What Public Records?

Once inside the Orient Road jail, I could close my eyes and smell my childhood all around me. Smells of starch, disinfectant and hospital food were everywhere, conjuring memories of my mom at the hospital or my dad at the customs office. Even the musky smell of the empty cells in 6-Alpha - the dampness and woody smell - was like my elementary school in a portable annex in Ft. Lauderdale.

Bits of anachronism snapped me out of my day dreams. There was a large guard carrying heavy chains who clanked loudly through the halls like Marley's ghost, his heavy jowls pulling his mouth and eyes wide-open. The waiting area had a bizarre attempt at modern art in the display of the jail cell doors through time.

One was green like oxidized copper, your standard jail door with interlaced bars. Two were black. One had bars shaped like a gaping maw. The other was black with Plexiglas windows and an air vent at the bottom. The finale was the modern door, undistinguishable from a classroom door, although it was ominously numbered 13. Another throw back to public schools was the ever-present yellowed analog clocks.

Adjacent to the first long corridor was an adorable garden. It was absolutely unnecessary right down to the bench that was too small for even a child. I had to double-check that there was even a door to get to it, but there was.

We were reminded to pin our golden identifier badge to our shirts so that the cameras could identify us as tourists and not prisoners as we moved through the holding areas. However, once in the booking area it was painfully apparent that the badges were overkill. No one there, prisoner or jail employee, looked anything like us.

The stout disheveled woman being searched in front of us was visibly mortified. Other people hid their faces from us, while some turned to stare. A lot of people in processing were haggard, tired, greasy and those were just the employees. The great unwashed masses would be a generous description for many of them.

Strangely, the prisoners would have looked just as natural had their clothes been exchanged with the people behind the desks for fingerprinting, identification, etc. The most disconcerting thing was the way Lieutenant Smith addressed us while the stout woman was being searched. She became an object, something to be poked and prodded. Once that CRA (a formal arrest document) was handed over and signed, she became something, instead of someone.

Perhaps that goes with the job. That behavior was almost understandable when Smith described the daily tussles with deputies, the sheer stupidity of admitting to a crime on a prison phone or trying to kill yourself from a second-floor staircase. It's a mad world in there.

An Exercise in Insanity

While walking through the Hillsborough County 911 call center a bewildered woman asked the question we all were waiting for: "someone stole your plants?"

Of course, she was an operator. The stolen plants? Those belonged to the caller. A classmate quickly asked: Is that for real or are you just doing that because we are here?

Well, I stopped listening to what our guide, Harold Lloyd, was telling us and tuned in to the background conversation. It went on for about three minutes. Then, the operator put down the phone with a heavy sigh and let out a baffled laugh. It was real.

That was by no means the climax of our tour.

The crux of the day, if anyone missed it, was the freaking computer setup. Don't mistake my very deliberate adjective. Those consoles could nuke nations. Nay, destroy the very fabric of reality. In wartime, generals would wrap those flat screens around their head, red alert's blaring, arbitrarily selecting locations with satellite imagery to destroy with wanton delight. Not unlike our fancifully mustached guide pinpointing Nelson's home. The pants-tightening luminosity of that call center will haunt and tantalize my dreams forever.

All joking aside. We saw today why Tampa has a 7% sales tax. Their prime real estate is mere feet from Mema's Alaskan Tacos. Also, they staff 130 deputies in patrol cars, 20 short of their mandate. With 10 to 12 operators - addressing issues like stolen orchids - they cover 900 square miles of Hillsborough County.

Perhaps they need the money. "60,000 people a year get booked in Tampa," according to J.D. Callaway, explaining why the Sheriff's office discriminates in what arrest information they release to the public. That creates mountains of paperwork. So much so that information is limited to three record's requests a day, or what Callaway called, "the most access anywhere in the country, that I know of."

To be fair, it is a lot of access. The only exemptions to public records are police and firefighters, their addresses and photos are withheld. A simple request and leisurely wait gets you almost anything you want, though if you want them you may have to go to the courthouse, city jail, or somewhere else entirely.

The roll call room, our first gaze into the world of nuclear control reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove, is where Harold Lloyd mentioned that the operators work 12-hour shifts. It must be maddening and exciting. An emotional 'musical chairs' affair perhaps? Or a Mad Hatter tea party? Everybody change places!

The Talented Mr. Davis

There's a serendipitous nature to this public affairs thing, and to reporting in general. Maybe someone at the office finds something interesting in buckets of data that blend into abject mediocrity. Perhaps an employee at the courthouse or archive points you in the right direction of something fabulous. Or not.

That's how Chris Davis from the Sarasota Herald Tribune got a tip for one of his murder stories. Someone, probably with mental problems, kept bringing up this claim; yet something else while investigating was even more interesting.

Sometimes that's how it all comes together.

Another huge factor is raw talent. Something Davis probably soaks himself in a vat of on a weekly basis. The man oozes journalism like I have never seen before.

Maybe it is the scope of his projects, which rely heavily on Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR).

Usually over the course of weeks, or months, Davis' team compiles mountains of data into accessible web applications like the ones he showed off in Tuesday's class. His staff put together records from 57 of Florida's 67 counties to demonstrate the scope of flipping houses in our state. Using unique identifiers to label and track the increase in cost of a home over a set amount of time, he showed scientifically some of the worst excesses of capitalism.

On another project his team created a database that tracks misconduct at public schools across Florida. The method: human resource and employee records cross referenced with court records for each and every school.

Not many are lucky enough to have the kind of freedom I do, Davis said.

Some aren't blessed with that kind of dedication. Or that kind of luck.

The Good Ol' Incredibly Depressing Fight

There's something admirable about fighting for democracy to work. It's probably a very overlooked aspect of prospective journalists, but the discussion with Tim Nickens framed it perfectly. Without Florida's Sunshine Laws and the relentless pursuit of their enforcement, our democratic institutions suffer a great deal.

Nickens spoke as if around every corner there is someone trying to trip up the average citizen. The legislators and lobbyists have private dinners to keep their plans secret: policy is made soviet style over booze and a good meal instead of in the public sphere. Obviously that's a stretch, but our tradition of laws ought to be decided in the halls of congress, not the kitchens of lobbyists.

For example, Nickens brought up one incident in a lobbyist's condo where late at night a one-cent tax increase was levied on dry cleaning and legal fees. It was written on the back of a pizza box.

If the legislators do meet in public, that does not mean their work is then available. Behind every desk is a bureaucrat trying to grease his pockets by stopping you dead in your tracks on retrieving paperwork or any type of record.

But breakthroughs have been made.

"Audio recordings of court proceedings" are now considered public record, according to Tim Nickens of the St. Petersburg Times.

One of the biggest existing loopholes, said Nickens, is "e-mail... it should be public record" instead commissioners and officials get to decide which of the many e-mails on their official e-mail account get distributed for public scrutiny.

The emphasis of this discussion was knowing your rights. You are entitled to those records and all you have to pay for is the actual work it costs to produce them. A good journalist knows Chapter 119 by heart, said Nickens. The less exceptions to what is public record, the better.