It now appears the state police won’t release records
related to the Sandy Hook School massacre until perhaps September.
There’s no reason for the delay.
Connecticut’s Freedom of Information law allows law
enforcement to keep records secret if they needed for an active police
investigation.
But there is no active investigation of Sandy Hook anymore.
There is no suspect on the lam. There is nobody sitting in jail waiting for
trial. By all accounts, there is nobody, anywhere who is eyed by police as a
possible accomplice.
There is no active investigation. At best, there is an
active effort to write a report.
The law says the records can be held secret if they “were
compiled in connection with the detection or investigation of crime, if the
disclosure of said records would not be in the public interest because it would
result in the disclosure” of a confidential informant, a witness who could be
endangered, investigative techniques not known to the public or information
that would be prejudicial for a potential law enforcement action.
Not one of those exemptions applies in this case.
I can understand why information was kept under wraps during
those first difficult days and weeks, when the anguish was raw and the case still
not completely clear. But we all know the basics of what happened now. We know
who did it. We know how he did it. And we will probably never really comprehend
why he did it.
The state has no reason to hide information we paid to
collect from us. It needs to lay out what it has gathered and let the public
makes it own decisions about what it all means.
Yes, produce a report. Try to make it sound something like
English, too, for a change.
But let’s not pretend there is an active investigation going
on. This is not what the law was meant to protect. We don’t live in a police
state. I’d like to think we live in a state that trusts its citizens and
prefers to let the sunlight shine.
Open the books already.
