Concord PD Restricting Arrest Information?

April 30, 2012 by Free Concord
Filed under: Data, Free Concord, Free Press, New Hampshire, News, Police, Politics

Japanese Kempeitai officer, secret police

The Concord Monitor’s Felice Belman writes on her blog from the newspaper’s website that the Concord police have stopped including narratives of the events surrounding an arrest in releases to the press. Recently, they began only including the name and charges against an individual who has been seized by their organization. This is to have stemmed from complaints filed by an attorney on behalf of city councilor Fred Keach, who was arrested for attempting to drive while intoxicated in October 2010. Keach was unhappy with the amount of detail provided by the police in the account of the arrest as published in the Monitor.

The article also overviews that a statutory change pending in the NH legislature will specify the amount of information to be released by police following an arrest. It is hard to imagine anyone would support a more secretive local police force that didn’t work for the police or prosecutor’s office. In case you may be curious as to what a typical arrest narrative given to a defendant would look like, here’s a scan of the report I received with my discovery packet from the Chalking 8 trial.

http://www.facebook.com/cchayniepublic Craig Haynie

If the police are no longer giving the narrative as to why they made the arrest, then that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The narrative is a one-sided view of an event. If the papers are simply reporting the police narrative and not trying to get the other side of the story, then it serves no purpose but to editorialize the fact.
- Free Concord
  
  As one sided and sometimes false as the initial narratives can be, they are very important because now the police can wait to come up with their version of events much further in the future than had been the case. This also makes inside information on arrests that much more valuable.
  
  Some information is always preferable to no information. Demonstrably false information they can be held accountable for.
- davidinkeene
  
  I agree,A statement is better than no statement because they can be held to it and inconsistencies can be pointed out… Sort of like “anything you say can be held against you.” So imo for THEM to ” remain silent” isn’t good.
- Despotic_Keene
  
  Newspaper stories are absolutely irrelevant to testimony at trial, unless the writer is testifying or it’s a defamation case.
  
  More importantly, a mere arrest does not equate to guilt. However, the tendency is to assume that a person who is arrested is guilty, and to treat them as if they’d already been convicted. In some cases, this can have ramifications for a person’s employment, personal relationships, and reputation in the community for long after the case is dismissed. I support anything that lessens the negative impacts of an arrest, absent some aggravating factor.
  
  Note: FKers who videotape themselves committing a crime and being arrested do not fall into the assumption category. That’s an admission of guilt and people can judge accordingly.
- davidinkeene
  
  The court of public opinion effects trials; newspapers effect the court of public opinion.
Molari Molari

It is simple. From their actions on this, one can only come to the conclusion that Concord police have something hide and seriously believe citizens have no right to know whats going on with “their” supposed PD.

They don’t really care if anyone is suspicious on what they are hiding.

Now why is that? Because they are not accountable and like it that way.

If you were the police chief and trying to cover up misconducts from inside the dept, do you really want people to know whats going on?

Police believe transparency and accountability is just very annoying tools to lessen their tight control over citizens and occupation of the town they are based in.

The only reason for not giving out information and details of the arrests is that Concord police has something to hide.

Now if they had nothing to hide…