Chief arrested in records dispute
Posted on Saturday, February 16, 2008
A judge ordered the Helena-West Helena interim police chief arrested this week on charges he violated the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act — a situation city officials are calling a simple misunderstanding.
Interim Chief Fred Fielder was arrested Tuesday after Special District Judge John Martin issued a warrant against him for not releasing Jan. 9 recordings of outgoing and incoming 911 calls to The Daily World, the city’s newspaper.
The newspaper requested the information after a family claimed a 911 dispatcher made improper comments to a boy after the child called 911, then hung up.
Mayor James Valley said Friday that the emergency dispatch office doesn’t record outgoing calls and hasn’t since 2005. He said the information the newspaper is seeking doesn’t exist. Valley said technicians are going to fix the 911 system so that outgoing calls will be recorded in the future.
“The chief won’t be convicted,” Valley said. “Because the reporter says the information exists, the judge found probable cause to have the police chief arrested, but we know the recording doesn’t exist.” Valley served the warrant against the chief, and the city posted the $ 305 bond to have him released, court papers show. The city will provide representation for Fielder, who is scheduled to be in court Feb. 22 for a plea and arraignment on the misdemeanor charge.
Randy Hogan, the newspaper’s editor, referred all questions to the reporter who filed the information request.
Michele Page, the reporter who filed the request and submitted the affidavit against Fielder, said Friday that a representative with Voice Products Inc., the company that owns the city’s 911 software, told her the outgoing calls are in fact recorded and are available for review.
Efforts to reach the company representative Friday were unsuccessful. A phone call placed for him at the company in Wichita, Kan., wasn’t returned.
Page said she filed a freedomof-information request on Jan. 10 and has received the 911 dispatch log and the radio dispatch log, which also were requested, but hasn’t been able to get the recordings of the outgoing and incoming calls.
She requested the information, she said, after a family called her to claim that a 6-year-old boy called 911 dispatch and hung up. Moments later, a dispatcher returned the call and, according to the family, made derogatory and improper comments to the boy.
The family wants the recording of the call to prove its allegations, Page said.
Arrests for Freedom of Information Act violations are unusual nationwide, according to Gregg Leslie, legal defense director for The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, an Arlington, Va.-based organization that provides legal assistance to journalists.
“We hear about something like this once a year, maybe,” Leslie said. “It is fairly rare, and a lot of states don’t have criminal penalties for FOIA violations.”
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