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St Paul police chief defends search of reporter's phone records
Saint Paul Police Chief John Harrington today defended his department's decision to search the cell phone records of a Twin Cities television reporter. He also explained why the Saint Paul police initially denied that reporter access to an old arrest report, which sparked the chain of events culminating in the highly unusual move. "If we erred at all in doing this," Harrington told a room full of journalists at police headquarters, "We erred on the side of trying to protect the public. We erred in an attempt to protect a woman who has been battered." Harrington acknowledged his investigators obtained a search warrant for KMSP-TV's reporter Tom Lyden's cell phone records for part of the day of June 11th. The chief said the warrant, issued by a Ramsey County judge last summer, was limited in scope to a few hours that day. "The concern by the media that we are somehow on this blanket search for your records or your notebooks or anything else, is just not the case." Probe centered on Sheriff's Officer On June 11th Lyden asked the police records desk for a report on a careless driving arrest from January of 2000. He received only front sheet, commonly known as the "public" part of the report. While that's standard procedure for current cases still pending in court, it's fairly uncommon to seal an old police traffic file. So Lyden got the full report from another source and used it in his story that night. Saint Paul police immediately focused on a Ramsey County Sheriff's Office director who pulled the report the same day they turned down Lyden. "We later learned that a Ramsey County deputy came to our records unit and obtained that report using his law enforcement access to get the complete report," Harrington said. "We were not happy about that release. We believed at the time that information was not public. We started a criminal investigation on misconduct by a public official." In an effort to build a possible criminal case against that sheriff's officer the police sought a search warrant of his phone records on June 11th, the day Lyden asked for the report. "That investigation led us to Tom Lyden's phone records," Harrington elaborated, "And a very limited search was done to see if there was some information there that would help us determine criminality or not." If the police knew which officer pulled the report and that Lyden used part of it in a story what could investigators hope to glean from the reporter's call log? "Partly to figure out the timing," Harrington replied, "Partly to see if there were other members contacted, but primarily to get some confirmation of the fact that this conversation was a two-way street." "Simply accessing the records isn't a violation. It's accessing the records and then giving them to somebody else who then discloses them is where the violation happens." The chief said his department dropped the investigation months ago, partly because the phone records alone can't prove whether a "transfer" of a report took place between the Sheriff's officer and Lyden. Harrington stressed repeatedly the investigation targeted the deputy's conduct, not the reporter's. "We recognize that the news media gets their information from a variety of sources and once you get its fair game. You're not a public official." Old public record The old arrest report Lyden sought back on June 11th was a careless driving citation from January of 2000, involving a young woman pulled over by an undercover officer on Rice Street. Lyden sought the old report because days earlier in Coon Rapids the woman's husband shot and wounded an off-duty plain clothes officer during a traffic dispute. The woman and her two children were in the car when her husband fired the shots at the victim. That day Lyden was running down a lead that the same woman had been involved in another "road rage" incident in Saint Paul in 2000. But police released only the front sheet of that incident report and withheld the other pages with the arresting officer's detailed account. Harrington told reporters his department chose to keep that full report under wraps because based on the belief it was still off-limits to the public as a pending case. "We believed at the time that information was not public because the investigation was still open," Harrington said He asserted the other reason his staff originally hesitated was out of concern for the safety of the woman in question. She'd been battered and threatened by a man in a previous relationship. "She has taken a number of steps," Harrington remarked, "Moving, changing names, all kinds of things to try and protect her identity from her batterer." And yet her date of birth, previous name and address at the time of the 2000 arrest were on the front sheet released to Lyden. So how could sealing the other pages protect the woman's identity? Harrington said the back pages would give more detailed information about cars and addresses. "The front sheet doesn't give you a lot of information that would frequently be in the non-public narrative, that would allow someone looking for her to track her down." Media uproar The police department's been under fire from media experts and journalists around the nation since the search of Lyden's records came to light earlier this week. In a statement issued by the Society of Professional Journalists, national president Clint Brewer called the move "an abuse of power and an affront to First Amendment rights." "What the Saint Paul Police department has done is circumvent reporters' ability to protect their sources," local SPJ chapter head Joan Gilbertson added. Lyden, interviewed by a member of his own staff, compared it to having the police seize his notes which, by law, are shielded from official probes in the interest of protecting confidential sources and whistleblowers. The U of M's media ethics and law expert Jane Kirtley used the words "sneaky" and "end run" to describe the department's tactics by going to a third party, the phone company, to grab information it couldn't easily get directly from a media outlet. Harrington said he regrets causing so much uneasiness in the world of reporters, but did not apologize or call the records search a mistake. And he tried to dispel any notion that it happened without his input. "I'm the guy that's in charge," the chief said, "I take full responsibility, both for Mr. Lyden's concern and for the investigation." Should have been public The chief conceded that on further review he determined the entire report, including the back pages, was indeed public information. He said that would have been determined in time had the reporter filed a formal request. "If a data practices request would have been made the next day we would have had a chance to find out the traffic violation case was closed." But Lyden found a shortcut that day, getting the same day through another source. And it was his apparent source who drew the full attention of the Saint Paul Police. "Our focus was never on stopping the press," Harrington said, "Our focus was on not having a public official access data that they should not have, that we believed at the time they should not have access to." Harrington said now that the probe is closed he'll ask the Ramsey County Attorney's Office to unseal the search warrants, both for Lyden and the sheriff's officer. Even the applications for those warrants would reveal how investigators justified the search to the judge who signed them, and whether that judge was ever informed that Lyden was a reporter. The U's Kirtley told KARE 11 Thursday night that the chief's explanation still doesn't justify the department's intense approach to the case. "Why not check first to see if the data is public before you launch this all out investigation into the sheriff's officer? Wouldn't you want to know at least that much before going after the guy for releasing it?" In a statement issued Thursday KMSP News Vice President Bill Dallman said, "Today's admissions by the St. Paul police were important first steps. FOX 9 continues to strongly insist that reporter Tom Lyden's phone records remain private and be returned to him." Harrington said that will happen, and he'll try ensure that Lyden's phone records don't become public data themselves.
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