REFUGIO — The Refugio County Press has been embroiled in a controversy with Sheriff Earl Petropoulos after reporting that his chief deputy’s son had been arrested for burglarizing seized cars at the sheriff’s impound yard, a felony offense.

Daniel Thomas Petrusaitis, 24, eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of possessing stereos and speakers stolen from cars stored at the impound yard earlier this year and he received 19 days jail time and a $4,000 fine.

In a follow up story, the newspaper reported that the deputy’s son is a three-time convicted felon — one of those convictions coming while his father was sheriff in nearby Aransas County — and that prosecutors apparently were unaware of the prior convictions when they handled the recent case.

The newspaper also reported that the son is facing charges in two subsequent burglaries, one involving gasoline taken from a locked storage tank used by sheriff’s deputies.

After the newspaper’s reports, the sheriff circulated a flier in the community alleging the newspaper had broken several points of the Society for Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.

He claimed the newspaper blew the story out of proportion and “attacked the Refugio County Sheriff’s office.”

“In my opinion the editor has reported stories that are even questionably newsworthy and blows them out of proportion, highlighting events and statements causing the true meaning to be twisted,” the sheriff wrote. “It is this kind of negative reporting that causes the public to be misled.”

Scott Reese Willey, editor of sister newspaper the Beeville Bee-Picayune, contacted SPJ about the sheriff’s actions and asked for an opinion about the news reports.

“As do most newspapers, we review our reporting and editing practices whenever we are accused of misleading our readers or violating a journalistic code of ethics,” Willey said. “We e-mailed the stories to each member of the SPJ ethics committee and asked them to comment on our reporting. Then we published their comments in the paper.”

While the SPJ is a voluntary membership organization with no regulatory power, much like Texas Press Association, its ethics committee did issue a letter to Sheriff Petropoulos on Sept. 25.

“It is the consensus of the committee’s members that the County Press performed its journalistic duties in an ethical and responsible manner by reporting what amounts to a bona fide crime story, the type of story papers routinely report every day,” the SPJ committee wrote.

Willey said the newspaper has experienced problems with the sheriff not releasing crime reports in the past.

“The sheriff has always refused to give us access to arrest or offense reports. When the chief deputy’s son was arrested we had to file an open records request to get the offense report. We also are not allowed to see the booking log so we were unaware he had been arrested. A caller tipped us off,” he said.

“Even today, County Press editor Kenda Nelson must file an open records request each and every time she wants to see arrest and offense reports and even then the names of those arrested are not included in the reports.”