6 ms·

Court blocks Inglewood from destroying police disciplinary records

98 points by alphabettsy 5y ago

MisterBastahrd 5y ago
What is the cost of storing public records versus destroying them? I'm betting there isn't really that much of a difference given the main consideration is digital, not space.
- zepto 5y ago
  Is it? The records date back to 1991. Possibly a lot of them were still paper at that time.
- kingcharles 5y ago
  It's not the physical cost, it's the PR cost. A lot of the time the public body doesn't know what is in its files until someone makes a request, then they read the record and realize how many skeletons they have in their closet. No records = no skeletons; no bad PR. Better to destroy everything all of the time.
- ssklash 5y ago
  The key attribute of these records is disciplinary. Which just so happen to be subject to an unfulfilled freedom of information request. This is called police corruption.
- alphabettsy 5y ago
  The cost is likely PR and Legal. Appeals and investigations as a result of what the public might find could be very expensive and/or embarrassing.
- decebalus1 5y ago
  There are three costs basically: - storage, which is pretty darn cheap, easy to predict, easy to budget for, etc.. - retrieval for FOIA, which is easily quantified in workhours and sometimes deferred via fees. - liability, which is very hard to quantify, considering you never know what skeleton a nosy citizen would be able to uncover. The latter is mainly the reason public records disappear. I'm glad most parts of the US are still in the 'let's take this to court' territory. We should be very afraid if we go into the 'an unfortunate accident destroyed all the records' area of dealing with this stuff.
- sergers 5y ago
  As others have stated for legal liability purposes. If you werent legally required to store documents or there is a limitation on length, you wouldn't want to continue to store those records. I work alongside hospital radiology systems. Large organizations only keep what's required and are looking to purge all else (like deleting mammos after 15 years, pediatrics after 21... Requirements vary state to state in USA). So if a patient comes suing you with a malpractice in the future, they can say they no longer have the records (as they only kept till legally required). I doubt they would win a case solely on this but would definately help them. A vendor created a cloud archive solution for reports/images, with unlimited retention. Customers (hospital organizations) are demanding features for purging data aka "retention management". So I bet this happens in all industries/businesses
  - zaphar 5y ago
    There is more to the liability than just the threat of malpractice. Holding data of a sensitive nature means you might accidentally leak that data. The more you hold the worse the leak is. Being able to delete that data enables you to somewhat control the blast radius of a leak.
  - nieve 5y ago
    It's not just the non-police record holder's own liability, it's very common to be subpoenaed over a case you're not party to and those can easily turn into expensive fishing expeditions. No excuse for the cops and pretty clearly those requests can be entirely legit, but there are other organizations that have financial reasons to see old records as a liability. One employer that got massive numbers of subpoenas had a business requirement forbidding audit trails and logging because as soon as a lawyer saw any sign of logging they'd go digging. We were never sued, we were just a convenient source of legal ammunition.
swlp21 5y ago
I think there is an important word missing from the title, it is Police /Disciplinary/ Records that are being referenced. That is a significant difference and there is a very strong case that these should be retained in exactly the same way criminal records are retained (essentially forever) and for the same purpose - so they can be looked up and referenced should any officer come to attention and a fuller picture of their character is required.
- alphabettsy 5y ago
  Good point. Done.
- onphonenow 5y ago
  Is this the case with criminal records? There was a rumor that in the Rittenhouse case, one of the other folks involved had a much much larger actual criminal history then the one they released, but that a lot of the history was hidden in various ways? This was supposedly misinformation but the details were pretty specific, and they seemed to indicate that there might be a method to basically hide past convictions so a full picture would not be available. Has anyone heard of something called "Expungement"? Google got me to these guys: https://www.record-clear.com/ https://www.record-clear.com/ They claim even felonies can be removed, even if there are probation violations etc.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >There was a rumor that in the Rittenhouse case, one of the other folks involved had a much much larger actual criminal history then the one they released, but that a lot of the history was hidden in various ways? As an aside, there's a ~2hr video floating around the internet of bodycam footage from arm guy's DUI arrest between the shooting and the trail. They dropped it, presumably because an active DUI case makes for a crappy prosecution witness. Police officers don't even get treatment that good. If they get as far as being cited (vs a free ride home, which is what they often get) the prosecution typically makes them plead down and spend thousands doing so rather than just dropping it. That said, the DUI in question is an example of a lot of things that are wrong with policing (the cops in the video are professional and civil the whole time) and I think it's worth watching just for that.
