WILMINGTON, NC (whqr) - The City of Wilmington says it will review its employee email policy after discovering that thousands of emails were marked to block public review.

All city emails are sent to a public computer for review, except ones with the word "private" in the subject line.

The city's policy says private emails block the release of personal or sensitive business information.

More than 38,000 emails were marked "private" during a 12-month period. The city says that's just a fraction of its emails. But the StarNews reports that after a review of emails many of the ones marked "private" should have been made public.