Lift The Curtain

As part of a statewide mandate for local police departments to undergo a self-evaluation, with hopes of improving law enforcement policies, Southampton Town’s Community Law Enforcement Review Committee is set to meet on September 23. A focus of that meeting, according to Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, will be how the Town Police gets its message out to the public, and transparency is expected to be a subject of discussion.

It’s overdue. The department has a long reputation for being among the more difficult in sharing information with the public. Police Chief Steven Skrynecki is accessible, and it seems to be an area of importance to him, but there has been little progress in a day-to-day sense.

It’s a fact that local media representatives are how the public tends to get its information from the police, and so interactions between departments and the press are the primary conduit. The region’s police departments are a mixed bag, but there are numerous departments that have an organized, open and standardized approach to sharing information with the public via the media — including reports that are, with rare exceptions, protected by law as accessible to the public. With the Town Police, it’s inconsistent, piecemeal and frustratingly incomplete. Basic details are often withheld.

This has an impact on the public. For instance, 12 cars were stolen from February through July — a precursor to the wave of thefts in the summer months — and the information wasn’t made public until midsummer. Had residents known that thieves were targeting the easy pickings (luxury cars with keys and key fobs left in them) for months, it could have put people on guard. By comparison, other departments issue press releases the day any car is stolen.

Without regular, unfettered access to police reports, logs and other records that are, by nature, public information, it’s impossible for the media, or the public, to know what’s going unreported. That’s unacceptable — and dangerous.

There are other local departments with hit-and-miss policies, but most have one important thing going for them: They believe that a dedicated approach to keeping the public informed is necessary for a department to function. Credit goes to Chief Skrynecki for acknowledging this, but perhaps the town’s committee this month can begin to help find ways to turn lip service into actual policy that lifts the curtain and embraces healthy communication as an essential part of community policing.