Comments on: Sunshine Reflections http://PassOpenRecords.Org/2008/03/26/sunshine-reflections/ A Movement to Lift the Lid on Pennsylvania Government Sat, 30 Aug 2008 00:41:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.2 By: Erik Arneson http://PassOpenRecords.Org/2008/03/26/sunshine-reflections/#comment-2319 Erik Arneson Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:05:45 +0000 http://PassOpenRecords.Org/2008/03/26/sunshine-reflections/#comment-2319 Regarding campus police crime logs and incident reports, Act 3 of 2008 (formerly Senate Bill 1) includes this language in Section 708(b)(16), which is the exception for criminal investigations: "This paragraph shall not apply to information contained in a police blotter as defined in 18 Pa.C.S. § 9102 (relating to definitions) and utilized or maintained by the Pennsylvania State Police, local, campus, transit or port authority police department or other law enforcement agency or in a traffic report except as provided under 75 Pa.C.S. § 3754(b) (relating to accident prevention investigations)." It will be interesting to see how various agencies try to apply that language, but the intent was to make sure that basic crime logs and incident reports (i.e. "information contained in a police blotter") are always available to the public. Cheers, Erik Arneson Regarding campus police crime logs and incident reports, Act 3 of 2008 (formerly Senate Bill 1) includes this language in Section 708(b)(16), which is the exception for criminal investigations: “This paragraph shall not apply to information contained in a police blotter as defined in 18 Pa.C.S. § 9102 (relating to definitions) and utilized or maintained by the Pennsylvania State Police, local, campus, transit or port authority police department or other law enforcement agency or in a traffic report except as provided under 75 Pa.C.S. § 3754(b) (relating to accident prevention investigations).”

It will be interesting to see how various agencies try to apply that language, but the intent was to make sure that basic crime logs and incident reports (i.e. “information contained in a police blotter”) are always available to the public.

Cheers,
Erik Arneson

]]>