Times Leader, Oct. 6

Times Leader sues Wilkes-Barre, police chief seeking crime stats
Chief Gerry Dessoye denied Times Leader’s two written requests for geographical breakdown.

By KRIS WERNOWSKY

The Times Leader filed a civil suit against the city and its police chief Oct. 5, demanding the release of crime statistics the chief refused to provide to the paper.

The suit filed in the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas comes after Chief Gerry Dessoye’s denial of two written requests for a geographical breakdown of crime statistics from previous years made by Times Leader Managing Editor Dave Iseman.

The chief also refused Iseman’s request to release the department’s policy for obtaining records.

The paper, a division of Cypress Media, and Iseman say both refusals are in violation of the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law, which regulates access to public records in state and municipal agencies. The paper is seeking the release of information plus any court fees related to the case.

“Everything that we see indicates that our readers want as much as we can give them about crime in the city,” said Times Leader Executive Vice President and Editor Matt Golas.

Dessoye says revealing information about crime by specific sections of the city would reveal too much information about how officers patrol and would jeopardize their safety. The chief says he will create a better system that would allow for criminal statistic breakdowns without giving away his departmental beats, but still believes he has no obligation to report information to the media and public in that manner.

Since the Times Leader began pressuring the police department for more access to records, Dessoye has increased the output of the department’s press releases, which are available to the public in the police station lobby. The press releases offer a bare-bones account of criminal incidents.

Capt. Tom Unvarsky also compiles a twice-a-year statistical report that lists crimes and the area in the city where the crime took place, among other statistics. The chief refused the paper’s request for stats from 2002, 2003 and 2004 even though the department released the same information in the past.

“You should not be able to get percentage studies, what you’re asking for. We’re not set up to do that at anyone’s whim,” Dessoye said. “At least not without paying the fee to have it researched and done properly. There has to be a fee to shut down the records department to find information for you.”

The department charges $10 per incident report. In August the paper paid $140 to obtain a handful of violent-crime reports after an 87-year-old woman was stabbed to death in her South Main Street apartment. Dessoye said the department charges because many of the detailed incident reports are written by hand and that it takes time and manpower to research reports.