From Mason City Police Chief Jeff Brinkley Re: Iowa Senate File 2288:
Most juvenile arrest records used to be public information. Earlier this year, Governor Branstad signed SF 2288 into law which went into effect today. This law makes most juvenile records private as of July 1, 2016, with a possible exception for juveniles charged with a forcible felony.
In the past, the Mason City Police Department has released the names of juveniles charged with a crime who are 10 years old or older. We are changing our procedures to comply with this new law and will not release names of juveniles charged with a crime. There is some difference of opinion around the state on how to interpret this new law regarding the very limited occasions that juvenile arrest information can be released. Due to this lack of clarity, public records requests concerning juvenile offenders may require us to get a legal opinion as to whether the info can be released.
In an effort to comply with the change in the law and to protect juveniles who have contact with our department, we have temporarily taken down the link to our incident log on our web page. We are working with LETG, our records management, computer aided dispatch, and mobile vendor to insure that this information is removed from the log. As soon as that change is made, the online incident log will be up and running.
