S.C. newspaper sues police for access to 911 tapes

By The Associated Press

07.10.01

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CHARLESTON, S.C. — The (Charleston) Post and Courier has sued the North Charleston Police Department after the agency denied the paper's request for 911 and dispatch tapes in a police shooting.

The lawsuit was filed yesterday.

Prosecutor Ralph Hoisington last month said he would not to file criminal charges against two white police officers accused of shooting a black man to death.

After Hoisington's decision, The Post and Courier requested a copy of the 911 and dispatch tapes under the state's Freedom of Information Act.

The city denied the request for the tapes, saying that Hoisington considered them evidence in the pending trial of four other men charged with lynching in connection with the case.

"Because I believe it is essential for law enforcement agencies to be consistent with the prosecuting authorities, the city takes the position that the tapes are exempt from production under the FOIA," North Charleston City Attorney Brady Hair wrote in a letter denying the newspaper's request.

Edward Snowden, 35, was killed in October by two North Charleston police officers responding to a fight in the parking lot of a video store.

The officers were called after four white men allegedly attacked Snowden, who was black. Snowden was carrying a gun when police arrived. He was shot seconds later. Four men have been charged with second-degree lynching — the charge for mob violence — in connection with the case.

The FOIA allows law enforcement agencies to withhold some records under four specific exemptions, if releasing them will harm the agency, according to the "Public Official's Guide to Compliance with South Carolina's Freedom of Information Act" published by the attorney general's office.

The newspaper's lawsuit says the tape recordings are public records and the city's denial did not say how releasing them would harm the police department, a requirement under the FOIA exemptions.

The tapes can be obtained through discovery by the defendants in the lynching cases, "so it is difficult to understand how disclosure of the tape recording will cause harm" to the North Charleston Police Department, the suit said.

There also was no prospective law enforcement action involving the tapes since officers did not face prosecution on any criminal charges and the four men have been indicted, the lawsuit said.

"It is important to this community that the public be as fully informed about those events as possible," said Barbara Williams, the newspaper's executive editor. "The Post and Courier does not believe there is any valid reason to keep the information on these tapes, which we believe strongly to be public records, away from the public."

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