DUI by the book

It’s tough to dredge up too much concern for somebody guilty of drunken driving.

But until proved guilty, that alleged drunk is entitled to put up a good defense in a fair and unbiased court. Sometimes, though, our courts tend to tilt a bit more heavily in favor of the law enforcement officers on the other side of the proceedings.

Maybe that’s why a Harrisburg attorney wants to see the DUI manual used to train so many Pennsylvania police officers. But it’s no surprise that some high-level police officials are trying to stymie him on that effort.

Attorney Justin J. McShane, who specializes in DUI cases, filed an open-records request with Harrisburg Area Community College, asking for any and all training materials on DUI used in its municipal officer training program.

The school’s open-records officer turned over some of the materials, but withheld others. He defended the denials with an affidavit from the state police official who was then executive director of the Municipal Police Officer Education and Training Commission, which runs the classes.

The affidavit claimed releasing the DUI manual would endanger public safety.

Now, the court has ordered the state’s open-records agency to hold a hearing to determine whether public safety really would be endangered by making the information public.

That seems like a pretty easy call.

McShane told the Associated Press that, in any individual case, he could get access to the training manual through the legal-discovery process. He wants the manual released simply because he believes that the goal of the state’s Right to Know Law is to give everyone – not just the principals in a court case – access to public records.

And he’s right. That’s exactly what the Right to Know is all about.

When the Right to Know Law was strengthened three years, it became incumbent on the public agency to prove why a record should be held back. Previously, someone requesting a document often had to prove why it should be made public.

The goal, without a doubt, was to make records more easily accessible to everyone. And it stands to reason that people have a presumptive right to know what their government is up to, unless there’s a real chance that information could threaten public safety.

Unfortunately, that “public safety” exception is proving to be very popular with officials who had grown accustomed to keeping things from the public.

And while we agree there are cases in which releasing certain police documents could compromise ongoing investigations, this is not the case with a training manual.

Training manuals, by their very nature, deal with hypotheticals. They outline various scenarios and prescribe certain actions. What they don’t contain is any specific information about ongoing legal actions.

Besides, there’s simply no logic to the stance that revealing how an officer is trained to do field sobriety tests would make the public any less safe.

No amount of knowledge about what’s in that manual is going to make it possible for a drunk to walk a straight line. No amount of studying that manual will change a drunk’s breathalyzer screening or blood-alcohol test.

There just is no legitimate public-safety argument for blocking access to a training manual.