The Bismarck Tribune
The reason for public access to recordings of 911 calls isn’t to exploit the terror of callers who are witnesses to accidents, crimes or other emergency situations. It isn’t so someone can invade the personal lives of others and get their jollies off that person’s crisis. It isn’t for some perverse or sensational entertainment.
Rather, the public has a right, a powerful need, to know what happens in a democratic society.
There are always responsibilities and consequences associated with the rights codified in the U.S. Constitution. It’s not always convenient to be democratic. We all know there are abuses and people who expoit those freedoms. But do we give up those freedoms?
The 911 calls to emergency agencies are an important part of community. They are not just about callers or the victims. They are also about 911 operators and the following responses by police, firefighters and other emergency personnel. They are a part of the narrative of a story within the community, and given the nature of 911 calls, often an important story. They are about accountability.
The trend has become to put more and more of what government does behind a wall of secrecy. For who knows better what’s good for you than government?
We’re talking economic development conversations, public health issues, law enforcement efforts and, now, 911 calls. The wall of secrecy separating people from government and its actions grows higher and wider with each legislative session. Lawmakers tuck more and more of what they and government officials do behind closed doors and into locked files.
Already, public access information shielded by other laws is edited before 911 calls are released. And now the Legislature wants to restrict access unless the caller gives permission for release.
Government has no business deciding what the public should or should not hear about its own community. The Legislature should back off this effort to further erode what was at one time a model “open meetings, open records” law - one that has been, session by session, tarnished by those who believe they know better than the state’s citizens.
People have a right to their privacy. We are, after all, a nation predicated on individual freedom. And one part of that freedom is from the overreaching of government.
That’s the rub here, between individual freedom and the hand of government - we side with individual freedom and, thereby, the public right to know. We side with public responsibility.
Copyright 2011 The Bismarck Tribune, a division of Lee Enterprises