Orient Road Jail: A Microcosm of Society…Except That Your Every Move Is Recorded as a Public Document

I expected the Hillsborough County Jail to be a scary place with bars and yelling officers and tough inmates. However, from Lt. Scott Smith’s tour, it seems that the jail is not much different from the world we live in, except, of course, the freedom to leave the building. Inmates have three meals a day, a bunk to sleep in, reading material, television, and recreation. They have access to medical, dental, and psychiatric care. In addition, any of the problems you could imagine on the outside they have on the inside. We could not see any of the inmates because of the threat of spreading swine flu.

In regards to our class, the major difference between freedom and jail life is the amount of public records that are kept about the inmates’ every move. All footage captured on the security cameras are kept for two weeks. This is for the protection of the deputies and the inmates. So, if you were to do a story on a jail fight that lead to one inmate killing another, a broadcast journalist could access the security tape in the next two weeks following the incident and air it as supporting evidence. A Phoenix TV station did that and proved that the Sheriff’s Office's story did not line up with the video’s evidence of the incident (Read the full story here). The jail keeps the booking video for forty nine months for evidence in “use of force” cases like the quadriplegic dumping video we all saw last February.

The news stations and newspapers got that video because it is public record. Inmates in confinement are watched twenty four hours a day by a deputy who records their every move. Another public record. Any incident reports that are filed while the inmate is in the jail are public. As we learned at the HCSO, CRA’s are also public. Are you noticing a pattern here?

Even the prisoners phone calls and visitation records are public. For this reason, most lawyers warn them not to discuss anything over the phone. However, Lt. Scott Smith explained that many times they can catch inmates with drugs or other contraband because they discuss their wrongdoing over the phone. These phone records are fairly easy to access, too. Each inmate must punch in their identification number to make a phone call. To get a specific recording, a reporter must simply request the phone records for an inmate’s ID number with a certain date and time. Unfortunately, the lieutenant said that interviewing a deputy who dealt with a certain inmate is prohibited. In this case you would be sent to a PIO.

I’ve never planned on going to jail, and I still don’t. This trip has sealed the deal. I think, beyond all the security and supervision, the most humiliating and freedom infringing aspect of jail is the lack of privacy. When you go to jail you are on the radar 24/7 and everything you do is a matter of public record. When you end up in jail, your privacy comes to an end.

In Public Affairs Reporting, There Is No “One-Stop Shop”

The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office is trying to make their records accessible. But this is not the only stop for a reporter doing a police records story. J.D. Callaway, the Public Information Officer at the HCSO, and his colleague, USF graduate Crystal Bermudas, shared with our class about the different documents available at the Sheriff’s Office. However, Gil’s quote impacted me the most. When discussing the necessity of "shoe leather journalism", Gil stated that there is “no one-stop shop”.

Once HCSO sends out a press release about one of the newsworthy cases that came in that day, a reporter’s work just begins. Callaway explained that the search does not start at the Sheriff’s Office. He suggested to start at the jail and get the criminal report affidavit to see who the victims and the arrestees are. Next, you need to go to the courthouse to see if the arrestees have previous court cases on their record. After this, you need to go to the HCSO for the charge report and any other records available from the case (i.e. DUI reports, traffic reports). Lastly, check out the scene of the crime and talk to secondary sources, like family members and friends, about what happened. As one student put it, it’s a lot of driving.

In an age of Wal-Mart shopping and internet searching, young journalists might find this process daunting. However, “shoe leather journalism” is necessary to get the story right. You cannot depend on a press release or a detective’s report alone for the most accurate and intriguing information. First of all, a press release only gives you the bare minimum facts and finding the story can require digging deeper. Secondly, many of the reports are hard to read or illegible, so they need to be verified with other sources.

I think this kind of reporting makes journalism exciting. Even though traveling to each place can be inconvenient, it is imperative to a good, solid story. Besides, Callaway admitted that they only release about five percent of the cases that come in each day in a press release. Although I’m sure Callaway and Bermudas are capable PIO’s, they still work for elected official, David Gee, and their news judgment may not be the same as yours.

