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Spokane police prefer public record blackout Top court mulls crime news access OLYMPIA (Thursday 6-17-99)---The state Supreme Court today will hear oral arguments in a case that could greatly restrict the public's access to news of crime in their communities, according to an Associated Press report.   Spokane police argue that law-enforcement agencies aren't required to release to the public or press "incident reports" of crimes to which they respond. These reports form the basis of news about criminal activity in any given area.   The case, which the high court is expected to take months to decide, stems from a lawsuit filed by the Spokesman-Review newspaper against Spokane police.   The police in 1997 refused to release an incident report and booking photograph after the arrest of an assistant city attorney for investigation of drunken driving and punching police Officer Brad Hallock in the jaw.   Citing a previous Supreme Court ruling saying police are not required to release investigative files in an active case, Spokane police refused to release even a description of the arrest of Asst. City Atty. Milt Rowland.   Rowland later pleaded guilty to attempted fourth-degree assault, driving while intoxicated and leaving the scene of an accident after Roland's car became stuck in a neighbor's yard. He remains an assistant city attorney.   Spokane County Superior Court Judge Sam Cozza sided with the newspaper in the case. He said the city should have turned over the incident report and a booking photo.   But the Washington Court of Appeals reversed, agreeing with police that the records were not subject to the state Sunshine Law.   Rowland Thompson, executive director of Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington, said Wednesday the case is extremely important to news media and public they serve.   "Without the incident reports, you can't figure out what kind of crime there is in the city. Access to those reports are the only way an average citizen can hold police accountable, to even know just the fact that a crime occurred"   "This isn't just about the media and what they need, but about the citizen that sees a disturbance at the house across the street and wants to know what happened and the police won't tell you."   Lawyers for the Spokane police, however, argue that a 1997 state high court decision leaves police free to keep all records in active case under wraps until the case is completed or dropped.   In that case, the court narrowly reversed a King County Superior Court decision supporting freelance journalist David Newman, who contended police files on the unsolved 1969 murder of Edwin Pratt should not automatically be closed in their entirety. Police have far more latitude than other government agencies in keeping records secret and can keep all police files on unsolved crimes under wraps, the high court ruled in a 5-4 decision.   That decision applies even to incident reports, Spokane police assert.   Spokane police also argue that the subject of an incident report, in this case Asst. City Attorney Milt Rowland, has a right to privacy and a right to avoid pretrial publicity. There is "no legitimate public concern" in having access to incident reports, their high court brief said.   But lawyers for the Spokesman-Review argue that the earlier ruling does not extend to incident reports or booking photographs. Indeed, they note in briefs filed with the high court, the incident report in the Newman case was released to the public.   "Clearly, the public, as this court has decided in numerous cases, has not delegated to the police or any other state agency the authority to unilaterally determine the scope of the right of the public to be informed about issues of public concern, such as police investigations, that consist of routine factual police incident reports," the Spokesman-Review argues.