Channel 3′s website is running a story about police concerns about the privacy of their home addresses. Officers are concerned about how easily their home addresses can be found by searching their home town’s grand lists. Some town’s grand lists can be found online.
Channel 3 asked West Hartford Police Chief James Strillacci about police concerns. Here’s what he had to say:
“Because of the nature, the way they keep certain land records and grand lists, etc., people can go around the law and get the address of public safety personnel and do what they want with it,” Strillacci said.
The law also protects other public safety workers, even judges.”We’ve had judges receive threats at home,” Strillacci said. “We’ve had hate mail, harassing phone calls. I don’t know how they’re getting the addresses, but those judges should be protected.”
The story is correct when it says that the law protects the addresses of police, judges, and public safety workers. Those addresses fall within one of the many exceptions to Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Act. The exception is codified in Connecticut General Statutes § 1-217.
But the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association doesn’t think that Section 1-217 goes far enough, so they are supporting Raised S.B. No. 986, which would add the following sentence to the general statutes.
No assessor or board of assessors shall disclose or publish on the grand list the name and residential address of a sworn member of a municipal police department or a sworn member of the Division of State Police within the Department of Public Safety.
This will be one of several bills related to open government and freedom of information that I will be watching this year. Keep reading this site for updates.