Hear about the 13-year-old who smashed out his sister’s teeth with a chair, leaving them dangling by her braces?How about the Lorain County juvenile corrections officer investigated on suspicion of threatening to have sex with a detention home teacher’s
2-year-old?

Or the county sheriff’s deputy who ran over a stop sign on her way to answer an emergency call?

No? That’s because The Chronicle-Telegram hasn’t written about those incidents until now. That is because the Sheriff’s Department made public only about half its incident reports from late March to early May, despite a law requiring it to promptly release such reports.

The Chronicle got the reports after documenting report numbers that were missing in the sequence of those released and filing a public records request to fill the gaps.

The Chronicle-Telegram’s public records request to the Sheriff’s Department resulted in 219 incident reports being made available that previously hadn’t been disclosed. Some of the incidents include: April 2: A sheriff’s deputy who responded to an emergency call accidentally ran over a stop sign on Oberlin-Elyria Road. The deputy’s cruiser was taken to the county garage for repairs. April 2: Deputies were called to Midview High School to investigate an overnight break-in of a concession stand. Various items were stolen and damaged.  April 11: Deputies investigated an incident at American Wilderness Campground in Grafton Township, where approximately 23 campers were vandalized or burglarized. April 12: An Elyria man told deputies he was robbed at gunpoint near a Sheffield Township apartment building. The robbers made off with stereo equipment, cash and other items.  April 17: A Wellington nurse stole a credit card number from an 82-year-old patient and gave the number to her boyfriend, who bought nearly $4,000 worth of furniture. April 24: A 16-year-old Parma girl told deputies she was sexually assaulted at a Carlisle Township address, possibly sometime in December 2006. The report offered little information.  April 24: A 13-year-old smashed out his sister’s teeth with a chair, leaving the girl’s teeth hanging by her braces.  April 24: About a week after the Virginia Tech shooting, a Clearview High School student told a teacher “that if he was involved in a school shooting that he would do a better job at killing more than 33 people.” The student was removed from the school pending a mental evaluation. April: A man used a piece of foil to repair a blown fuse in a car, causing a fire that burned the vehicle. The man escaped unharmed.

Sheriff’s officials blame the lack of prompt disclosure on an in-house communication glitch. But the law that the department is tasked to enforce doesn’t make allowances for glitches — it’s spelled out very clearly that such reports are to be made available for the public to review.

And while the law doesn’t nail down a specific time frame for releasing reports, the state has said with great certainty that “promptly” means reports should be released within 24 hours of the initial incident, said Tim Smith, a Kent State University journalism professor and a public records expert.

“More than that, and they’re jacking you around,” Smith said. “They should have the information available and you should be able to say, ‘Let me see the activity from yesterday,’ and everything they did from yesterday should be available.”

Out of sight, out of mind?
According to Ohio’s public records law, citizens have the right to request a public record — anything from city council minutes to a police incident report.

To make it easier, most law enforcement agencies in Lorain County provide copies of incident reports that officers responded to the previous day — generally by posting them in an area easily accessible to the public, such as the police department’s lobby.

“The (public records) statute says public records should be prepared and made available to the public,” Smith said. “There’s a positive duty on the police to promptly prepare records and put them in the appropriate file.” 
Department records show that over a six-week period from late March to early May, Sheriff’s deputies typed incident reports for roughly 470 incidents. Of those reports, precisely 219 — almost half — were never released to the public.

And there’s the problem of delay.

Even when reports were released, it often was weeks after the initial incident. Routine reports on incidents such as burglaries, breaking and entering, and assault took months to release, such as one deputy’s report on a December 2006 incident that wasn’t released until May 2007.

“Horse-hockey,’’ said Smith, labeling that his technical term for the way the sheriff’s staff is handling reports. “What they’re doing is concealing information in hopes that you won’t ask for it. They’re not withholding it — if you ask for it, they’ll give it to you — but they hope you won’t notice that it’s not there, and there will be no story.”

Simply by way of notoriety, some criminal incidents manage to be known regardless of whether an incident report is ever released.

Case in point: On April 17, Vermilion resident and accused home burglar Justin McFadden, 19, fled a deputy who suspected he burglarized a Carlisle Township home.

According to interviews with Sheriff’s Capt. Rich Resendez at the time — who said an incident report had yet to be completed — the deputy chased McFadden to a Grafton Road gas station, where McFadden jumped into a minivan that was being refueled at a gas pump.

Resendez said the deputy stunned McFadden with his Taser, but McFadden still managed to escape and crashed the stolen minivan into another vehicle in Westlake.

What was never mentioned was that the deputy fired a shot at McFadden’s stolen car as it fled the gas station.

Smith said it sounds to  him as if someone within the Sheriff’s Department is making a conscious decision to withhold certain kinds of files and information.

“That’s illegal,” Smith said. “The statute requires that public agencies promptly prepare public records and make them available. It says so right in the statute — it’s one of the clearer statements.”

But Sheriff’s officials say that’s not the case.

“Nobody is making a conscious effort to withhold this stuff,” said Sheriff’s Capt. Jim Drozdowski, who oversees the department’s records division. “At least not that I know of.”

The ‘glitch’
Sheriff’s officials say the problem is due to a communication breakdown among record-keepers — the office staff — and the record-makers — the deputies, sergeants and detectives.

“The problem is we don’t have everybody on the same page,” Drozdowski said. “I know this is a job we have to do, but every once in a while we have glitches.”

The department’s detectives and sergeants typically release incident reports to records clerks, who in turn provide the reports to the public — but only if the sergeants and detectives write “news media” on the actual report, Drozdowski said.

Sheriff’s sergeants and detectives say the records clerks are responsible for designating an incident report as a public record, though Drozdowski said detectives and sergeants have chided clerks in the past for releasing certain reports to the general public.

In some cases, officials can redact certain information from police incident reports — such as the name of suspects in ongoing investigations — but they’re still required to release a report that contains the basic information, Smith said.

“They can withhold certain kinds of information about certain kinds of procedures, such as the identity of suspects,” Smith said. “But with suspects who know they’re suspects, they can’t withhold that information.”

Even where there’s an ongoing investigation, Smith said officials are still required to release basic information such as the location, time, date and names of officers or deputies handling the case.

But Drozdowski said fixing the problem and educating the Sheriff’s staff is going to take an overhaul of its records-handling process, a process he’s hoping will be under way within the coming weeks.

This is not the first problem the Sheriff’s Department has had with complying with the state’s public records law. In June 2004, the department was releasing incomplete reports that failed to list the names of people who were arrested and charged with crimes — information that by law is public.

“We have to straighten this out,” Drozdowski said of the current problem. “We’re just going to enact a broad policy where we streamline this process, but there are differences of thought on how this should be done.”

Drozdowski said he may consider releasing every report to the public the minute a deputy turns it in, which might bring them much closer to complying with public records law.

“I want to take away all the guess work,” Drozdowski said. “As soon as we get our hands on these reports, we’ll just designate it (public) immediately.

“We’re a public entity, and we have to comply with this stuff,” Drozdowski said. “We can always do better, and we’re always trying to improve.”

Given that the Sheriff’s Department has been clamoring for an increase in deputies for road patrols, some think the department’s mishandling of incident reports is counterproductive as it gives the illusion that deputies are handling far fewer crimes than what’s actually taking place.

“That could have an effect, for sure,” said Dave Noll, a former deputy and a vocal advocate for the sheriff’s department. “The (county) commissioners are only seeing half the numbers. It wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to intentionally (withhold reports). At least, I can’t believe that would be the intention.”

Contact Shawn Foucher at 329-7197 or sfoucher@chroniclet.com.

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