5 ms·
As part of some volunteer work I'm doing with Lucy Parsons Labs, I submitted a FOIA request to every single state's largest city, asking for search warrant reco
by chaps 7y ago
As part of some volunteer work I'm doing with Lucy Parsons Labs, I submitted a FOIA request to every single state's largest city, asking for search warrant records that would likely exist on complaints for search warrants, the warrants themselves, or from any audit. About 100 requests in total.
After two months, only two cities have sent me their search warrant records. All other states have given me rejections saying:
1. The records are on paper and never transcribed.
2. The records are digital, but there's no way to query from a frontend.
3. The records are digital and queryable, but the agency considers the use of queries "creating reports", where tons of states have case law backing this up.
4. Nothing, because they haven't responded yet.
So far I've received three enormous fee estimations of ~500k, ~400k and ~150k. Obviously not affordable.
Chicago is one of the few cities that sent records (though, it took a year). They've sent three separately sized files for the same timeframe - 11k rows, 9k rows, and 20k rows. The data is messy, and there is some very important info missing from their records. Can't speak too much about it yet, since I'm still confirming the reasons. It's been blindingly frustrating trying to get a consistent message about whether the data is even accurate.
All this goes to show that police agencies don't make records on search warrants even remotely easily available to the public, and we have no way of gauging whether our constitutional rights are being upheld throughout the US. It's honestly very sad.
If you want to support this work and our other projects, please consider a donation to Lucy Parsons Labs: https://lucyparsonslabs.com/support/ https://lucyparsonslabs.com/support/
- mrandish 7y agoThanks for sharing. Sounds like a useful project. > don't make records on search warrants even remotely easily available to the public, It seems like the right reform would be for all approved search warrants to be automatically posted online one year after issuance.
- jammygit 7y agoIf an innocent person had a warrant issued for them, and they were cleared, I bet employers would still routinely query those records if they were able to. It could affect people’s lives if it was too public
- chaps 7y agoThis is a non-issue within the context of these requests. The only names that I am requesting are the names of the officers and judges involved. The requests are not seeking any names of anyone the search warrants are meant for.
- vageli 7y ago> If an innocent person had a warrant issued for them, and they were cleared, I bet employers would still routinely query those records if they were able to. It could affect people’s lives if it was too public I know it is unlawful to ask about arrests without convictions as a precursor to employment in at least a few jurisdictions in the US. [0] [0]: https://www.workplacefairness.org/criminal-records-workplace#7 https://www.workplacefairness.org/criminal-records-workplace...
- hanniabu 7y agoAhhh, good ol' government inefficiencies and obfuscation. I have no faith in there ever being efficient systems in place because it'll just make it harder to hide shady behavior.
- qrbLPHiKpiux 7y agoThat’s how it’s been developed, continues, and planned. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be like this.
- jammygit 7y agoThanks for your work
- lysp 7y agoThere is a similar problem with FOI requests in Australia. It's not there to get information, it's there to give the appearance that they give information. The most used excuse here is it will take "too many resources". They often follow the same set of steps to legally delay or prevent information going out. There is a FOI ombudsman, but they are so swamped the backlog is enormous.
- CobrastanJorji 7y agoI wonder, are court records generated by the issuing of warrants? If so, I imagine you could have gone at it from the other direction and simply gotten a list of warrants and looked for terms that looked stingray-ish. So maybe warrants aren't actually recorded in court records?
- vageli 7y ago> I wonder, are court records generated by the issuing of warrants? If so, I imagine you could have gone at it from the other direction and simply gotten a list of warrants and looked for terms that looked stingray-ish. So maybe warrants aren't actually recorded in court records? That's probably the case as I believe warrants can be requested even when court is not on session. As someone who has sat in court a couple times I can say the only warrant I ever saw a judge issue was a bench warrant.
- Gaelan 7y agoDo you happen to have a city-by-city breakdown of the responses anywhere?
- chaps 7y agoNothing yet, but I hope to get something in the next couple weeks. Here are all of the requests, including their responses: https://www.muckrock.com/project/search-warrant-data-608/ https://www.muckrock.com/project/search-warrant-data-608/
- 4AoZqrH2fsk5UB 7y agoDo you have a template for this? I'd like to submit such a request to my own city.
- chaps 7y agoYep, please check out the requests at: https://www.muckrock.com/project/search-warrant-data-608/ https://www.muckrock.com/project/search-warrant-data-608/ It'd be a good idea to limit the set of record points to only those that you're interested in.