Free Access To Police Logs

TWICE LAST WEEK, student journalists left their newsrooms and went to court. On Monday, Boston College's newspaper filed suit against the B.C. Campus police in Middlesex County Superior Court. On Friday, four editors of Boston University's daily were arraigned in Brighton on trespassing charges after they refused to leave the B.U. police headquarters. Both publications seek the same right: access to a log of daily police activities to confirm recent reports of rapes on their campuses.

The Massachusetts Freedom of Information Act requires every police force in the Commonwealth to maintain a public journal of the arrests it makes and the incidents it investigates. The act does not differentiate between public and private police departments. Officials at B.C. and B.U. believe it should and have denied any access to their police blotters.

Crime, particularly violent crime like the rapes alleged by the two newspapers and denied by the two police departments, needs to be made visible to students, who are often unaware of its existence and prevalence. A public that is cognizant of crime can actually help prevent it through caution, but that cognizance can come only if the public finds out about crimes when they take place.

The people's right to know is guaranteed by the First Amendment and further stipulated by the Massachusetts act. Neither law denies police the right to protect the secrecy of the specifics of an investigation or the privacy of a victim; full investigation reports are not covered by the act, and only the names of individuals arrested, not suspects or victims, are required in the daily log. But the act does insure that the media, at times the only public accountant of police activities, are provided the basic facts to carry out this ledgering.

If B.C. and B.U. wish to retain the special status granted to them by the Commonwealth to maintain private police departments, their police should end their proud denials and admit that crime exists at those institutions--especially if the crime is rape. They should open daily logs to public inspection and release incident reports in an effort to increase awareness and to adhere to the same standards they are empowered to enforce.