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September 2017
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Vermont State Police Rewrite Press Rules To Withhold As Much Information As Possible

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Various authority figures have attempted to define journalism, usually excluding their critics. A recent post here covered a police chief who decided he could determine a journalist's credibility based almost solely on their web presence. Trimming down the definition of "journalist" allows government officials to limit their accountability by treating only certain outlets as credible.So, we already have government authorities attempting to define what is or isn't a "real" news outlet. Jonathan Peters of the Columbia Journalism Review reports a government authority is attempting to define what is or isn't news. In this case, it's the Vermont State Police.

It recently revised a “Press Release and Public Information Policy” that provides guidance for police officers regarding how, what, and when information should be given to the press and public. The revisions came in July, and local journalists aren’t happy.“The policy leaves it up to individual state troopers to determine what is news and what isn’t,” Michael Donoghue, the executive director of the Vermont Press Association, tells CJR. “Crimes, including sexual assaults, armed robberies, arsons, burglaries, embezzlements, drugs, and more are not required to be disclosed. Vermonters want to know if they are safe in their homes and out on the streets.
The new policy [PDF] prefers ambiguity to clarity and transparency. Worse, it allows officers and police officials to make subjective calls on newsworthiness, which is obviously going to make policing the police that much more difficult. This part is particularly problematic, as it restricts dissemination of information to that which is subjectively defined as "significant public interest."
Press releases will be issued as soon as practicable for significant incidents of public interest, including, but not limited to arrests, citations, road closures, hazardous scenes and motor vehicle crashes.
Beyond that, VSP will withhold all info that "could identify" victims of crimes. This would include those who are on the receiving end of criminal activity by law enforcement officers. As Peters points out, this may nod to privacy, but does very little for public safety. (Not to mention accountability…) This would allow officers to withhold information that might be actually useful to the public, like the areas where repeated criminal activity is being observed.Even as it places more limits on dissemination, the State Police is playing up its supposed "consultation" with local journalists when revising its policy. That's as much of a sham as the new policy.
While the police say they consulted the press (the state public-safety head wrote in a July letter-to-the-editor that the police “met with and had several discussions with and solicited input from” local journalists), the press association didn’t receive a final draft of the revisions before they were implemented.Donoghue says the formal consultation amounted to one meeting with two officials. Another press association leader then asked to meet with the public-safety head, who hadn’t attended the meeting except to offer a brief welcome. That request wasn’t granted, and there was no follow-up meeting involving the press.
When asked directly about the changes (and their tendency to make dissemination of information even less likely), the Police spokesman offered up some talking points, but little in the way of clarity. He told Waterman the policy tries to strike a balance between the public's right to know and individual privacy and the integrity of criminal investigations. The spokesman also pointed to the department's 14 press releases a day as evidence that it's all over this transparency thing. But, as is pointed out by the policy's critics, 14 releases a day isn't much when there are more than 300 officers on staff. The VSP issues press releases for things like driving with a suspended license and other misdemeanors. If this minutia is supposed to be evidence of transparency, what are the other 300 officers doing with their time?The faux consultation and the broad language attempt to disguise the self-interested policy rewriting. Law enforcement agencies are rarely paragons of transparency. The new rules the State Police wrote itself with almost zero consultation will only serve to keep more information out of the public's hands.

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posted at: 12:00am on 15-Sep-2017
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House Passes Amendment Rolling Back Jeff Sessions' Civil Asset Forfeiture Expansion

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Trump's pick for attorney general unsurprisingly holds the same ideals as his boss. He also holds the same misconceptions and misplaced nostalgia for tough-on-crime policing that went out of vogue as soon as it became apparent it wasn't doing anything but filling up prisons.Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been going hot and heavy on a 1980s-esque law enforcement policy revival. He booted the DOJ off the civil rights beat, telling states and cities to solve their own police misconduct problems -- something they were clearly unwilling to do on their own, hence the DOJ's intercession. He told cops they're getting back their access to war gear, rolling back the Obama administration's minimal 1033 program reforms.He's been touting tougher policing and tougher sentencing, using a false narrative of a country under siege by drug dealers and criminal border-jumpers. In a time of historic lows -- both in violent criminal activity and violence towards police officers -- AG Sessions is acting like a street corner preacher, promising an impending apocalypse to anyone who will listen.Sessions is also peeling away federal reforms to asset forfeiture. He's opened the federal safety valve for civil forfeitures, allowing local PDs to dodge state laws limiting the amount of property they can take from uncharged citizens.Given the makeup of Congress, one would assume Sessions' ongoing effort to raise US law enforcement to "a law unto itself" level would ride on rails, at least up until midterm elections. Instead, Sessions is facing a literal House divided -- not against itself exactly -- but against him.

In a stunning move, the House of Representatives on Tuesday approved an amendment to the Make America Secure and Prosperous Appropriations Act that will roll back Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s expansion of asset forfeiture.Amendment number 126 was sponsored by a bipartisan group of nine members, led by Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash. He was joined by Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna of California; Washington state’s Pramila Jayapal, a rising progressive star; and Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard.
If this passes the Senate untouched, the amendment will roll things back to 2015 -- once again prohibiting federal adoption of local forfeitures. It would make state and local agencies play by the rules set for them by their legislatures, rather than allow them to bypass protections put in place to discourage abuse of programs loaded with the most perverted of incentives.

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