Cookeville Enters Into CARFAX Agreement For Crash Reports

Cookeville residents will soon have a new option for gaining access to crash reports.

Ken Sircy is a Major for the Cookeville Police Department. He said city council has approved an agreement allowing CARFAX to distribute the department’s crash reports.

“And do it in a way that’s consistent with the current state law, which means an unredacted report can only be given out to the actual parties involved or the parties representing them,” Sircy said. “So they would be doing it for us. If we choose to charge anything for that, that’s what they (CARFAX) would charge and the money would come to us. In other words, they don’t get nay cut of it.”

About 11 agencies across the state currently have similar agreements with CARFAX.

“The primary thing they’re (CARFAX) after is information about crashes, which is associated with the VIN number,” Sircy said. “Of course, they provide that to dealerships so people know the history of that vehicle as it’s sold throughout time. It (agreement) also gives us access to their investigative dashboard. They have a website where we can run partial tags and some combinations of car description partial tags that probably aren’t available otherwise”

The agreement does not require a money exchange between CARFAX and the department. Sircy said the process to obtain public records will remain the same.

“If any given person wants to come down there and get a copy of the report now, they would just be charged 15-cents a page,” Sircy said.

Cookeville City Council unanimously approved the agreement during last week’s meeting.