Police departments don't have to go to the media -- arrests are public records. Some states have libel laws that pretty much prevent publishing names of arrestees, the media simply announces a suspect has been arrested. Do we really need the name and a picture to know that the police department has arrested someone?

http://www.sumtercountytimes.com/news/public-records

I often would not see arrest records in the Villages Daily Sun until whatever day the Safety blog would come out. And, there are instances when an arrest report might do more harm than good. We lived in Palm Harbor next door to a man who dragged two pit bulls along the street with his car. http://www.sptimes.com/2003/04/23/No...ragged_b.shtml A neighborhood boy called the cops who followed the blood trail to my next door neighbors. You can image the hate directed at this man when this became Tampa Bay wide news. We were lucky that nothing worse than a few drive by insulters occurred. The man who owned that house next door was a criminal defense lawyer who, it seemed, rented his out to his former clients or friends of these.

And I do not remember this arrest stopping this man's behavior as I think he got some more pit bulls when the ones he had were taken away from him.

Of course with an arrest like this, people in our neighborhood probably alerted the media themselves. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was very much involved.

In some cases, it would be next to impossible to keep any kind of arrest quiet. It seemed with the George Zimmerman case that there were leaks coming out of the police department which jeopardized the prosecution as well as the defense involved.