|
Opinion Letter No. 97-01
February 21, 1997
Names of Suspended Police Officers Are Public
In 1995 the Legislature passed Act 242 that recognized
suspended police officers’ significant privacy
interest in information about on-the-job misconduct resulting in
their suspensions. However, this Act
still required the suspended officers’ privacy interest to
be balanced against the public’s interest in the
disclosure of the misconduct information. Hence, if the public’s
interest outweighed the suspended
officers’ privacy interest, the information was required to
be disclosed.
In 1996 the Hawaii Supreme Court decided SHOPO v. SPJ, 83 Haw. 378,
and found that
information about police officers’ on-the-job misconduct was
not highly intimate nor personal. The
Hawaii Supreme Court, thus, concluded that this information was
not protected by the Hawaii
Constitution’s right to privacy.
Given the tensions among the legislative intent of Act 242, the
SHOPO decision, and the overall
purpose of the UIPA, the OIP weighed the competing interests as
required by Act 242. The OIP
concluded that the public’s interests outweighed the suspended
police officers’ privacy interest in
information about on-the -job misconduct resulting in their suspensions.
Because no exception to
disclosure applied to this information, the UIPA would require the
HPD to disclose this information.
|