kingcharles 5y ago
Most states have zero or minimal statutes requiring document retention by public bodies. I know several times I have requested documents from public bodies only to have them immediately throw them in the garbage so that they do not have to disclose them. I even took this to the appellate courts at one point as the argument was whether documents in the garbage are still in the possession of the public body. They said they weren't, I said they were. Courts ruled with the public body. (One of my arguments was also that they can put them in the garbage at the time of the request, write the denial letter, and then pull them back out of the garbage)
- sumthinprofound 5y ago
  most states absolutely do have document retention schedules for state/municipal agencies.
kingcharles 5y ago
Having police disciplinary records is important for criminal defendants. Sometimes prosecutors keep what is called "Brady Lists" of all the cops who are known liars who should be kept away from the witness stand or else their credibility will be ruined and the prosecutor will lose their case. So prosecutors have tried to keep these lists secret because they need bogus cops as these cops will go to any lengths to convict a person, just like the prosecutor's office. If the disciplinary records can be destroyed then this is a huge bonus for the government as without them the cops are totally clean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_v._Maryland#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_v._Maryland#Aftermath In my criminal case, of the two officers that indicted me, one badly beat an unarmed Mexican man who had committed no crime and then lied about it to the investigators saying that the man "ran into the front of the squad car" (luckily the investigators believed the passers-by who testified); the other cop was caught making up fake search warrants to go through people's houses, but managed to wriggle out of the charges and quit the force to avoid anything further. [in the first case the prosecutors have never disclosed the misconduct; in the second they were very proactive in disclosure]
- user982 5y ago
  Here's a recent example of this in action: ...the racist exchanges have led to the dismissal of at least 85 criminal cases involving the officers implicated in the scandal. It's possible this hatred and misconduct would never have been exposed. But two officers apparently felt untouchable enough that they felt comfortable spray-painting a swastika on a vehicle they towed following a report of mail theft. Several of those officers have been investigated for deploying excessive force or killing citizens. In almost every case, they've been cleared of wrongdoing. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211212/15551548112/california-police-officers-bigoted-text-messages-have-just-undone-dozens-felony-cases.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211212/15551548112/calif...
  - dundarious 5y ago
    Excerpt from another article on the same events, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-08/torrance-police-traded-racist-homophobic-texts-it-could-jeopardize-hundreds-of-cases https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-08/torrance... > In the Mitchell case, that could be especially concerning. According to district attorney’s records reviewed by The Times, Concannon once sent a troubling text message referring to a deposition he gave in an “officer-involved shooting.” > “They believed our lies. Good job sticking to the script,” he wrote. “LMAO, that’s what they call a W.” > According to a Times review of public records, Concannon has shot only one person during his career: Christopher DeAndre Mitchell. Referring to this case, where it was found to be "lawful self-defense": https://da.lacounty.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/JSID_OIS_10_2019_Mitchell.pdf https://da.lacounty.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/JSID_OIS_10_... Obviously this is totally inconclusive and in no way proves Concannon's guilt, but note the obstruction of the bodycam for the crucial moments: > In the body worn footage, Concannon appeared to move slightly back along the side of the car as he put away his flashlight. Concannon’s left hand can be seen coming up to brace his firing hand on the service weapon. After the shift to a two-handed firing position, the body worn camera’s view of Mitchell was obstructed by Concannon’s hands. As a result, Mitchell is not visible on the body worn footage during the three seconds preceding the first shot. Concannon can be heard on the video repeating the command, “Get out of the car!” more forcefully during this interval. About one second after repeating that command, the first shot was fired.
alphabettsy 5y ago
Meanwhile, police departments around NY state are just ignoring the requests. https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2021/12/06/new-york-police-department-freedom-information-requests-50-a-records/8568638002/ https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2021/12/06/n...
