The Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Kentucky has ruled that police departments across the state cannot deny public or media records that are related to a criminal case without a proper reason.
The standard of automatic denial of public information has been commonplace in Kentucky for 50 years, but an appeal by The Courier-Journal, relating to a records dispute from a July 2020 high-speed pursuit involving Shively Police Department officers that left three people dead including a 9-month-old girl, has changed the opinion of the Commonwealth’s highest court, which sided with the Jefferson Circuit Court.
The records dispute came when The Courier-Journal requested dash and body camera footage from the incident, as well as accident reports and 911 calls made relating to the incident. However, Shively police denied the request within 36 minutes, citing a “law enforcement exemption” to the open records law in Kentucky.
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“As there is an active criminal case regarding this incident, all of the above requests are denied…,” the Shively police said.
However, after the Kentucky Supreme Court reviewed the record, the law it pertained to and the arguments of both SPD and The Courier-Journal, it sided with the newspaper, stating that the police department failed to comply with the Open Records Act.
“Having reviewed the record, the applicable law, and the arguments of the parties, we hold that SPD has not proven that it adequately complied with the Open Records Act in this instance,” stated Justice Michelle Keller in her opinion of the court.
The court also ruled that Kentucky’s law enforcement and the state’s Attorney General’s office have been erroneously relying on the statute that kept information from getting out “as a justification to shield their public records from public scrutiny for nearly 50 years.”
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This article appears in Sep 24 – Oct 8, 2024.