One of the most common calls I get at the Freeman City Desk is from the person who's been arrested and wants his or her name kept out of the paper.
The answer is no. Every time.
If you read the print edition of the Freeman, you know that we publish short items, usually on page A2, recounting arrests made by local police agencies. We can't write up every arrest -- there simply are too many in the four counties that we cover -- so we long ago established guidelines about which crimes we report and which we don't. And if you get busted for one of the crimes we cover -- and the arresting police agency gives us the information, as it is supposed to do -- your name is going to be in the paper.
And if you think we make exceptions for people we know and like, or people who are prominent in the community, you're mistaken. Freeman employees have had their names in our crime stories. So have elected officials, police officers, a county sheriff, relatives of a congressman and a local bank president. The rules are the same for everyone.
There's only one sure way to avoid having your name and the word "arrested" appear in the same sentence in our paper: Stay out of trouble.