Good Day "Sunshine"

I’m not the type to brag a lot, but this week Arbutus Patch broke two stories that highlight "Sunshine Week"-- a national effort organized by the American Society of News Editors that demonstrated the importance of accountability and public access to records. It also serves to illustrate what daily life is like for me and other Patch editors.

On Wednesday, Arbutus Patch was first to .

On Friday, Arbutus Patch at Baltimore County Police Department’s Precinct 1, on Walker and Wilkens avenues.

The MARC station story had been top of my list since Arbutus Patch launched in November. I commuted from the Halethorpe station for four and a half years, so I knew firsthand about parking, the trudge over the bridge, the accommodations and the traffic. A new station was supposed to be finished by 2010, and then 2011. The status of the project was one of the first questions submitted to Arbutus Patch when we went live.

Once I had an official reason to ask, the Maryland Transit Administration was one of the first agencies I contacted. Last year I was told there was no news to report, no progress, and no artistic rendering of a proposed new station.

I checked with MTA periodically since then, even as recently as last month, when I asked specifically about whether the Halethorpe station was in the pipeline at all, and whether there are any images of the new station.

I was told, in no uncertain terms, that there were no plans for the Halethorpe station to proceed at that time, and there wouldn’t be any drawings or pictures until the project had been approved.

Last Tuesday evening, toward the end of a usual long day, I saw on Facebook that Pete Kriscumas, legislative aide to 1st District county councilman Tom Quirk, checked in at the Halethorpe Improvement Association meeting.

Well heck. If Kriscumas has the energy to be working at that hour, I thought, I should too. Dog tired and still finishing our typically late dinner, I put on my hoodie and press pass and headed out the door once again into the breech.

I’m glad I did. That HIA meeting produced at least four stories for me, including the news from Del. James Malone—who also attended—that a ground breaking for construction of the new MARC station was scheduled for April 4.

I straightened in my chair as Malone spoke. The project had been quietly approved by lawmakers very recently, he said. My ears pricked up. It’s going to be beautiful, Malone added. It’ll look like Camden Yards.

I followed Malone out of the room after he left the meeting and told him about the runaround MTA had been giving me about images of the proposed station. Malone said that he had a picture in his office around the corner in Arbutus, but couldn’t get to it right then. He told me to give him a call the next day and he’d be glad to help me out.

Thanks, but I know who to call. Since I was deep into in my Sunshine Week project, I’d been brushing up on Maryland’s open record laws. I was not in a mood to mess around. Isn’t one of the perks of this job that I get to see my new train station before everybody else? There’s no need to be a jerk about it, but I don’t need to act as though I’m relying on the kindness of strangers either.

Wednesday morning, I called MTA’s media relations office and said that I know an image of the new Halethorpe station exists. I’m working on a story and want the image, please. Now.

And lo and behold, miracle of miracles, after months of denials and stonewalling, in my email in-box appeared not but , as well as .

The new Halethorpe station is a big deal, and not just for the Arbutus area or the 2,000 commuters who use the station daily. The fact that the state is spending $21 million on a major public transportation project in this environment underscores the station’s importance. Construction will create inconveniences for the next two years. When completed, the station will finally be accessible for the disabled and improve commuting time throughout the whole system. Unless I’m mistaken, it will also be the most costly facility in Arbutus.

Arbutus Patch was first to publish an image of the new station, and to date has been the only publication that covered news that the project was finally coming to fruition. No press release has been issued about it. You have yet to read about it in the Baltimore Sun or Arbutus Times.

And I got to see the new station before you.

The story about police records grew out of the discrepancy I observed between the weekly crime summary Precinct 1 had been providing Patch and what I knew to be happening in my neighborhood.

My mission as editor of Arbutus Patch is to be a fair broker of information, and to provide as complete and accurate coverage of events in the area as possible. People have a natural interest—and a right—to know about nearby burglaries, robberies and assaults. People want to know why a street was blocked off, why traffic was snarled, and whether anybody was hurt.

For a long time, Precinct 1 printed out a report of “significant events” that was released Monday mornings to the Arbutus and Catonsville Times, and since last November to Arbutus and Catonsville Patch.

There were two problems with this. For one, being a 24/7 news website, receiving information once a week just doesn’t work. Information must be more current and more frequent. Secondly, there were many incidents, crimes and arrests that didn’t show up on the weekly summary and were falling through the cracks of news coverage. Attempts to elicit more information had been unsuccessful.

One of the challenges was to do this story fairly and accurately without appearing overly antagonistic or burning bridges in the process. After all, I need to continue working with these people on an ongoing basis.

But the twist is that the people I’m covering are also my neighbors.

One of the things that makes Patch different is that the editors all live in or near the communities they cover. Unlike a television or newspaper reporter who covers a wide region—and at the end of the day can leave it behind as they go to their home in Howard or Anne Arundel county—all the stories Patch editors do are in their backyards.

I know these people because I deal with them almost daily. I interact with the police at community meetings, at the police station, at incident scenes and also at my grocery store and on my streets. The officers and command of Precinct 1 are decent people-- people with integrity, and not acting out of malice.

I understand the need to maintain the security within a police station; an over-worked desk officer with more important things to do than deal with some guy walking in off the street asking to look at the log book; and an electronic reporting system that isn’t optimized for public access.

However, none of that pardons telling a reporter— or any citizen—that records deemed publicly accessible by state law and police department policy don’t exist or can’t be viewed.

In practical terms, it turned out that the weekly report Precinct 1 had been releasing to the media isn’t intended as a comprehensive summary of activity in the area, but is a selection of certain crimes prepared internally for other purposes. The police thought they were giving us what we needed.

I came away from our hour-long meeting at Precinct 1 with the realization that of course Capt. Spiroff, commander of Precinct 1, cares about what happens in this area. He lives just down the street from me.  My neighborhood is his neighborhood too. The police and the media both serve the public. While our goals are different, we both want what’s best for our community.

It’s a new day in greater Arbutus. We’re rebooting our police coverage and starting from square one again. This coming week I’ll be introducing myself to the police again, re-establishing relationships, and finding out how I can cover them as completely, truthfully and accurately as possible.

My open records audit will change how information is released from Precinct 1, and from the police department throughout Baltimore County, and will change what readers are able to learn about their community from now on.

And that’s not bad for a week’s work.