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  It's long been a trope that Police aren't responsive to the citizens they nominally serve, but nowadays they aren't even controlled by the political leaders of their municipalities. Heck, it's not that uncommon to see cops threatening politicians and just ... getting away with it.
  - craftinator 5y ago
    It's a rough time when the 2nd Amendment gun nuts start to look prescient.
    - philovivero 5y ago
      When did they start to look prescient? 1776? Or was it earlier?
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        If the standards that were applied to police use of force were applied equally to all people there would be a lot less dubious use of police force.
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        It’s worth reiterating that police are effectively above the law, criminally and civilly. Aside from the obvious conflicts of interest between police and prosecutors, there is a court invented[0] principle that says that cops are immune to even civil suits if they violate your rights. This can only be breached if the courts had previous ruled that their specific actions[1] violated your rights. Since cops can’t go to trial for new abuses, new precedent isn’t being made and cops are for all intents and purposes immune. 0 - Funny how the anti-“activist judges” crowd is silent about the Supreme Court making this doctrine up out of whole cloth. 1 - Down to the terrain in which the abuse happened.
notyourwork 5y ago
A police force without transparency is as good as a politician who doesn't want equal opportunity voting. These are not people that represent my best interests. It is being irritating that the bodies of our country that are intended to support, represent and carry us are the same ones that try to tear us down and hold us back from prospering.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  As a general rule, the truth of moral-institutional declarations by public figures is inversely proportional to their frequency and fervency.
  - notyourwork 5y ago
    As I've gotten older, my conclusion is all people are just people. Not all Doctors are best in class, some are shit. Not all politicians want to be there for the good of people, and maybe some do. Overall everyone is on a spectrum of really extremes with most falling in the middle. It does seem the outliers are the ones that society props up and puts in the lime light. Idk, maybe I'm jaded but sometimes I look at this and sort of laugh that we have not blown this planet up yet.
bmitc 5y ago
> “This premise that there was an intent to beat the clock is ridiculous,” Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. said at the time. It has become surreal that public officials can get away with blatantly lying these days. Edit: Interestingly enough, the mayor is not white, which surprised me at first given this stance, but then I found that the mayor came up through law enforcement, was deputy chief in Inglewood, and chief of police in Santa Monica. This is what people talk about when police are viewed as the state-sanctioned gang.
- vmception 5y ago
  its ACAB spray painted everywhere, not AWCAB, for a reason the incentive model is broken part, and that incentive model is highly correlated with attracting recruits of different extremes, but its the incentive model under focus
- Rebelgecko 5y ago
  I don't think it should be particularly surprising. Inglewood is 4% white. (Although that percentage is increasing as the city rapidly gentrifies) For better or for worse people are predisposed to vote for elected officials that have the same ethnicity. I was somewhat surprised when I looked at the neighborhood by neighborhood results from the last California gubernatorial primary. You can use whether a precinct voted for Newsom, Villaraigosa, or Chiang as a pretty good proxy for that area's racial demographics. Anyways, Butts is mostly known for being a grifter who gives 6 figure jobs to his mistresses and multimillion dollar contracts to his relatives. I think it's just regular corruption, I don't particularly buy the gang argument (although maybe that explains why he drove his SUV over an LAPD officer a few years ago)
gnud 5y ago
Hmm. Are they straight up lying here, or am I missing something? First, “The attached records are no longer required to be retained by law and are not needed for any pending litigation.” Then, later, "The city of Inglewood said in court declarations that some records requested by the ACLU should be temporarily withheld pending ongoing investigations."
literallyaduck 5y ago
"Rather than destroying them we now store them all together unsorted in a giant box under the water pipe for the building. Hope nothing happens!"
xbar 5y ago
US municipal police departments require a lot more change before they are going to start achieving their stated missions.
- ssklash 5y ago
  Depending on your perspective, they are achieving their stated missions, quite successfully. They do not specify who they are protecting and serving, but there is certainly a class of people who are quite well protected and served by police.
some_furry 5y ago
https://archive.md/rAgI0 https://archive.md/rAgI0

