Report Claims a Third of FOIA Requests To the NYPD Go Unanswered 65
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, who shared a Pulitzer last year as part of the Associated Press team covering the NYPD's surveillance activity, have summed it up perfectly: The NYPD doesn't answer document requests. "For the most part, they don't respond," Apuzzo told the Huffington Post. 'Even the NSA responds.' It's not just reporters who've noticed. New York City Public Advocate and mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio gave the police department a failing grade in an April report based on its dismal response rate to Freedom of Information requests. By de Blasio's analysis, nearly a third of requests submitted to NYPD go unanswered."
How low can we go (Score:3, Funny)
LAPD and NYPD are locked in an epic struggle to see which department can be a bigger waste of taxpayer money.
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You err, but only because you manage to confuse bush league teams with professional league teams.
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LAPD and NYPD are locked in an epic struggle to see which department can be a bigger waste of taxpayer money.
Don't forget SFPD! I've been trying to get *any* record of a particular arrest from 1986. The guy plead guilty too (the he really did it way, with a really good lawyer, not the way we usually read about) and I can't even get an answer to my requests using their email, even to the district stations.
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Just a thought, but I think you would want to be going through the court to get that information, not the police.
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Just a thought, but I think you would want to be going through the court to get that information, not the police.
Trying to figure out that minefield too. It took a while to get through the federal system (SFPD performed the arrest with the FBI, he was housed in the Oakland City Jail until his federal bail hearing). Now I have a bunch of good info, but the earliest document is five days after his arrest.
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Just a thought, but I think you would want to be going through the court to get that information, not the police.
Slashdot is magic: From Oakland - "Additional time is required to answer your public records request. We need to search for, collect, or examine a large number of records (Government Code Section 6253(c)(2)). "
First answer I got of any kind from any LEO in California.
Re:How low can we go (Score:5, Interesting)
That's true of just about every department in the country. I think most people in this country have ridiculous illusions about the quality and skill of our police force. Reality hits them square in the face when they actually have to call the police. My neighbors home was burglarized recently, the police showed up, told him there wasn't much they could do and left. They didn't even ask any of the neighbors (like me) if we'd seen anything. No investigation at all. Get pulled over with a Marijuana pipe in your car and you'll have 3 squad cars on the scene within minutes.
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..."No investigation at all. Get pulled over with a Marijuana pipe in your car and you'll have 3 squad cars on the scene within minutes."
Wouldn't this be more an example of a misappropriation of resources than an example of the lack of quality and skill exhibited by our police force?
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The problem with policing is well, the pool of candidates is pretty small. Everytime you hear a call for "more police on the streets", the question you should be asking is "where are they going to find those people?". Most departments are understaffed, and the necessity to hire means the standards of hiring get *really* low.
Because face it - it's not a good job at all - you face all sorts of lowlifes all the time. This already screens out the good c
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Holy shit, they actually came to his house? The last time my apartment was broken into, the guy on the phone just told me "tough luck" and ended the call.
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NYPD Blues (Score:1)
I wonder how many of their 911 emergency calls go unanswered?
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I wonder how many of their 911 emergency calls go unanswered?
Since they won't answer that FOIA request I guess we'll never know.
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I wonder how many of their 911 emergency calls go unanswered?
Since they won't answer that FOIA request I guess we'll never know.
Well, if you put in three FOIA requests then maybe one of them might be answered, if I read this right.
Re:Good or Bad (Score:5, Informative)
The requests that go unanswered are either badly written (you know what I mean: smiley faces, horrible grammer, bad spelling, etc.) or would involve the department turning over information that would be questionable or even criminal in nature.
I think you misunderstand -- it's not that 1/3 don't get the information they're asking for... it's that they're unanswered. In other words, no "thank you for submitting your request X - it has tracking item Y" or "Your request has been examined by Officer X and has been deemed to be improperly submitted. Please follow the guidelines as made available here:" or "Thank you for your request. It has been examined, and we have determined that the information requested is not of a type made available by this department through FOIA requests." It doesn't take much of a tracking system to handle this; there are many out there that could do the job.
More likely it's a case of the department not being structured to actually handle FOIA requests, which means the ones that ARE answered are ones where the person who handles the inbox actually knows who to hand the request off to -- and no item tracking system is in place at all. Should be pretty easy to fix, if tehre's any incentive to do so (aside from it being illegal not to).
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Exactly if they pretend it was lost in the mail, they are no longer required to answer anything. My real thought on the matter is that they are simply incompetent. They have been striving for that for a long time now. Maybe the cops on the beat need to where some body cams, this way there would be less to question.
Re:Good or Bad (Score:4, Informative)
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Wrong Subject (Score:5, Insightful)
Should read:
"NYPD ignores the law"
since they're required to respond to these requests.
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What are ya gonna do, call the police?
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I'm pretty sure if the law says 'must respond to all properly filed requests', then yes they are.
This type of counterargument may have a long and storied history, but it's still crap. If the law says X, then you are required to follow the law. Even if you don't like it.
