LABOR Commissioner Lloyd Fields attends a party where he's accused of trying to steal a guitar in what he says is a joke gone wrong. Officers take him for an hours-long stay at a publicly funded drunk tank rather than arrest him. Now, the city's legal staff wants the public to pretend the whole incident never happened even as police brass investigates whether Fields received favorable treatment.
There's more than one problem with this scenario. But for now, let's focus on the city's refusal to release what should be public records at the detoxification center, formally known as the Public Inebriate Alternative Center.
Police Chief Bill Citty denied The Oklahoman's open records request to see the center's intake logs because Fields wasn't arrested or charged with a crime.
"The OCPD should neither confirm nor deny whether a particular person has or has not been taken to a detoxification facility for acute inebriation,” the city's legal staff wrote in an e-mail reply. "No record of taking a person to detox should be made, and absent a record none can or should be provided to the public.”
As one of our editors put it, that's a "creative reading” of open records law. Of course, there is a record of Fields' stay and it should be public.
The city pays the nonprofit OKC Metro Alliance Inc. more than $280,000 to operate the center and has designated $1.3 million in bond money for a new building. That's a lot of taxpayer money, not to mention the time officers spent transporting Fields and similar detainees to the center.
Taxpayers deserve to know who's sleeping it off at public expense. And city officials shouldn't support secrecy that amounts to flouting the spirit — if not the letter — of the open records law.
