The Eagle will no longer be publishing the police blotter. This was not an internal decision, but instead the result of judgment made outside The Eagle in consultation with neither us nor the student body. Because this was one of the most popular features of the paper, we believe that we owe our readers an explanation.
Typically, the AU Department of Public Safety sends The Eagle the police blotter each Thursday or Friday preceding our publication date. That text is then published as is, straight from the source, edited only for names, grammar and AP Style. However, the Friday before our Aug. 29 issue came and went with no customary email of the weekly crimes, disturbances and general shenanigans occurring on campus. After contacting Public Safety, The Eagle was informed that we would no longer be sent the police blotter as we had come to know it.
Instead, we would be sent a document that lists the occurrences not with a specific description, but by the general category of their nature. Gone are the detailed accounts, replaced with vague one-word entries and times: Theft — Tunnel Shops — Sept. 8 — 2 a.m.; Burglary — Sports Center-Inside — Sept. 3 — 4 p.m. The descriptions that AU has come to call the police blotter would no longer be available for public use.
We would like to have been given as detailed a response as possible to Public Safety’s reasons for restricting student access to the legal infractions occurring on campus. And if these reasons were compelling, The Eagle might have accepted this decision tranquilly and gone gently into the night. Unfortunately, Public Safety has given us no such compelling reasons.
In our meetings with Public Safety following the initial email notification, our calls for continuing the police blotter access were met with deaf ears. Officials insisted this new format continued to provide to students the information required by law. It seemed that Public Safety had made the judgment on their own that AU students did not need the additional information. Yet as far as this paper knows, no students were ever consulted in the alteration.
As far as concrete reasons for changing the format, Public Safety offered few, if any. However, officials did once voice concern that previous blotter releases were viewed as entertaining by the student body.
To be sure, the police blotter was a source of entertainment for many readers, and The Eagle published it in part with this in mind, including the recent “Best of the Spring 2011 Police Blotter” piece. Yet the loss of the police blotter amounts to losing more than a couple laughs. It’s the loss of valuable source of campus information — a source of information to which both George Washington University and Georgetown University students continue to have access in their communities.
The police blotter acted as a primary source for students to identify trends in on-campus crime and to take necessary action. A string of thefts in Letts South? You can bet that Eagle readers were locking their doors.
Moreover, the crimes listed by the police blotter frequently led to concrete and detailed stories in The Eagle. Just last spring, our stories on the vandalism in the Letts Sky Lounge were a direct result of initial reports on the police blotter. The same applies to recent reports on campus bike theft and a reduction in overall campus theft, among others.
We at The Eagle are saddened by this recent friction with Public Safety. Traditionally, they have been one of the most cooperative and responsive departments on campus, but since Former Public Safety Chief McNair left AU, that has not been the case. By pulling access to the police blotter, they are unnecessarily restricting information to which AU students are entitled.
The police blotter shed needed light on threats and disturbances that occurred throughout campus. And until Public Safety reinstates access to the police blotter, The Eagle urges its readers to join us in protest against the dying of this light.
