TALLINN — The Estonian Newspaper Association lodged a complaint with the interior ministry, and the Police and Border Guard Board Tuesday about the lack of information on crimes since police reports ceased being issued en masse last month.
On Jan.1. when the Estonian Police force merged to became the Police and Border Guard Board their communication bureau announced that they will no longer send out detailed information on crimes in daily morning emails due lack of personnel, but the information is still available on request.
Toomas Leito, executive director of the newspaper association said that switching back to the previous system would be better.
“Every county must receive enough information, either through the county or through Tallinn,” Leito told Baltic Reports, “The police constructed a new system, and cut the staff, which was a bad strategy.”
Newspapers across Estonia have criticized the policy change on police reports, saying it overly restricts public access to information on crime in their community. Photo by Kai Joost.
The association said its rural members have said they are missing necessary information on crimes happening in their coverage area since police reports on individual cases stopped being automatically released and only given to the press on a selective basis, which makes many crimes impossible for journalists to find out about.
Although the country’s Public Information Act reads that government entities must disclose any information concerning danger which threatens the life, health, property or the environment as quickly as possible, it is up to the police to decide what crimes are worthy of having information released, which newspapers argue could result in crimes escaping public scrutiny and reduce information on police activity.
Tarmo Õuemaa, editor of Läänemaa regional newspaper Lääne Elu said that the new system takes more hassle and is concerned that the police hold too much power over what information is released.
“Already for years the police have been taking themselves a right to decide what information will be shared with media,” Õuemaa told Baltic Reports, “The movement of information was better far back in the 1990s.”
For example, police do not send detailed information on rapes, suicides and crimes involving minors, but also information that harm the interests of investigation and violate the personal data protection act.
According to Õunmaa, the newspaper did not receive any newsletters from the police for days in the beginning on January when the new system was applied.
“It turned out that they forgot to add us on the press list,” Õunmaa said.
The mistake was corrected, and the newspaper started receiving mail, but still there are days when Lääne Elu does not receive the police information.
Tuuli Härson, a press spokeswoman for the Police and Border Guard Board said that they have talked to the newspaper editors, and came to an agreement that the new system works.
Härson also pointed out that all criminal information released to the media is also up on their website.
“We talked to the newspaper editors already before we received the letter from the newspaper association and from that was concluded that the current system works just fine,” Härson told Baltic Reports.
Marko Pomerants, the minister of the interior told the Postimees newspaper that the problem must be solved by the Police and Border Guard Board.
“One thing must be clear, no one should not even try to take into his mind the version on a silent era or hiding information on purpose,” Pomerants said.
