Police said withheld information will include birth dates of criminals, addresses where crimes occur and the names of injured victims. They will be completely redacted from the written public record in some cases.

City attorneys advised the department to make the policy shift, saying the idea was to balance Arizona public-records law with a newer state statute that cites the government's obligation to secure residents from identity thieves.

Phoenix police say they will immediately begin identifying criminal suspects by name, age and race only — not by date of birth, even if they are booked into jail. Victims' dates of birth also will be withheld.

"In general, the names of victims are eligible to be released, however, there will be exceptions," Phoenix Sgt. Andy Hill wrote in a letter to members of the news media.

The city began reviewing how to restrict the public flow of personal identifying information in 2007, Phoenix Assistant City Attorney Sandra Hunter said. She said information that "has nothing to do with the business of the police department," public safety or public-records law will likely be stricken from the written record.

"If it's exclusively private, we'll do our best to protect it," Hunter said.

Hunter said she didn't know of any lawsuit against Phoenix or any specific concerns among residents about public records leading to identity theft. She said the policy shift was designed to prevent identity-theft claims from arising.

Beckie Miller, who leads the Phoenix chapter of the national nonprofit Parents of Murdered Children, said she understood the need to withhold information.

"From the victim's perspective, each one of those things traumatizes them more when (the media) doesn't get it right," she said.

The decision could meet with resistance from the Phoenix-area news media and from civic-journalism advocates, said Tim McGuire, a journalism professor at Arizona State University and a former newspaper editor.

"In the case of suspects, I think it's a disaster to not include information like [dates of birth] because it's going to lead to the real danger of mistaken identity," McGuire said.

Publisher Michael C. Traynor said yesterday that police officials wre violating the state Open Records Act by no longer giving reporters and citizens unfiltered access to the department's incident reports, which total about 300 a day.

For years, Savannah police compiled copies of each day's reports, which are public records by law, and kept them on a clipboard at the front desk. Combing through them for news stories was a daily ritual for police reporters.

That changed Dec. 24, when the clipboard was removed. Police spokeswoman Judy Pal e-mailed local press outlets and told them the change was necessary as the department converts to a paperless, electronic system. She said police planned to post a synopsis of all reports on their Web site in four to six months.

For now, the department posts on its Web site abbreviated versions of several "significant incidents" culled from crime reports. Complete copies of individual reports are provided by clerks on request.

Traynor argues that's not good enough.

"If we don't know what the incident is that's out there, how do we know to request the report?" Traynor said. "We believe the police should not be able to control what we know and what we don't know."

The newspaper asked Attorney General Thurbert Baker's office on Jan. 5 to mediate the dispute in hopes of settling it outside of court.

Police Chief Michael Berkow responded to the newspaper's mediation request with an e-mail: "We welcome any and all opportunity to clarify the law and publicly prove our adherence to the (Open Records) Act."

The Gwinnett Daily Post, a metro-Atlanta newspaper, has had a similar struggle since Gwinnett County police switched to electronic reporting in May and stopped providing daily crime reports. Gwinnett County is just north of Atlanta.

Publisher J.K. Murphy said the attorney general's office is still trying to resolve the dispute months later. Meanwhile, the newspaper has quit publishing its police blotter, Murphy said, and would have missed a story about a man who died in police custody, had there not been an anonymous tip.

"Once we asked about it, the report was immediately made available to us," Murphy said. "But had we not gotten this tip, we might not have ever heard about it."

Gwinnett County Police Chief Charles Walters has said his department used to provide daily copies of incident reports as a courtesy — not a requirement of the Open Records Act.

In Savannah, police plan to replace the old clipboard soon with a daily list of all reported crimes that the public can read, Pal said.

"Transparency for us is extremely important," Pal said. "I understand what their concern is and their desire to be able to thumb through every one of those reports. But we need to find a way, and an efficient way, to do it."

Hollie Manheimer, executive director of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation, said state courts have ruled public records that can be easily accessed by government officials must be provided immediately on request, regardless of format.

"Access means meaningful access, not the access that the police department chooses to provide," Manheimer said.