Marsy's law changing crime disclosures

On Friday, Jacksonville police stopped saying where some crimes occurred and who the alleged victims were, a drastic change in records policy triggered by Marsy's Law, a sweeping amendment to the state Constitution that passed last fall.

Law enforcement in other parts of the country with similar laws say that a restriction on identifying victims makes it harder for police to solve crimes. This also means Jacksonville residents will have a harder time finding out what crimes are occurring in their neighborhoods.

Police will no longer identify a crime's location if it happens at a victim's address, and the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office crime map shows no new local crimes since Friday.

While Florida has long had records laws that are more transparent than other states, that changed when voters overwhelmingly approved Amendment Six, also known as Marsy's Law, last fall. That amendment says victims have the "right to prevent the disclosure of information or records that could be used to locate or harass the victim or the victim’s family, or which could disclose confidential or privileged information of the victim."

Across the state, police agencies are interpreting the new law in wildly disparate ways. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office is retroactively redacting previous reports, while others, like the Orlando Police Department, allow victims to request confidentiality.

Even within the same county, different agencies can have different interpretations. In Leon County, if the Sheriff's Office responds to a crime, it will only withhold information about a victim upon request, while if the Tallahassee Police Department responds, they will always withhold information, according to Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation.

Despite all this confusion, the Office of Attorney General has gotten no requests for opinions interpreting the law, spokeswoman Kylie Mason said.

It's unclear how this change in policy will affect Jacksonville's relationship with Cure Violence, an anti-violence strategy that Sheriff Mike Williams, Mayor Lenny Curry and State Attorney Melissa Nelson have promoted. That initiative relies on identifying the victims of violence and preventing retaliation. Representatives with Cure Violence didn't respond to a request for comment.

Until Friday, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office had continued as it had before the amendment passed. Then Democratic Sen. Lauren Book said famous attorney Barry Richard of Bush v. Gore fame gave her a legal opinion that said agencies must redact information.

Last fall, when asked about how a version of Marsy's Law had been implemented in South Dakota where police complained that they were having a harder time investigating crimes since they couldn't release information about where the crimes occurred, Book told the Times-Union that hypothetical was an "unfounded scare tactic." Book didn't respond to requests for comment Monday.

Jennifer Fennell, a spokeswoman for the Marsy's Law for Florida campaign, said that "Our position is this: The Florida Constitution now provides victims with the right to prevent the automatic, public release of any personally identifiable information that could be used to locate or harass a victim, which would include their name and home address. It was not intended to prevent the disclosure of the location where a crime occurred when such a release could not lead to revealing the identity of the victim(s)."

Marsy's Law is the pet project of a California billionaire, Henry Nicholas, who has been supporting amendments to state constitutions across the country with a goal of eventually getting an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In Florida, it was most prominently supported by Book and Miami State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle.

After a version of Marsy's Law passed in South Dakota, police and prosecutors complained that it harmed their ability to investigate crimes.

"It blocked law enforcement from being able to release important information to help us solve crime," said Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead. "Our biggest success comes from the eyes and ears of the public. Being able after a crime occurs to put out the name of a business and say, 'A robbery occurred at Billy's Pizza.' If we're able to say that, when we put that out through the media, the public would be able to go and say, 'I saw that black Monte Carlo that pulled out of Billy's Pizza, we should put that in.' Now when Marsy's Law was passed and interpreted by the state for the counties, we were told we couldn't put that out any more.

After such an uproar from law enforcement, the state amended its constitution again to allow police to make those disclosures.

But Jacksonville Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Officer Melissa Bujeda said already the police here "do not usually use victim ID’s when asking for information on general crime. Many times photos of suspects released are sent out with no victim or location identification with a brief description as to not comprise [sic] an active criminal investigation. We generate tips on those cases no different than when more information is given."

But multiple recent Facebook posts from the Sheriff's Office did name businesses and business addresses where robberies occurred, something that will no longer be allowed.

One tool that helped identify where crime trends were occurring was the Sheriff's Office's own map of reported crimes.

Jeanne Denton-Scheck, president of the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors, said that some people really want to know if crime is occurring in a neighborhood before deciding to move into that area. Usually, she said, she refers them to the crime mapping tool.

Bujeda didn't specifically say the crime mapping tool will no longer be updated, but when asked, she said "every aspect relating to information disseminated publicly is being reviewed for compliance with the Marsy’s Law amendment that the citizens of Florida voted on."

Gainesville State Attorney Bill Cervone, one of the main law enforcement officers in Florida who opposed Marsy's Law last year, said it's usually more helpful to be able to give the public information about where a crime occurred in order to solve those crimes. "We've overcomplicated everything," he said. "I told you this was a Pandora's box we would spend years getting our way out of," referring to a conversation with the Times-Union before voters approved the amendment.

Last fall, Paul Cassell, a University of Utah law professor who advised the Marsy's Law campaign, told the Times-Union that fears about Marsy's Law were misplaced and that Florida wouldn't experience the same issues that South Dakota did.

On Monday, he stood by his previous statements, saying that "I have consistently said that any reaction by police agencies not to provide information that is needed to solve crimes would be an over-reaction."

But Jacksonville police said until "legislation provides uniformity on how this is to be handled," it will be redacting information about where crimes occur if they occur at victims' addresses. Florida law makes no distinction between victims who are people and victims who are corporations.

Petersen said she wants the Legislature to clarify the amendment's impact so that law enforcement agencies can again release information. If that doesn't work, then she'd like to see future constitutional amendments that make those changes.

Reporter Ben Conarck contributed to this report.

Andrew Pantazi: (904) 359-4310