FOI request yields identity of deputy

SUMMERVILLE, SC -- The Dorchester County Sheriff's Office released the name of a suspended deputy Thursday after a Freedom of Information request for records.

Deputy Jason Shrewsbury has been suspended, said Chief Deputy Sam Richardson. The deputy was suspended this week after he allegedly drove a patrol car to a bar where he drank while off duty. Richardson said he had talked with County Attorney John Frampton about the request from The Post and Courier, and the record of the suspension will be released after an internal affairs investigation is complete.

"We have absolutely no problem releasing that information," Richardson said.

More here.

Fraternal Order of Police Sues City of Jacksonville, Florida

The Fraternal Order of Police has sued the city of Jacksonville, Florida, over an 85-point public records request last fall that has gone unfulfilled. Among the records sought are e-mails from Mayor John Peyton's staff and City Council members regarding a proposed 3-percent pay cut for the police union and other unions.

The city says the records need to be reviewed by attorneys and redacted for negotiating strategy information.

For more, click here.

Dash Cam Catches Police Excessive Force Incident

A Texan car dealer is suing the Carrollton police department after he was roughed up in a parking lot. The dealer, Shomari Staten, obtained the video through an open records request. The incident was caught on the squad dash cam.

Watch the video here.

Proposed Law Riddled with Misguided Symbolism

A great editorial from The Seattle Times on the misguided symbolism of a proposed law that would exempt personal information on law-enforcement employee's from the state's Public Disclosure Act. The proposed law is redundant of existing state law that already protects public employees' home addresses, home phone numbers, and Social Security numbers.

The House Majority Leader says the legislation should be enacted for its symbolism, as a gesture of appreciation for the law enforcement community, which has lost police officers in recent killings.

Investigation into Use of Confiscated World Series Tickets to be Public

Writing that, "if anyone should obey the law, the Metropolitan Police Department should," a judge in St. Louis order the Board of Commissioners to release records of the investigation of police officers who let family and friends use dozens of 2006 World Series tickets that had been confiscated from scalpers. Circuit Judge Philip D. Heagney said the board ignored open records laws and court decisions.

Heagney rejected the arguments of the police lawyers that the report should be kept from public scrutiny because it did not involve criminal activity, only personnel issues exempt under the law.

For more regarding the decision and the disciplinary actions taken against the police officers, click here.

Appellate court says police internal affairs reports are public

The 4th District Appellate Court ruled that police internal affairs reports are public records, The State Journal-Register reported. The court said this is so no matter what the results of the investigation are. The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by a dentist who complained that a sheriff's deputy roughed him up for driving improperly during a kidney-stone attack. The dentist, Mark Gekas, didn't sue for excessive force but only after the department didn't turn over copies of the internal affairs report to him.

Police internal affairs files are public records, even if investigators conclude that accused officers did nothing wrong, a state appeals court has ruled.

The decision came Monday in a lawsuit filed by Springfield dentist Mark Gekas, who says he was roughed up by Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy John Gillette during a 2006 traffic stop.

Gekas sued Sheriff Neil Williamson after the department refused to give him copies of internal affairs reports. The department said the records are part of Gillette’s personnel file and that making them public would violate the deputy’s right to privacy.

More here.

Number of 'unfounded' rape cases surprises Mo. police

The Southeast Missourian spent 10 months investigating rape cases that police determined had never happened or were "unfounded." The National Sexual Violence Resource Center found that 3 to 8 percent of rape reports turn out to be unfounded. Missouri is on the high end at 8 percent. "Police departments in larger Missouri cities like Springfield and St. Louis reflected much lower numbers of unfounded rape cases than Cape Girardeau," the Southeast Missourian found. In Cape Girardeau, 51 percent of the 53 reported rape cases from 2006-2008 were unfounded.

Fifty-three women have reported rapes in the last three years to Cape Girardeau police.

Police investigators determined that just over half of those rapes were "unfounded" or that they never occurred. That number is six times higher than what is reported across the state, according to the highway patrol.

Rape is one of the most difficult crimes to investigate. The evidence often boils down to one person's word against another's, making rapes difficult to prove in court.

More here.

Proposal for racial data on traffic stops would keep records secret

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle's proposed budget would require 11 counties to compile records on traffic stops in order to determine if racial profiling is occurring, the Journal Sentinel reported. However, the records would be exempt from public record laws. This information is already included in police reports and considered public record, but the proposal would require the data to be organized into a record, which would not be public, for the Department of Justice.

Gov. Jim Doyle wants law enforcement in Wisconsin's 11 largest counties to compile data from traffic stops to determine whether racial profiling is occurring.

The proposal, contained in Doyle's budget bill, also would keep those records secret.

That has open government advocates bewildered. Why keep from the public data that could point to a problem or show that there isn't a problem, they wonder.

More here.

Troopers illegally shoot deer, try to win prize

FOI at Work!

The Traverse City Record-Eagle obtained investigative reports concerning a deer shot illegally by a Michigan State Police trooper from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources via an FOI request. The records show that Jeffrey Hadley and Donald Bolen shot the buck while on duty. They later loaded it into the back of the patrol vehicle, sawed off its head and antlers and discarded the rest of the animal. They claimed the blood and hair in the back of the patrol car stemmed from them transporting a road-kill deer to a needy family. Hadley later tried to enter the deer's rack in a troopers' big-buck contest.

A Michigan State Police trooper who illegally "shined" and shot a 10-point buck while on duty in a state patrol vehicle tried to enter the ill-gotten deer's antlers in a troopers' big-buck contest.

