Editor's note: The Associated Press reported Dec. 25 that Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner had loosened his policy and would allow limited public access to crime reports on weekends and holidays, following the advice of the state's attorney general. But he said not much information would be available because records are processed by administrative staff who don't work weekends. The policy was challenged by The Island Packet of Hilton Head and The Beaufort Gazette. The attorney general said it violated open-records law.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Newspaper readers and television news viewers along much of South Carolina's coast aren't finding out as much now as they did a few months ago about crime in their neighborhoods.

In Beaufort County, deputies recently began to refuse to turn over police reports on weekends or holidays, meaning reporters with The Island Packet of Hilton Head and The Beaufort Gazette had to wait until Dec. 1 to review crimes that took place over the four-day Thanksgiving weekend.

And in Charleston, The Post and Courier says police are blocking out critical information in some of their reports, including where burglaries took place and the names of witnesses.

Law enforcement officials say they are protecting privacy. But they also may be withholding critical information that could keep people safe, according to advocates for the news media.

"You see a trend of police being more and more reticent to give out information. People are trying to withhold the names of victims and witnesses, places where crimes happen," said Bill Rogers, executive director of the South Carolina Press Association.

The Charleston newspaper reports that police there used to release crime reports in their entirety, but earlier this year began blacking out information, sometimes arbitrarily. A recent robbery report listed the victim's name and address, but redacted her age. Another report on a homicide blacked out some witnesses' names, but kept others in. Reports on a string of burglaries blocked out where the crimes occurred.

"That makes no sense. The burglar certainly knows where he broke in. What about other people in the neighborhood? Shouldn't they know what is going on?" said Jay Bender, a lawyer who represents a number of news-media organizations, including the Associated Press.

Releasing all the information in a report also allows reporters and the public to better assess the incident, press advocates said.

The South Carolina Sheriff's Association is backing Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner's interpretation of a clause in the open-records law requiring documents like police reports to be available "during the hours of operations of the public body."

News-media advocates say the reports should be available any time because officers never stop patrolling, but Tanner has ordered his officers to release reports only when his administrative staff is on duty Monday through Friday.

Many police agencies don't want to release reports until administrators have time to black out information that is being withheld, and that can only be done when office staff is in, said Jeff Moore, executive director of the sheriff's association.

"I'm not going to say somebody who has that responsibility doesn't get carried away with a magic marker from time to time," Moore said. "But they are trying to protect confidential sources, juveniles, rape victims or other information that shouldn't be public."

Those few commonsense exceptions are laid out in the law, but many times officers are simply being too zealous in trying to protect privacy, Bender said.

"The police are in the business of protecting people, not protecting privacy," Bender said. "If the information needs to be private, don't put it in a public record."

A number of sheriffs have asked the sheriff's association about the open-records act, so Moore said the organization has planned a workshop early next year with the state attorney general's office, which advises governments to take the narrowest interpretation of the law and when in doubt to favor openness.