Former CMPD Police Chief Kerr Putney speaks to the media after the 2016 protests in Charlotte. Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images
At a time of national cries for transparency, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department is rolling out plans to reduce questions and interactions with local media.
Why is this important: The 2016 police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte sparked a community-wide call for accountability from law enforcement here. The 2020 killing of George Floyd and subsequent protests accelerated these claims nationwide.
Driving the news: Chief Johnny Jennings tells Axios that the department is focused on meeting requests for public records, which they are legally required to do. Jennings told Axios it’s a way to improve efficiency and he doesn’t think it limits media access.
- “I know of other agencies across the country that have basically shut down media outlets,” Jennings said. “And they don’t give interviews. They don’t give press conferences. They release their own stuff, and the media can take advantage of that. And that’s one thing that I was adamant we’re not going to do.
Details: Other CMPD changes include:
- The CMPD will grant interview requests on a case-by-case basis. Jennings says that has always been departmental policy.
- Press conferences will be less frequent (CMPD initially set up scheduled weekly press briefings), and “as needed,” Jennings told the WFAE on Wednesday.
- The CMPD has also reorganized its public affairs office with a civilian team, dismissing sworn officers who worked in communications to patrol, to alleviate the shortage of officers it faces. The department has over 300 vacant officer positions.
Yes, but: Robert Dawkins, political director of Action NC which works on police accountability and safety, expressed concern about the new media protocol. He says it’s hard enough to get information like body camera footage as a citizen, and news reports are the main way his group knows if something needs to be investigated.
- “Without it, it limits transparency specifically for groups looking to see how political decisions are made and to assess how political decisions are working,” he says.
State of play: The number of media requests has become demanding on the department, Jennings tells Axios. He estimates that requests for information are “more than 140, 150 times a day”.
- “Our public information office has almost turned into a call center,” he says. “There’s just no way we can sustain this. We don’t have the manpower to just keep answering calls and emails.
- He also said he wanted the CMPD to be able to “spread our narrative” as some reports cast the department in the wrong light.
Lieutenant Stephen Fischbach, who is leaving the public affairs office for a promotion, told Axios in a recent phone call that media partners are looking for public records out of sheer curiosity, bogging down the system.
- To note : No one needs to provide a reason to request public records under the law.
Meanwhileover the past several days, the CMPD has dealt with the drive-by shooting of a 4-year-old boy in southeast Charlotte, investigated a homicide in southwest Charlotte and arrested a suspect in 17 years old in connection with a homicide investigation.
What they say : City Councilman Braxton Winston says he wants the city to increase its communication. He said the weekly press conferences were an intentional change to be more transparent and fears they will disappear.
“We are a growing city. Part of the growing pains have to do with the need for increased communications,” he says.
Between the lines: The CMPD says it is focused on processing requests for records, but its current records system is lagging.
- Axios has several pending records requests, including one for the data behind the CMPD’s mid-year crime statistics, which the department presented to the public in July. We have not yet received a response.
And after: The hope is that the redesign will improve the speed of processing requests, Fischbach told Axios.
By the numbers: The CMPD operates on a budget of over $300 million, which is the largest slice of the city’s budget at 40%.
The bottom line: We cannot force the police to be transparent. Law enforcement agencies are only subject to public records laws, and even then there is no definitive timeline for providing this information.
Anytime information travels slower than faster is cause for concern, says Brooks Fuller, director of the NC Open Government Coalition.
- “We rely on the good faith of elected and appointed leaders to keep the public informed, and the primary way they do that is through press conferences with news outlets,” Fuller said. “We constantly hope that they will live up to their end of the bargain as public servants.”
The story behind the story
In mid-August, Alexandria Sands of Axios asked CMPD for the best phone number to reach the communications team.
- Turns out there aren’t any more. Instead, journalists are encouraged to communicate via a general email address.
Axios was invited to a meeting Tuesday at police headquarters to learn more about changes to media policy. After we sat down and started recording, the CMPD public affairs team asked that the conversation be kept confidential. We asked for this to be recorded, but the CMPD public affairs office told us that we will receive a statement by email.
- We never received the statement from the public affairs team. We were told that they were still weeding out the “verbiage with the legal”.
Yes, but: On Wednesday afternoon, Chief Jennings received a call from Danielle Chemtob of Axios and confirmed some of the confidential details of Tuesday’s meeting. He explained what happened with the policy change and gave some of the comments and context above.
- Shortly after, Amanda Aycock and Sandy Vastola from the public affairs office called Danielle and told her not to call the chief directly anymore and to go through their office.
