The terse language of police incident reports echoes through American life.

The rough outlines of crimes form the skeleton of stories broadcast by the smallest local radio stations and printed in the largest national newspapers.

In many places, they're rolled into daily summaries of criminal activity - popular "police blotter" features where readers avidly catch up on the sins and suffering of their neighbors.

They're also a resource for people who want to know about crime in their neighborhoods and how police are responding to it.

But are those reports public? A recent audit by Northwest newspapers indicates about 55 percent of Washington's law enforcement agencies don't consider reports of recent crimes public documents. And the legal picture is far from clear.

The auditors' mission was to see how public officials would respond when someone walked in off the street and asked for an incident report on a recent property crime.

Most police officials flatly rejected the requests. Others barraged the strangers with questions: Are you the victim? An attorney? An insurance agent?

Only a handful followed the letter of Washington's Public Records Act: They simply handed over the report without asking questions.

Walla Walla County Sheriff Mike Humphreys' office complied, although his staff asked the auditor why he wanted the report and demanded identification before giving it to him - for a $10 charge.

"I think the public has a right to know, and that's the bottom line," Humphreys said. "That's who we work for."

But Humphreys' opinion is apparently the exception.

Police incident reports occupy a gray legal area. In general, the Public Records Act makes public "any writing containing information relating to the conduct of government or the performance of any governmental or proprietary function prepared, owned, used, or retained by any state or local agency."

But the police reports can also qualify for one of the biggest exemptions from that law, which allows agencies to close "specific investigative records ... essential to effective law enforcement or for the protection of any person's right to privacy."

So are the reports public or not? Ask two lawyers and you'll get two different answers. Ask two law enforcement agencies, and chances are one won't give you the report. Even if the other will, you'll likely be grilled about who you are and why you want it.

At the Pasco Police Department, a suspicious Barbara Daniels wanted to know why an auditor wanted the report and required an official request to the city attorney.

"It's so people who have no business seeing the report can't just walk in off the street and obtain the record," Daniels told the auditor.

Two contradictory Washington Supreme Court cases don't help clarify matters.

In a 1997 case, the court ruled against a freelance reporter's request for records in the unsolved 1969 killing of civil rights leader Edwin Watts. Such records, justices said in the 5-4 decision, enjoy a "broad categorical exemption from disclosure" because the investigation is ongoing.

More importantly, the justices gave police agencies - not judges - power to decide which records enjoyed the exemption.

Since then, agencies have used and abused that discretion to keep more documents secret, said Michele Earl-Hubbard, an attorney with Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle who represents the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association.

"They're not the public employees' records, they're not the agency's records, they're the people's records," Earl-Hubbard said. "If they cannot prove that harm will result, then they should not be withholding access."

In 1999, the court seemingly ruled the other way. It upheld Cowles Publishing Co. - owner of The Spokesman-Review in Spokane - when the newspaper sought the incident report in the case of Assistant City Attorney Milt Rowland, who had been arrested for drunken driving and attempted assault.

The court ruled that Rowland's incident report wasn't a record of an ongoing investigation because he had been arrested and the case was in the prosecutor's hands. Therefore, the document could be released to the public.

Unfortunately for those seeking guidance about incident reports in general, nearly all reports fall somewhere between the two cases, and the conflict gives agencies room to argue either way.

"Those in law enforcement and those who represent law enforcement are not thrilled about the idea that they might have to give the results of their investigation to anyone, including the people who were being investigated," said Chip Holcomb, senior counsel in Attorney General Christine Gregoire's office.

One problem is the variability of the reports themselves. Some are as straightforward as "John Doe was arrested on suspicion of public drunkenness." Others contain the names of victims and witnesses - people entitled by law to demand confidentiality.

And then there's legitimate investigative information. What if a witness account in the report fingers a suspect who hasn't been caught yet? What if the report contains detailed information about stolen goods that might tip off a fence, prompting him to destroy potential evidence?

Some agencies get around this problem by redacting such information - usually by blacking it out with a felt-tip marker. For others, it's reason enough to withhold the entire report.

Reporters who cover police agencies often can get access to all or nearly all reports. Ongoing relationships between beat reporters and law enforcement agencies help. And many police officials understand that journalistic policies and ethics will keep dicey or speculative information out of the newspaper and off the air.