From Mountain Xpress (3/27/12): Over two months ago, Xpress requested a copy of the audit of the Asheville Police Department's evidence room from District Attorney Ron Moore. We have received no reply. According to attorneys from the North Carolina Press Association, the audit should be public record, and Moore's behavior violates the state's open records law.
When the news broke last year that significant amounts of guns, drugs and money were missing from the APD evidence room, it sent a shock through the city, and Chief Bill Hogan resigned soon after. At that time, Moore released preliminary reports from an earlier partial audit showing problems with the evidence storage. Asheville City Council approved $175,000 for a full audit.
That audit was concluded on Jan. 9, but Moore has not released the results, either to the larger public or to city officials. On Jan. 20, after Moore’s receptionist informed Xpress that “he never checks [his email],” and no other official could turn over the record, an open-records request was faxed to his office, asking that he make the audit report public or cite a specific statutory reason why he couldn’t.
Under North Carolina’s open records law, public officials must comply with open records requests “as promptly as possible.”
Moore has claimed to other media outlets that the records aren’t public because they’re involved in an ongoing criminal investigation, but according to the law, “the use of a public record in connection with a criminal investigation or the gathering of criminal intelligence shall not affect its status as a public record.”