FOI/Victim Privacy Task Force Compromises

The Task Force on Victim Privacy and the Public’s Right To Know voted to recommend the Connecticut legislature change a law it passed last year limiting the public’s access to information from crime scenes.

The compromise — reached after months of meetings on the topic — does not bring the public’s access back to the level it was prior to passage of Public Act 13-311. The deal results in a recommendation that would allow the public to view crime scene photos from homicides, but requires an appeal in order to get access to the records.

Click the links to view coverage of the final meeting from the Hartford Courant, the Danbury News-Times and CTNewsJunkie. The video embed above is CT-N coverage of the Dec. 17 task force meeting.

Connecticut SPJ, which appointed four members to the task force, including CTSPJ President Jodie Mozdzer Gil, wanted to see the FOI act returned to its original state. However, facing an uphill battle against a task force heavily weighted toward privacy advocates, the compromise seemed like the only way to gain back some of the lost access to the important public records.

Being able to look, but not copy, public records was a compromise to ensure the availability of the records.