Confidential Law Enforcement Investigatory Records and Incident Reports: The way things were

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For more than 20 years, we’ve taught public records law to Ohio law enforcement agencies. For nearly all of those years, the law has been rather clear about the Confidential Law Enforcement Investigatory Records (CLEIR) exception and how it relates to the initial incident reports prepared as part of nearly every law enforcement investigation.

All the way back in 1994, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled in State Ex rel. Steckman v. Jackson that some law enforcement records, primarily incident reports, must be released immediately upon request and can’t have CLEIR redactions. But Steckman also said that anything beyond the routine factual information found on an incident report was protected by CLEIR if there was a likely or pending criminal prosecution. On June 9, 2022, after nearly 30 years of clarity, the Ohio Supreme Court decided to flip the script and make huge changes about which records law enforcement agencies have to provide in an initial incident report.