Citizen to meet with city of Elk Grove officials

The ownership and editorial staff of the Elk Grove Citizen will be meeting with numerous officials from the city of Elk Grove in an joint effort to discuss and enable better communications between the Elk Grove Police Department and the Citizen reporting staff.
In light of two recent serious public safety issues, Citizen staff became concerned about the availability and dissemination of information about critical criminal allegations and situations.
One incident involved the owner of a local mascot business who is facing allegations of suspicion of child porn charges and is also accused of suspicion of rape. The suspect was initially arrested on minor charges and allegations, but when more serious accusations and allegations surfaced, the Citizen and other area media were not informed. A local television news investigation weeks after the additional charges uncovered more details about the unusual allegations.
A second incident involving two pit bulls rampaging up to a mile from their owner's home and menacing citizens, attacking two pets, and finally aggressively confronting police officers - one of whom shot one pit bull to death - was reported to the Citizen but full and critical details regarding the incident were not provided to the Citizen reporting staff despite repeated interviews and requests.
These details, however, were provided to other area media; and the information provided by several officials was confusing and did not match the information each provided to the Citizen.
The Citizen editorial staff also sought the name of the owner of the two pit bulls, but was denied by Elk Grove police officials, who said names of suspects only receiving citations were not releasable to the press.
The Citizen editorial staff felt this information was public record, and filed a California Public Records request with City Attorney Susan Cochran, who denied the request and refused to release the name of the owner of the two dogs. The surviving pit bull was returned to the owner - who is facing numerous charges related to the dogs and incident - after being deemed not viscious by city animal control officials.
The city of Elk Grove finally did release the name of the owner, but it was nine days after the incident occurred.
In an effort to work collaboratively to better share information with the Citizen reporting staff, Editor Jeff Forward; Publisher and General Manager David Herburger; and Owner and Founder Roy Herburger will be meeting with city Manager Laura Gill, Elk Grove police Chief Robert Simmons, city Attorney Susan Cochran, city Public Information Officer Christine Brainerd, and EGPD Public Information Officer Christopher Trim.
The Citizen staff is very excited about the meeting as one of our top priorities it to serve the public and readership by, among other things, reporting news about critical public safety issues in Elk Grove. We appreciate the quickness of city officials to recognize the importance of the situation and offer to meet and improve communications.
A full report will be published in the Citizen after the meeting.

Jeff Forward
Editor