98 points by alphabettsy 5y ago

What is the cost of storing public records versus destroying them? I'm betting there isn't really that much of a difference given the main consideration is digital, not space.

zepto 5y ago
Is it? The records date back to 1991. Possibly a lot of them were still paper at that time.
kingcharles 5y ago
It's not the physical cost, it's the PR cost. A lot of the time the public body doesn't know what is in its files until someone makes a request, then they read the record and realize how many skeletons they have in their closet. No records = no skeletons; no bad PR. Better to destroy everything all of the time.
ssklash 5y ago
The key attribute of these records is disciplinary. Which just so happen to be subject to an unfulfilled freedom of information request. This is called police corruption.
alphabettsy 5y ago
The cost is likely PR and Legal. Appeals and investigations as a result of what the public might find could be very expensive and/or embarrassing.
decebalus1 5y ago
There are three costs basically: - storage, which is pretty darn cheap, easy to predict, easy to budget for, etc.. - retrieval for FOIA, which is easily quantified in workhours and sometimes deferred via fees. - liability, which is very hard to quantify, considering you never know what skeleton a nosy citizen would be able to uncover. The latter is mainly the reason public records disappear. I'm glad most parts of the US are still in the 'let's take this to court' territory. We should be very afraid if we go into the 'an unfortunate accident destroyed all the records' area of dealing with this stuff.
sergers 5y ago
As others have stated for legal liability purposes. If you werent legally required to store documents or there is a limitation on length, you wouldn't want to continue to store those records. I work alongside hospital radiology systems. Large organizations only keep what's required and are looking to purge all else (like deleting mammos after 15 years, pediatrics after 21... Requirements vary state to state in USA). So if a patient comes suing you with a malpractice in the future, they can say they no longer have the records (as they only kept till legally required). I doubt they would win a case solely on this but would definately help them. A vendor created a cloud archive solution for reports/images, with unlimited retention. Customers (hospital organizations) are demanding features for purging data aka "retention management". So I bet this happens in all industries/businesses
- zaphar 5y ago
  There is more to the liability than just the threat of malpractice. Holding data of a sensitive nature means you might accidentally leak that data. The more you hold the worse the leak is. Being able to delete that data enables you to somewhat control the blast radius of a leak.
- nieve 5y ago
  It's not just the non-police record holder's own liability, it's very common to be subpoenaed over a case you're not party to and those can easily turn into expensive fishing expeditions. No excuse for the cops and pretty clearly those requests can be entirely legit, but there are other organizations that have financial reasons to see old records as a liability. One employer that got massive numbers of subpoenas had a business requirement forbidding audit trails and logging because as soon as a lawyer saw any sign of logging they'd go digging. We were never sued, we were just a convenient source of legal ammunition.

swlp21 5y ago

I think there is an important word missing from the title, it is Police /Disciplinary/ Records that are being referenced. That is a significant difference and there is a very strong case that these should be retained in exactly the same way criminal records are retained (essentially forever) and for the same purpose - so they can be looked up and referenced should any officer come to attention and a fuller picture of their character is required.

alphabettsy 5y ago
Good point. Done.
onphonenow 5y ago
Is this the case with criminal records? There was a rumor that in the Rittenhouse case, one of the other folks involved had a much much larger actual criminal history then the one they released, but that a lot of the history was hidden in various ways? This was supposedly misinformation but the details were pretty specific, and they seemed to indicate that there might be a method to basically hide past convictions so a full picture would not be available. Has anyone heard of something called "Expungement"? Google got me to these guys: https://www.record-clear.com/ https://www.record-clear.com/ They claim even felonies can be removed, even if there are probation violations etc.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >There was a rumor that in the Rittenhouse case, one of the other folks involved had a much much larger actual criminal history then the one they released, but that a lot of the history was hidden in various ways? As an aside, there's a ~2hr video floating around the internet of bodycam footage from arm guy's DUI arrest between the shooting and the trail. They dropped it, presumably because an active DUI case makes for a crappy prosecution witness. Police officers don't even get treatment that good. If they get as far as being cited (vs a free ride home, which is what they often get) the prosecution typically makes them plead down and spend thousands doing so rather than just dropping it. That said, the DUI in question is an example of a lot of things that are wrong with policing (the cops in the video are professional and civil the whole time) and I think it's worth watching just for that.

