Issue date: 4/4/06 Section: NEWS

Journalism students from universities across the state, including NT, have joined forces in a project sponsored by the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas to learn how to use the state's public information laws.
The Light of Day project is in its second year, with this year's theme focusing on law enforcement officers' use of force.
According to the Light of Day project Web site, participating students sent out letters to all 254 counties in the state of Texas requesting information under the Texas Public Information Act. The students requested documents showing the use of force with weapons such as Tasers, stun guns or beanbag shotguns since Jan. 1, 2000. Other documents requested included incident reports, custodial death reports and copies of individual department's use of force policies.
"We want to teach journalism students about obtaining and analyzing large quantities of data from public sources, how to use the Public Information Act, and how to compare and contrast for investigative pieces," said Katherine Garner, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas (FOIFT). "This is valuable hands-on experience for the students."
The FOIFT supplied the letterhead for the students to use on their requests. When the counties comply with the request or send any communication back, the FOIFT receives the documents, and scans them into PDF files that are made available on the project's Web site.
"Our goal with this project is not only to find good stories to write, but to take all the documents that they have obtained and make them public on the Web site so people can see what is going on," Garner said.
Thus far, 74 of the 254 counties have not returned records. Because of this, the students are currently working on resending letters by certified mail to some of the counties that have not responded. Students also are filing complaints with the Texas Attorney General's office on other counties.
"[The project] is also an opportunity for students to encounter the frustrations that journalists have when public officials impede or fail to comply with the [Public Information] Act," said Pete Slover, staff writer for The Dallas Morning News and one of the founders of the Light of Day project. "This is a very real-world scenario. To work with those challenges and handle them is a very invaluable experience for students."
Another frustration the students have encountered in their investigation is some city's requests for exorbitant amounts of money to provide the records. According to the scanned documents located on the project's Web site, the city of Lubbock has requested $375,000 and Texas City requested $337,500 to comply with the student's request of records.
"To demand a third of a million dollars for records other departments have released for free is disturbing," said Dan Malone, the NT journalism instructor overseeing students participating in the project. "Those that have released are to be applauded. The bigger problem is how these documents are not being distributed."
Garner attributes the high monetary requests and refusals to respond to attempts at getting around the Public Information Act's reach.
"It's a way for them to deny public access," Garner said. "These techniques are one of the things we are learning. Some departments turn over records without a problem and do their public duty. Others use costs and stonewalling techniques as ways to get around providing the public data. Students are learning these techniques and how agencies use certain walls to get around providing the records."
Jacob Taylor, San Angelo graduate student, has been involved with this year's project since its inception in the fall 2005 semester.
"It's a huge project," Taylor said. "The biggest thing for me was just how much work went into it for something that we thought was going to be so small."
According to Malone, one piece of information the students have learned from the documents is the total number of deaths that have occurred in police custody since 2000. Most of these deaths have occurred in Tarrant County with a total of five, four of them in Fort Worth.
"The purpose of this was to look at how law enforcement is using these weapons that are supposed to be non-lethal, to look at how the [Tasers] are being used, and what's going on with these deaths," Malone said.
The project is still ongoing. Students are waiting for more responses and have started evaluating the information they have received thus far.
"It ranges so up and down on departments' policies of use of Tasers," Taylor said. "There are departments that don't use them and some departments that use them in jails for discipline. It's surprising how many have been misused."
According to Slover, the project is trying to expand, get more funding, and get more students interested and involved.
"For the most part I think the students are getting invaluable experience they wouldn't get without a project like this," said Garner, alumna. "They would not learn it if they weren't using these skills. I've been working for the foundation for 12 years and learned more in the past two years of the project than I did previously."
Students participating in the project also have an opportunity to gain a stronger appreciation for the commitment a journalist must have toward his or her profession.
"I'm amazed at how dedicated they are and how many people out there are working on something like this," Taylor said. "These journalists are doing this on their own time, not for profit. It has really been eye-opening to work on something like this."
For more information or to access the students' articles, visit the project's Web site at http://www.lightofdayproject.org.

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