Lowell Sun Wins Appeal on Cop’s Records

In a post at the New England First Amendment Center, Tom Zuppa, assistant managing editor at The Sun in Lowell, tells about his paper's fight to get access to records of a police internal-affairs investigation in Tyngsboro, Mass. The kicker is that even though town officials knew the law required them to release the documents, they held onto them because they had agreed with police not to release them unless ordered to do so by the attorney general or secretary of state. "In other words," Zuppa writes, "the town and police made a deal to follow the law only if compelled."