kingcharles 5y ago

Most states have zero or minimal statutes requiring document retention by public bodies. I know several times I have requested documents from public bodies only to have them immediately throw them in the garbage so that they do not have to disclose them. I even took this to the appellate courts at one point as the argument was whether documents in the garbage are still in the possession of the public body. They said they weren't, I said they were. Courts ruled with the public body. (One of my arguments was also that they can put them in the garbage at the time of the request, write the denial letter, and then pull them back out of the garbage)

sumthinprofound 5y ago
most states absolutely do have document retention schedules for state/municipal agencies.

kingcharles 5y ago

Having police disciplinary records is important for criminal defendants. Sometimes prosecutors keep what is called "Brady Lists" of all the cops who are known liars who should be kept away from the witness stand or else their credibility will be ruined and the prosecutor will lose their case. So prosecutors have tried to keep these lists secret because they need bogus cops as these cops will go to any lengths to convict a person, just like the prosecutor's office. If the disciplinary records can be destroyed then this is a huge bonus for the government as without them the cops are totally clean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_v._Maryland#Aftermath https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_v._Maryland#Aftermath In my criminal case, of the two officers that indicted me, one badly beat an unarmed Mexican man who had committed no crime and then lied about it to the investigators saying that the man "ran into the front of the squad car" (luckily the investigators believed the passers-by who testified); the other cop was caught making up fake search warrants to go through people's houses, but managed to wriggle out of the charges and quit the force to avoid anything further. [in the first case the prosecutors have never disclosed the misconduct; in the second they were very proactive in disclosure]

user982 5y ago
Here's a recent example of this in action: ...the racist exchanges have led to the dismissal of at least 85 criminal cases involving the officers implicated in the scandal. It's possible this hatred and misconduct would never have been exposed. But two officers apparently felt untouchable enough that they felt comfortable spray-painting a swastika on a vehicle they towed following a report of mail theft. Several of those officers have been investigated for deploying excessive force or killing citizens. In almost every case, they've been cleared of wrongdoing. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211212/15551548112/california-police-officers-bigoted-text-messages-have-just-undone-dozens-felony-cases.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20211212/15551548112/calif...
- dundarious 5y ago
  Excerpt from another article on the same events, https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-08/torrance-police-traded-racist-homophobic-texts-it-could-jeopardize-hundreds-of-cases https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-08/torrance... > In the Mitchell case, that could be especially concerning. According to district attorney’s records reviewed by The Times, Concannon once sent a troubling text message referring to a deposition he gave in an “officer-involved shooting.” > “They believed our lies. Good job sticking to the script,” he wrote. “LMAO, that’s what they call a W.” > According to a Times review of public records, Concannon has shot only one person during his career: Christopher DeAndre Mitchell. Referring to this case, where it was found to be "lawful self-defense": https://da.lacounty.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/JSID_OIS_10_2019_Mitchell.pdf https://da.lacounty.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/JSID_OIS_10_... Obviously this is totally inconclusive and in no way proves Concannon's guilt, but note the obstruction of the bodycam for the crucial moments: > In the body worn footage, Concannon appeared to move slightly back along the side of the car as he put away his flashlight. Concannon’s left hand can be seen coming up to brace his firing hand on the service weapon. After the shift to a two-handed firing position, the body worn camera’s view of Mitchell was obstructed by Concannon’s hands. As a result, Mitchell is not visible on the body worn footage during the three seconds preceding the first shot. Concannon can be heard on the video repeating the command, “Get out of the car!” more forcefully during this interval. About one second after repeating that command, the first shot was fired.

alphabettsy 5y ago

Meanwhile, police departments around NY state are just ignoring the requests. https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2021/12/06/new-york-police-department-freedom-information-requests-50-a-records/8568638002/ https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2021/12/06/n...