Troopers and patrol partners Jeffrey Hadley, 45, and Donald Bolen, 41, both of Cheboygan, illegally killed a buck sometime after midnight on Nov. 13 -- two days before the firearms deer season -- along Mograin Road in Cheboygan County's Benton Township.

The poaching incident kick-started the troopers' clumsy, six-week attempt to cover their tracks, though Hadley spent part of that time boasting of his monster buck and attempted to enter its rack in a contest.

More here.

Clipboard disappears but reports will soon appear online

The Savannah-Chatham County police agreed to post a list of all reports on its Web site each morning. The comprehensive list had been available on a clipboard at the front desk until the department converted to a paperless, electronic system on Dec. 24. The department had discontinued providing a comprehensive list (even though copies of individual reports could still be obtained), which led to a complaint from the Savannah Morning News.

The Savannah Morning News has settled a dispute with Savannah-Chatham County police over public access to police reports after the department agreed to post a daily list of all reports on its Web site.

The agreement resolves a complaint the newspaper made to Attorney General Thurbert Baker last month accusing the police department of violating the Georgia Open Records Act by suspending unfiltered access to daily incident reports.

For years, Savannah police compiled copies of the latest reports, which are public records by law and total about 300 daily, and kept them on a clipboard at the front desk. Combing through the reports for news stories was a daily ritual for police reporters.

More here.

Arguments heard in World Series ticket scandal

A St. Louis circuit judge on Thursday heard arguments for and against opening files from the city Police Department's internal investigation into officers' misuse of 2006 World Series tickets seized from scalpers.

Activist John Chasnoff filed a Sunshine Law suit in 2007 to get access to the investigative files; the Police Department has argued that the files should remain closed.

Earlier this month, Judge Philip Heagney ordered the department to provide Chasnoff with the initial complaint that sparked the investigation, saying it was clearly a public record under Missouri laws. After Thursday's hearing, Heagney said he did not know when he would issue a ruling on the investigative files. Both sides said they would appeal any decision against them.

More here.

Roanoke Times files second open records suit of the month

After the city of Radford, Va., heavily redacted parts of FOIA requests related to an internal city investigation of a harassment complaint, The Roanoke Times filed suit. Earlier this month, the newspaper challenged the sheriff's office policy of withholding photos of inmates released on bond.

The Roanoke Times filed suit Monday against the city of Radford over the city's decision to withhold portions of documents the newspaper sought under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

The lawsuit -- technically called a "writ of mandamus" -- centers around two FOIA requests filed with Radford officials in August and September by Roanoke Times reporter Tim Thornton. Among other things, Thornton asked the city to provide him copies of any other FOIA requests the city received between June 15 and Sept. 18.

In response to Thornton's requests, City Attorney Jim Guynn provided heavily redacted copies of two FOIA requests, erasing names and other pertinent information and in one case excluding two pages of a two-and-a-half-page document.

More here.

Free Press FOIA request culiminates in Detroit mayor admitting he lied

The Detroit Free Press outlines the legal battles since its first Freedom of Information Act request made in October 2007 up until Thursday's confession by the Detroit mayor that he committed perjury.

On Oct. 19, 2007, the Free Press submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for all documents in the police whistle-blower settlement that cost the City of Detroit $8.4 million. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and lawyers then schemed to hide the documents and cover up lies he told under oath in the lawsuit.

But then things unraveled for the mayor: The Free Press published text messages that exposed his lies, County Prosecutor Kym Worthy charged him with eight felonies, and courts ruled that the documents were, in fact, public.

On Thursday, the mayor finally acknowledged his lies, signifying a victory for freedom of the press, the Freedom of Information Act itself, the public's right to know -- and the idea that violating an oath to tell the truth carries severe consequences.

More here.

The Free Press also has an interesting article on the three laws that led to Kilpatrick's demise: the Michigan Freedom of Information Act, Whistle-blowers' Protection Act and a shield-type law for Michigan journalists.

Read more here.

Now THAT is Good News!

The Meridian, Mississippi, Police Department and Lauderdale County Sheriff's Department readily complied this week to a new state law that makes law enforcement incident reports public record.

Both agencies provided full reports — complete with narrative descriptions of the incidents — within an hour of the requests.

"The information that is released through the initial incident report in the case will not affect the investigation of that case," said Lauderdale County Sheriff Billy Sollie Wednesday. "I don't see where anything will change for us."

The new law clarifies that incident reports are public records. The reports through a narrative will give basic information when someone is arrested, such as who is involved and where and when an alleged crime took place. The bill was pushed by the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information and other open-government groups. Law officers can withhold names of confidential informants.

More here.

A Rather Interesting FOI Data Request...

A Cook County judge ruled Monday that the Chicago Police Department does not have to turn over the underlying data from a controversial study on eyewitness identification methods that critics and academics have called junk social science.

Defense lawyers led by a group from Northwestern University Law School's Roderick MacArthur Justice Center sued the city and the Police Department to get the data from a 2006 study led by a Police Department lawyer.

The study purported to show that the traditional method of police lineups in which witnesses see all the subjects at once was more accurate than a method in which witnesses are shown subjects one at a time by an officer who does not know the identity of the suspect.

Although academics have dismissed the Chicago study as unscientific, several law enforcement agencies across the country have held it up as a bulwark against changing their own lineup procedures, said Scott Ehlers of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, a lobbying group that filed the suit.