OAKLAND, Calif. (CN) — Citing a pattern of consistent stonewalling, investigative journalists have taken the Oakland Police Department to court to force it to comply with state public records laws.
Two petitions brought in Alameda County Superior Court claim the department routinely ignores public records requests, professing a commitment to transparency even as thousands of open Public Records Act requests languish in their system.
One petition, filed Aug. 19 but made available by the court Wednesday, claims the department offers only a standardized automatic response to thousands of requests — if it replies at all.
The Oakland Police Department, like any other government agency, must comply with the California Public Records Act’s strict response deadline of 10 days, plus an additional 14 days if it invokes a specific exemption. But the department is also required to “promptly notify the person making the request of the determination and the reasons therefor” by disclosing whether it has responsive records or whether it will be withholding them under a statutory exception.
The journalists say the department has done neither, adding that it also flouts the Sunshine Ordinance enacted by Oakland enacted to bolster the CPRA.
"In the last two years alone, OPD has not provided a sufficient determination in response to approximately half of its PRA requests,” says the petition brought by East Bay journalists Scott Morris, Sarah Belle Lin, Brian Krans, the watchdog group Oakland Privacy and its research director Michael Katz, all of whom regularly investigate the department.
Instead, the department either ignores the request or issues a “boilerplate” response: “Our agency is in the process of reviewing your requested records to determine what information can be released in accordance with the California Public Records Act. All records must be reviewed and in some cases redaction may be necessary. Due to the department’s limited staffing resources and numerous public records requests received, our agency needs additional time to respond to your request. All records that are not exempt with be provided within 30 days.”
But the petitioners say that “despite these clear mandates, OPD routinely and systematically ignores the law,” adding the department regularly extends its own self-imposed 30-day deadline without explanation.
"OPD thus lulls requesters into a false sense that it is actively compiling records when in fact it is not,” the petition says.
“It's demoralizing,” said independent Oakland journalist Scott Morris. He’s been a reporter in Oakland for 10 years, and his work has appeared in East Bay Express, Oakland Magazine, Berkeleyside, and The Appeal. In an interview Tuesday, he said the department has always been slow to respond to his request for documents.
"They might send back some messages and say they’re short-staffed, but honestly it can take well over a year sometimes to get any responsive records out of them — and that requires me haranguing them constantly.”
Attorney Sam Ferguson with the Meade Firm is representing Scott and a proposed class of what could be a thousand people and organizations who have open public records act requests with the department.
"At some point the OPD ignores people for long enough that they just give up asking for records and that's something we've heard over and over again,” Ferguson said.
"Some of the plaintiffs in our lawsuit happen to be particularly diligent about following up but that's not the way the PRA is structured. The onus is not on the requester to make sure the agency is complying with the law.”
In 2018, Oakland switched to a new online portal called “NextRequest,” for records requests, allowing the public to view and track their requests and filter them between “open” and “closed.”