If you ask for local crime reports from law enforcement agencies around the state, you'll likely be turned down in nearly half the cities and counties -- even though you have a legal right to the information.

A survey of 134 police and sheriff's departments in the state conducted by Virginia newspapers and The Associated Press shows that 43 percent of the agencies denied requests for their weekend crime logs.

Fifty percent supplied the information. Survey results were inconclusive in the other 7 percent of the cases.

"We don't just turn records over to anybody," Dickenson County Sheriff Bobby Hammons said. "I'll only do it if I get a subpoena or if somebody over me tells me to do it."

City and county police departments were more open to providing the requested information than sheriff's offices.

Of the police departments, 62 percent met the Freedom of Information Act requests. Sheriff's offices complied with 43 percent of the requests.

Most of the requests for information by employees of Virginia newspapers were made Sept. 12 and 13. The reporters making the in-person survey identified themselves only as ordinary citizens interested in the reports.

Told of problems getting public information, Dana Schrad, executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police, said, "With FOIA, it's not easy to see a bright line" between what is legitimately confidential and is clearly public information.

While "it's a very complicated act," said John Jones, executive director of the Virginia Sheriffs' Association, "we want our members to comply with the law."

Among reasons police and sheriff's authorities gave for not releasing the weekend crime logs: they were not public records; they were kept on computers; they could only be shown to victims or people involved in the incidents; they could only be produced under court order; they would only be given if the requesters explained why they wanted it; they were available to the media, but not to other members of the public.

While the state's FOIA permits governments to get the requester's name and address, law enforcement officials also asked dozens of those seeking survey information for their occupations, employers and reasons for their requests.

"You are being really mysterious, which raises some red flags," Rappahannock County Sheriff Larry Sherertz said.

In several cases, police and sheriff's officials checked up on the requesters' identities.