ISSUE: Sunshine Week

OUR VIEW: Public access to records essential in addressing Highway Patrol issues

You've got to know about a problem to solve it.

In America, citizens can press their government for solutions. It falls to the press to watch government, uncover problems, inform the people and report on the voices of reform.

Integral to the role of media are the very laws that leaders have passed to ensure public access to government. Those laws are in the spotlight this Sunshine Week, The point of the national observance is to draw attention to the principle of openness and the laws that ensure it.

The unfolding controversy surrounding the S.C. Highway Patrol illustrates the importance of people in the know. The leaders of the state Department of Public Safety and the Patrol have announced their impending resignations in the face of public disclosure of their actions against a trooper who used a racial slur during a traffic stop.

As much as the two stand by their discipline in the one case, African-American lawmakers continue to insist the incident is not isolated. They contend there is a pattern of discrimination and profiling when it comes to minorities and traffic stops. One lawmaker has told a story of being himself stopped and lied to by a trooper about why.

How can the facts be determined? Journalists take leaders to task through interviews, but it is access to public records that often is key to getting to the bottom of such stories.

Incident reports and video records of traffic stops are public information available to anyone under South Carolina law. Since the resignation announcements by the two law enforcement leaders, reporters have obtained records that document what happened in the initially reported traffic stop -- and now in at least one other.

As reported this past week, an African-American woman recounted the harrowing experience of being handcuffed to a trooper's bumper while on the roadside in an incident that raises more questions about trooper behavior. Again, police reports and video were crucial in documenting the traffic stop.

Bringing such incidents to light serves to protect citizens as well as law enforcement. Records will show troopers performing professionally within the bounds of regulations on more occasions than not. But when they don't, it is important to find out.

Public confidence, particularly among minorities, is shaken by evidence of police behavior that smacks of discriminatory attitudes. Putting the problems before the public through documentation can lead to changes that improve the situation. The scope of the problem can be defined, determining whether the issue is different methods of screening would-be troopers, training or patrol leadership.

It is up to state leaders to take action to ensure that troopers -- vital to the safety on roadways -- are not wrongly held up to ridicule as a group where the actions of a few have tarnished the image of all -- or to determine whether problems are systemic.

Using access to public records, the press and the people must hold those same leaders accountable in addressing such matters -- during Sunshine Week and every week.

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