AIKEN, S.C. — Anyone asking for a police report or other public record at the Aiken County Sheriff's Office likely will be asked for identification and have a background check performed on them without their knowledge.

Sheriff Michael Hunt said the deputies just ask for identification and would still give the records without an ID. Hunt said the checks find up to 40 people a month with outstanding warrants.

But Jay Bender, attorney for the South Carolina Press Association, calls the ID checks outrageous.

"I think that's the most absurd thing I've ever heard of," Bender said. "That is harassment of citizens."

Bender, who argues Freedom of Information Act cases for newspapers around the state, says no one should feel like they have to identify themselves just to get a public document.

"I think that's just as intrusive as it could possibly be, and I don't know but that could be a civil rights violation," Bender said. "I don't think you can make an inquiry of a citizen unless you suspect that individual has committed a crime."

The sheriff's office policy was discovered by a reporter from The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, who during a June 14 visit to the office saw a clerk ask for a woman's ID and charge her $6 for a one-page police report.

Deputies ran a check on the woman and found she was wanted for writing a $54 bad check to Wal-Mart in 1991.

Authorities were angry when the reporter told the woman she didn't have to give her name to get the record and she was likely being overcharged since South Carolina law said fees should be as low as possible and not exceed the cost of searching for or making copies of the records.

The reporter "needs to come over here, make her request and basically mind her own business," said sheriff's spokesman Lt. Michael Frank.

Asking for identification for records may also break state law, said Trey Walker, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office.

Hunt disagrees, saying showing identification isn't a requirement to get the records.

Hunt said he promised when he ran for sheriff to whittle away at the 18,000 outstanding warrants the sheriff's office had. He said the ID checks for records along with other ideas have lowered the number of outstanding warrants to 14,000.

The sheriff also defended charging $6 for a one-page report, saying the charges are part of a county ordinance.

State law, however, states that such fees shouldn't "exceed the actual cost of searching for or making copies of records" and should be at "the lowest possible cost" to the person requesting the records.

The sheriff's office collected $2,229 from July 2005 through last April on fees charged for criminal incident reports.

Charging $6 might be reasonable for older records they have to search for, but "$6 across the board does not appear to me to be legal," Bender said.

Despite the possible violations of FOI law, the attorney general's office can't do anything because the law does not provide a way to enforce the open-records law outside of someone filing a lawsuit, Walker said.