MONTGOMERY — Brenda Surrett called the Mobile Press-Register last summer after her nephew died in a Prichard car crash, shocked that the newspaper's story on the wreck didn't identify him and that no reporter had contacted his family.
The newspaper would have identified the nephew, Daniel Miller, in the story — if only it had been able to find his name.
But a policy change by the Alabama Criminal Justice Information Center Commission removed victims' names from the front of police incident reports, making that and other identifying information confidential.
While some agencies have still been cooperative about providing the information, which the policy change allows them to do if desired, others have used the new rules to keep even the most basic details from the public even though that goes against the intent of the change.
"I think it's regrettable that as a matter of policy the state has taken a position that information about important events has to be hidden from the media and therefore the public," Gilbert Johnston, a Birmingham attorney who specializes in media law, said recently.
While the policy adopted in 2006 gives law enforcement officials the discretion of releasing names, Prichard police took the position that names should always be withheld. Surrett's call was the first time the Press-Register learned the wreck victim's name.
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