police say that the agency handed over affidavits in which troopers attest that the videos are part of criminal investigations, and that that should be sufficient for the records office to classify the videos exempt as investigative information.
The Office of Open Records "is not a criminal justice agency. Therefore we cannot provide them with this information," Nolan B. Meeks, assistant counsel to the State Police, told Simpson.
A lawyer for the records office argued that it has a responsibility to gather evidence about whether a record is subject to public disclosure and that the sworn statements from troopers are not enough.
"We reviewed the affidavits from the State Police, and we felt that we had some other questions, and we felt that the best way to answer those questions was to actually look at the videos," Charles Rees Brown, chief counsel of the Office of Open Records, said after the proceeding.
Simpson said after hearing the arguments that he did not think the Open Records Office was a criminal justice agency and that he had difficulty understanding how the office would be permitted to see information protected by the Criminal History Record Information Act. But he called that an initial impression that could be subject to review.
Even if he finds that the Open Records office cannot view the recordings, Brown said, a judge could still review them.
717-787-2141
@karen_langley