Cop Secret

The 30-year-old Sunshine Law also doesn't say that the government can charge for reviewing files that aren't removed from public offices. Section 109.180 of the Missouri Revised Statutes, passed by the Legislature in 1961, is even more explicit, stating that any citizen of Missouri has the right to inspect public records, and woe unto any public employee who denies access: "Any official who violates the provisions of this section shall be subject to removal or impeachment and in addition shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be punished by a fine not exceeding one hundred dollars, or by confinement in the county jail not exceeding ninety days, or by both the fine and the confinement."

In a February 27 letter to the paper, Shaw maintained that the statute requiring that citizens be allowed to inspect records doesn't apply to the Riverfront Times, though she didn't explain her reasoning.

Of course, it's tough to ask the police to arrest themselves. Indeed, even talking to department officials about anything is difficult. The department's media-relations division has stopped speaking to the RFT, referring all inquiries about public records to Shaw in the legal division. Shaw also refuses to speak directly to the newspaper. When the paper asked for an interview, the woman who answered the phone said the department has a new policy: All interactions between the media and the department's legal division must be in writing.

Life is apparently much easier for the city's daily newspaper. "With a reporter assigned to the St. Louis Police Department every day, we regularly obtain access to records on request at no charge," says Richard Weil, an assistant managing editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "If it's something for which the department chooses to require a formally worded freedom-of-information request, we go through that process. In recent experience, we have paid as little as nothing or as much as $125 to compensate for copying costs."