The brash game of hide-and-seek that Pinellas Park plays with public records has taken a decidedly nasty turn. A police sergeant testified under oath last week that he was asked to alter a police report and that he took the old version and destroyed it. "I had both those copies, the original," Sgt. Dan Levy said. "They went in my shred pile. . . . They ultimately got shredded." Shredded.
The story that Levy told in a deposition before Times attorneys is stunning in its implications. He said he was told by a captain to change a police report after it was requested by a Times reporter, because the city didn't want to reveal that portion. A police officer also said, under oath, that she was asked to alter records in the period of time between when the newspaper sued to seek enforcement of the state law and a circuit judge made his first ruling.
This news, incredibly, has been met with silence at City Hall. Not a single elected official has voiced any public concern about the shredding of documents. Pinellas Park attorney Ed Foreman, who has lost previous cases brought against the city to enforce the public records law, has barely batted an eye. In fact, city officials have reacted with indignation ever since a Times reporter first asked to see the police investigation into the Feb. 11 suicide of City Manager Jerry Mudd. They have behaved as though they were among the righteous, trying to protect a dying man's privacy. But the law does not embrace their piety. It says records produced by public agencies are the property of the public and, absent an exemption, are to be turned over to the public.
The shredded documents reflect more than just a hostility toward a newspaper's inquiry. They reveal a contempt for the law that is so brazen Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe cannot afford to ignore it. If the public's law is to have meaning, then a prosecutor needs to enforce it.
