Why can't we all just get a log

Reporter reveals difficulty in obtaining public information

By Emily Nash, On-Line Forty-Niner

Tuesday, October 6, 1998

It seems like the best way to control information at the University Police Department at Cal State Long Beach is to claim technical illiteracy.

I was assigned to cover the campus police beat at the beginning of the semester. I spent the first three weeks of school calling the office for information only to be told it was unavailable because the office had a new computer system and only one person knew how to work the printer.

That one person is Communications Supervisor Greg Pascal, who was hardly ever in the office and did not return any of my phone calls when I requested the media logs (a daily printout of every reported campus crime).

The controversy began to stew Sept. 16 when Jay Seidel, the editor in chief of the Daily Forty-Niner, was concerned that I was not getting enough stories. He accompanied me to the campus police station only to hear what I was being told every week.

"Greg isn't here and he's the only one who knows how to operate the printer," Police Dispatcher Shari Shrewsbury said.

It was then I realized writing a story about the inoperable printer was probably more interesting than anything from the media logs.

I phoned Lt. Judith King and asked her what was wrong with the printer. She avoided my question and said she would try and get the secretary to work it. In what seemed like a miracle from God, on Sept. 16, the staff operated the printer outside the presence of Pascal and gave me the media logs for the previous week.

On Sept. 18, I picked up the media logs for the next week. After getting home I realized it had no information for Tuesday. I called Shrewsbury and asked her to fax it to me. She said the fax machine was not working. I asked her to read me the information over the phone, but she said she would call back. She never did.

Alison Young, the city editor of the Daily Forty-Niner, called the campus police on Sept. 21 and said she was going to print a story saying the media logs were incompletely furnished to us. Even though Pascal had the day off, the staff, hearing this, somehow magically made the printer operate again.

Frustrated, I reported the incidents to the secretary of Michael Lordanich, who is the coordinator for all the University Police Departments in the Cal State University system, but he did not call me back to discuss my concerns.

He must have gotten in touch with King, however, because she called me back to say she was not aware there was a problem, she had never once met me or spoken to me and it was not fair for me to go over her head.

Although, I had in fact spoken to her on Sept. 16, a week before I reported the incident to Lordanich, but I must not have made a strong impression on her.

If I have never once spoke to King I also must have fabricated the information in my Sept. 3 article, "Rape Victim Warns Campus," in which I used King's name to attribute information she gave me on the topic.

All in all, King found a way to curtail, giving Forty-Niner reporters information. She implemented a policy Sept. 23 whereby the campus police can only print one copy of the media log, which cannot leave the police department.

The log, which I am now expected to copy down by hand, is an average of four pages each week. Not to mention that the log is abbreviated in a police jargon, difficult for anyone to understand.

"What I did was check with other police departments to see what their procedure is for giving out information," King said. "Other departments only make one media log."

I do not think anyone in the campus community would be upset to find out the campus police, a public agency, is using tax dollars to photocopy four pages a week, in an act that could help warn other students of the crimes that occur on campus.

According to the California Public Records Act, when a specific document is requested from a public agency, it "shall make the records promptly available to any person, upon payment of fees covering direct costs of duplication."

On Sept. 28, as I was standing in the hallway of the campus police department, copying the media logs for my weekly column, I noticed an empty room nearby with chairs in it. I asked Police Dispatcher Dick Wolfe if I could sit down while writing.

"No, Lt. King says you have to stand right here," Wolfe said. "If you want to sit you'll have to talk to King about it."

However, King was in a meeting and was unable to grant me permission to sit anywhere.

It was not until I spent four days playing phone tag with her that I was able to get permission to sit someplace for my next visit to the campus police.