By design, including structure and funding, police are arms of the government. As such they are supposed to be subject to civilian control, but rarely operate with the same levels of transparency that attend other aspects of the government.
The state Supreme Court struck a blow for transparency and accountability this week when it ruled that the Pennsylvania State Police must disclose its policy on monitoring social media.
Six years ago, the ACLU of Pennsylvania asked the state police to disclose its social media monitoring policy regarding investigations and employee background checks. The agency provided a copy of the nine-page policy with almost everything blacked out, or redacted.
The ACLU appealed the redactions to the state Office of Open Records, which conducted a private review of the blacked-out sections and rejected the state police argument that disclosing the policy would harm investigations and applicant background checks. It found that the document did not compromise any particular investigation and was an internal administrative document dealing with process, thus a public record that the state police had to disclose without redactions.
State police appealed to the Commonwealth Court, where a three-judge panel offered state police the opportunity to provide more detailed reasons for its redaction decisions, even though state police did not ask for that opportunity, and overturned the Office of Open Records decision.
The ACLU appealed to the Supreme Court, resulting in the 4-3 majority decision that will force the state police to disclose how it monitors social media. According to the ruling, the Commonwealth Court judges exceeded their authority by ordering additional fact-finding not authorized by the Open Records Law.
All three Commonwealth Court judges who issued the decision were elected as Republicans; the four Supreme Court justices who issued the majority opinion were elected as Democrats.
The ruling is important beyond the question of the social media policy because it reinforces that police are a public agency that, like other public agencies, must make legally valid arguments to withhold public information from the people that it serves.
— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre, Pa. (TNS)