ashtonkem 5y ago
It's long been a trope that Police aren't responsive to the citizens they nominally serve, but nowadays they aren't even controlled by the political leaders of their municipalities. Heck, it's not that uncommon to see cops threatening politicians and just ... getting away with it.
- craftinator 5y ago
  It's a rough time when the 2nd Amendment gun nuts start to look prescient.
  - philovivero 5y ago
    When did they start to look prescient? 1776? Or was it earlier?
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      If the standards that were applied to police use of force were applied equally to all people there would be a lot less dubious use of police force.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        It’s worth reiterating that police are effectively above the law, criminally and civilly. Aside from the obvious conflicts of interest between police and prosecutors, there is a court invented[0] principle that says that cops are immune to even civil suits if they violate your rights. This can only be breached if the courts had previous ruled that their specific actions[1] violated your rights. Since cops can’t go to trial for new abuses, new precedent isn’t being made and cops are for all intents and purposes immune. 0 - Funny how the anti-“activist judges” crowd is silent about the Supreme Court making this doctrine up out of whole cloth. 1 - Down to the terrain in which the abuse happened.

notyourwork 5y ago

A police force without transparency is as good as a politician who doesn't want equal opportunity voting. These are not people that represent my best interests. It is being irritating that the bodies of our country that are intended to support, represent and carry us are the same ones that try to tear us down and hold us back from prospering.

anigbrowl 5y ago
As a general rule, the truth of moral-institutional declarations by public figures is inversely proportional to their frequency and fervency.
- notyourwork 5y ago
  As I've gotten older, my conclusion is all people are just people. Not all Doctors are best in class, some are shit. Not all politicians want to be there for the good of people, and maybe some do. Overall everyone is on a spectrum of really extremes with most falling in the middle. It does seem the outliers are the ones that society props up and puts in the lime light. Idk, maybe I'm jaded but sometimes I look at this and sort of laugh that we have not blown this planet up yet.

bmitc 5y ago

> “This premise that there was an intent to beat the clock is ridiculous,” Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. said at the time. It has become surreal that public officials can get away with blatantly lying these days. Edit: Interestingly enough, the mayor is not white, which surprised me at first given this stance, but then I found that the mayor came up through law enforcement, was deputy chief in Inglewood, and chief of police in Santa Monica. This is what people talk about when police are viewed as the state-sanctioned gang.

vmception 5y ago
its ACAB spray painted everywhere, not AWCAB, for a reason the incentive model is broken part, and that incentive model is highly correlated with attracting recruits of different extremes, but its the incentive model under focus
Rebelgecko 5y ago
I don't think it should be particularly surprising. Inglewood is 4% white. (Although that percentage is increasing as the city rapidly gentrifies) For better or for worse people are predisposed to vote for elected officials that have the same ethnicity. I was somewhat surprised when I looked at the neighborhood by neighborhood results from the last California gubernatorial primary. You can use whether a precinct voted for Newsom, Villaraigosa, or Chiang as a pretty good proxy for that area's racial demographics. Anyways, Butts is mostly known for being a grifter who gives 6 figure jobs to his mistresses and multimillion dollar contracts to his relatives. I think it's just regular corruption, I don't particularly buy the gang argument (although maybe that explains why he drove his SUV over an LAPD officer a few years ago)

gnud 5y ago

Hmm. Are they straight up lying here, or am I missing something? First, “The attached records are no longer required to be retained by law and are not needed for any pending litigation.” Then, later, "The city of Inglewood said in court declarations that some records requested by the ACLU should be temporarily withheld pending ongoing investigations."

literallyaduck 5y ago

"Rather than destroying them we now store them all together unsorted in a giant box under the water pipe for the building. Hope nothing happens!"

xbar 5y ago

US municipal police departments require a lot more change before they are going to start achieving their stated missions.

ssklash 5y ago
Depending on your perspective, they are achieving their stated missions, quite successfully. They do not specify who they are protecting and serving, but there is certainly a class of people who are quite well protected and served by police.

some_furry 5y ago

https://archive.md/rAgI0 https://archive.md/rAgI0