COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Under current state law, more than 800
privately employed Ohio police officers who carry guns, use deadly
force, and search, detain, and arrest people are allowed to keep their
records secret, even from crime victims.
The private police
officers, who work for 39 employers made up of mostly private
universities and hospitals, are — like their employers — exempt from the
public-records laws that public-sector police agencies must follow.
Critics,
including Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, say it’s time to demand
the same accountability and transparency from private police officers.
"The
public policy is clear, that the state is giving them the same power as
(public) police departments. For all other purposes, we should be
treating them the same insofar as openness and giving the public
information," DeWine said.
DeWine told The Columbus Dispatch
(http://bit.ly/KuBkLX) that he will ask state legislators to change Ohio
law to make private police forces subject to public-records laws.
"It’s
hard to envision the legislature would intend private police to make an
arrest and that they should be treated differently than a police
officer for the city of Columbus," he said.
Records with the Ohio
Peace Officer Training Academy show that there are 814 state-trained and
certified officers on the job with 17 hospitals and health-care
systems, 16 private universities, three railroads, an arboretum and a
bank. They’re allowed to make a felony arrest anywhere, anytime.
Of
public-records requests filed with all 16 private university police
departments and three Columbus-area hospital systems by the Dispatch,
just one — the Licking Memorial Hospital — provided copies of reports on
arrests made by their officers in 2013.
Fourteen of them largely
said they are private and have no duty to turn the records over, while
one agency didn’t have any arrests.
"There is no accountability,"
said Fred Gittes, a Columbus lawyer who has handled several cases
involving police and public records. "They have the greatest power that
society can invest in people — the power to use deadly force and make
arrests."
The inability to access records from private police
recently gained visibility as journalism students at Otterbein
University struggled to report on a former theater professor criminally
charged with putting his hands down the pants of a female student.
The Dispatch also was unable to obtain records from campus police, which reported filing 60 cases in
courts last year.
"Because
Otterbein University is not a ‘public office’ for purposes (of state
law) the documents you seek are not ‘public records’ and Otterbein will
not provide them," wrote John W. Herbert, a Worthington lawyer who
represents Otterbein.
Otterbein spokeswoman Jennifer Pearce said
campus police "focus on the safety and privacy rights of students" and
are not an arm of city police.
___
Information from: The Columbus Dispatch, http://www.dispatch.com
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.