Dialing 911

Linda Casey dialed 911 and screamed, "Oh, God!" over and over again after finding her daughter beaten to death in the driveway of their North Carolina home.

Later that day, she heard the 911 recording on the local news and vomited. "This was not only the most painful thing I have ever been through, it should have been the most private," she said in an e-mail.

Because of situations like Ms. Casey's, lawmakers in Alabama, Ohio and Wisconsin are considering whether to bar the public release of recorded 911 calls.

Missouri, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wyoming already bar public access to such recordings. But most states consider emergency calls public records available on request, with exceptions sometimes made for privacy reasons or to protect a police investigation.

"Nationally there is a growing concern about the release of audiotapes that don't involve newsworthy people or events -- just things that people like to hear because of their sensational nature," explains Sonny Brasfield, executive director of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama, which drafted legislation to bar the release of 911 recordings in that state. "There is a concern nationally that these kinds of things are having a chilling effect on people's willingness to call 911."

People are "concerned" about all kinds of things, some legitimate, some not. The job of responsible lawmakers is to try to seek out real evidence, then balance the public's right to know against any real harm that can be documented.

Documented cases of people who decline to call 911 in a real emergency because they're concerned about being recorded are thin on the ground, to say the least.

On the other hand, the ability of press and public to review such recordings have helped expose botched operator behavior that might otherwise have gone uncorrected, including the Detroit dispatcher who in 2006 scolded a 5-year-old boy for "playing on the phone" while his mother lay unconscious. (By the time police arrived, the boy's mother was dead.)

"It's crucial that we're able to hear how our public safety calls are being handled," explains David Cuillier, chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists' Freedom of Information Committee.

Yes, the media should often show more restraint in choosing what's played on the air. But openness should still be the rule. No reasonable person believes calling the police is a good way to keep a matter "private."