Judge’s Impromptu Phone Lectures Helped Reporter Get Crime Facts
Cops are often reluctant to provide details of an arrest, worried that details revealed in the press will ruin a case or imperil the tough-on-crime records of their precincts.
But one Maryland judge was always willing to set them straight. Chief Judge Robert Sweeney, who died 10 years ago, would lecture any recalcitrant police officers or department spokespeople via the phone, recalls former Baltimore Sun reporter David Simon in a Washington Post column.
Simon, who was a crime reporter, would dial Sweeney when he needed his help. “And then I would stand, secretly delighted, as yet another police officer learned not only the fundamentals of Maryland’s public information law, but the fact that as custodian of public records, he needed to kick out the face sheet of any incident report and open his arrest log to immediate inspection,” Simon recalled.
The article decries a new police policy in Baltimore that allows case-by-case decisions whether to release the names of officers who shoot or even kill civilians. Simon says he tried to demand a recent report on a police shooting, to no avail. He even tried calling Sweeney’s replacement, but the new chief judge “no longer handles such business,” according to the article.
Simon created the HBO television show The Wire based in part on his experiences at the Baltimore Sun, according to the Focal Point blog, which notes the Post article.
Corrected at 1:45 p.m. to reflect that the no-names policy is in Baltimore and at 5 p.m. to reflect that Simon created the HBO series The Wire.
