Critics fear public-records proposal could make Ohio police records off limits

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that a proposed Ohio state budget bill includes language that could limit the public’s access to law enforcement records due to a range of new exemptions for public records requests. 

Critics fear the changes if approved into law would result in most police records being kept off-limits indefinitely and that would make the work of free individuals wrongly convicted of a crime more difficult.

UC Law Professor Mark Godsey said the wording of the proposed exemptions is so broad that it would result in the police department indefinitely blocking release of most records, according to the Plain Dealer. 

Godsey is director of the Ohio Innocence Project at the University of Cincinnati.

OIP was founded in 2003 and is continuing its initial purpose: working to free every person in Ohio who has been convicted of a crime they didn’t commit.

“They would basically stop anybody from getting public records, including media and stop us from getting police files and things like that even after the cases are over,” said Godsey.

Read the entire story in The Plain Dealer online.