By Cynthia Grau/WJEZ News

When accidents or major arrests happen locally, law enforcement is only able to release certain information as the investigation moves along.

Pontiac Police Chief Jim Woolford explained that putting out too much information too soon could not only compromise a potential case, but also may lack pertinent information.

“An investigation has to take place and our job as the government is to produce the facts. You need to have a controlled set, and what I mean by that, you don’t want to taint the information you’re getting. And when you just start releasing things you’re hearing, we know from the past and throughout history, you have people who may be a partial witness and sometimes what they remember is tainted by what they’ve read. You want to control those sets until that data is complete,” Woolford said.

Woolford was a guest on a recent community forum, discussing how investigations work, which can be found in our podcast section at WJEZ.com.