So find your own story, research that story, and do some enterprise reporting that will affect your community.

The Power of Online to Take Specific Info to the Reader

Online media is overshadowing what you would call traditional journalism more everyday. Some are concerned that this will affect the validity of the journalism in our culture. I see their point in some ways, but there is something to be said for making new and different information more readily available to readers.

The investigative reporting that people like Chris Davis are doing at the Sarasota Herald Tribune is only enhanced by the graphics and databases made available to the public through their research. I was amazed at the amount of work put into one story about teachers’ rap sheets and how schools just “pass the trash” with teachers who require disciplinary action. It took five people, four months, for twelve hours a day, to go through 50,000 pages of public records to create a database that showed which teachers have been disciplined and why. I applaud these journalists for their dedication. Stories like these are important for insuring that the practices of our society are kept in the light.

Another interesting story that required much time and effort brought up a fifty year old murder case that was still on public file. I found it interesting that this case was brought up because a reporter was looking for another story. The reporters were able to reconstruct the crime scene from reports they found. They created an interactive graphic to allow readers to navigate through the crime scene and discover important clues in the case. Making news accessible and interactive will keep journalism relevant to the current generation.
I appreciated Davis’ comments on the payoff of this kind of journalism. Even though sometimes hours and hours of research may lead to a dead end, it could lead to a change in the laws. In the teachers story, administrators were given stricter laws on what they had to disclose about disciplinary action with a teacher who was let go. This law has the potential to stop the “pass the trash” pattern of sending bad teachers to other schools. This power to effect change is what makes journalism worth the work.

This kind of investigative database reporting intrigues me. I find it to be one of the most relevant ways of finding and displaying truth. Like with the teachers case, reporters can uncover truth about a situation in a systematic, research-based way, and then communicate it in a easy-to-use manner with a database or graphic online.

It's not always sunshine with Florida's public records laws

During my time in this class I've learned how blessed we are to live a state with such open public records because of our "Government in the Sunshine". Don't get me wrong I appreciate the efforts of our governors and legislators to make sure our records and meetings stay public. I do feel blessed that we live in a state where you can request public records with ease and go to most public meetings. However, after hearing Tim Nickens, editor of editorials at the St. Petersburg Times, speak about the problems and loopholes in our "Sunshine Laws" I have second thoughts.
As Gil mentioned during the class, reporters are actually a benefit to public officials in keeping them accountable and accurate. Without journalists as "flies on the wall" to make sure officials are competent and doing what they promised our representative government will cease to represent us at all.
It concerns me to know that there are loopholes around keeping public meetings public. In the case of the governor being able to keep his meetings with his colleagues private by simply turning all their "meetings" into phone converstaions is appalling. The idea that these officials think this is beneficial to how our government runs is beyond me. The basis of our representative government is that those represented know that their elected officials are doing their job. And it is our job as reporters to make sure this happens. When officials are masking their meetings as dinner parties all over Tallahassee it seems to me that something in our government is broken.
In the case of public records, things not always sunny either. The debate over electronic media is a crucial one at this time. Most of our records and all other aspects of our lives are being converted into electronic files and formats. People's fears about privacy are blinding them to the fact that public documents, whether paper or electronic, need to be easily accessible to the public. If we start to make court documents for example private for fear that someone online will use the information for evil we will start to go down a slippery slope of making other important documents private.
I understand people's desire for privacy. It can be scary in a world of identity theft and the threat of "Big Brother" like governments. But we cannot let fear keep us from holding the republican ideals that keep our public officials from spending taxpayer money inappropiately or hiding information that is important to public interest.
Again, I still appreciate the laws we have here in Florida. But I want people to be aware that there is still a fight for our public meetings and documents. Thank goodness for institutions like the First Amendment Foundation that are still in the fight to keep our public records "in the sunshine".