And for God's sake - they're the ones who are supposed to enforce the law! What does it say about the NYPD when they think they can pick and choose which laws are appropriate, or which parts of the law they have to follow?
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That even pigs can be trained to know what they can get away with?
Requester must specify which document they want (Score:2)
The person filing the request must specify which record they want. So "Where is Elvis hiding" isn't a FOI request.
"Please provide the arrest report for when Elvis Presley was arrested on Oct. 18, 1956" is a FOI request.
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I'm sorry, but all incidents that occur outside of NYC are not handled by this department. Please contact the department that handles the location that incident occurred in.
We do not track people that are officially dead and have no idea where they might be if they are not in their assigned grave, tomb, or urn.
Unid
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FOIL (Score:5, Informative)
Technically, there are no FIOA requests answered by any New York government office since the equivalent state law is abbreviated FOIL.
And... (Score:1)
While 1/3 go unanswered, that means a vary healthy majority are answered. Seriously, for a paramilitary organization such as the NYPD, 2/3 is not bad.
Certainly there is room for improvement, and it's probably a staffing issue.
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Is replying optional? Or is there some sort of requirement?
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Is replying optional? Or is there some sort of requirement?
You know the score, pal! If you're not a cop, you're "little people."
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Of course we hope that staffing is the issue, but as the guy once said "Never assume". Considering that NYPD had policies like Stop&Frisk, it could very well be that they have people holding offices that just don't give a shit about the law. That lack of regard tends to trickle down to the people they hire.
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Nah, it was the writers' math teachers that were foiled . . . mixing "for the most point, they don't respond" with "nearly a third" not answered . . . so for the most part they *do* respond.
hawk
Nothing to see here - Move along (Score:2)
What is printed above the information desk of the NYPD
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He works at the NYPD, but since he's too busy cleaning his PC with MyCleanPC, he keeps deleting FOIA requests instead of answering them. Oops.
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Until it is either illegal for "shoot first, as questions maybe later, probably never" policy - OR - it's legal for non-cops to use the same policy when being approached by a police officer, then anything they say that doesn't involve admitting rape and murder is an out-right lie anyway.
Not to mention you can't slander a reputation when that reputation is already to murder and rape people.
If they didn't want that image, I'd imagine they would put a tiny bit more effort into not murdering and raping people. Seems perfectly legit to me.
I didn't think politicians were allowed on slashdot? An AC politician is an oxy moron....
Not unanswered - round filed (Score:2)
File 13, the circular file.
Sent to recycling before processing.
Why are you surprised?
I guess .... (Score:2)
Does FOIA have teeth? (Score:2)
It's time to bare them if they do. NYPD is pretty famous for stonewalling on certain issues. It's time that wall fell on a few of them.
Another N.H. advantage (Score:3)
In New Hampshire, our state equivalent to FOIA, RSA 91-A [state.nh.us], requires that a government entity respond within 5 days to a right-to-know request or they can be hauled into court. RSA 91-A:4, IV. They don't have to provide the information within 5 days, but they at least have to respond saying they have received the request and either say how long it will take to comply with the request, or explain---under a very short list of enumerated exemptions in RSA 91-A:5---why the request is being denied. Denials themselves can of course be appealed. RSA 91-A:7. And RSA 91-A:8 authorizes the courts to award attorneys fees to the complainant if they're successful in demonstrating the agency violated the right-to-know law. Wilful violations by individual bureaucrats can even render them personally liable for all the court costs. RSA 91-A:8, IV.
New York's FOIA law doesn't have remedies similar to this?
New York is similar, they just ignore laws (Score:2)
I just skimmed New York's statue is similar. New York just ignores the law http://www.ojjpac.org/sanctuary.asp [ojjpac.org] .
They don't follow laws, they don't try to change laws that they think should be changed, they just ignore them.
The majority of New York voters support ignoring the law.
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I don't think you can really compare the two. One, in the case of a right-to-know law, the government ignoring it is most likely not the will of the people; in the second case, it sounds like it is doing the exact opposite, following the will of the majority of the people. Two, again in the case of an RTK law, the government ignoring it sounds like pretty blatant self-serving corruption---what kinds of abuse of the citizenry are they hiding by not responding to FOIA requests served upon police departments?-
good argument for anything else, this is enumerate (Score:2)
> There's probably also a constitutional argument to be made in the case of the IIRIRA. Practically every policy the Federal
> Government tries to force on the states now is an unconstitutional overreach of their explicitly enumerated powers.
Most are unconstitutional overreach. The Constitution grants only ~18 powers to the federal government.
Regulating immigration happens to be one thing the federal government can and arguably must do. (Consider the effect of article IV otherwise).
One of the enumerate
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The Feds can regulate immigration, but since general police power isn't an enumerated power, they can't actually police immigrants. In other words, the Feds can define "citizen," "permanent resident," &c., and they can grant privileges to each of these terms based on whatever criteria they come up with, but they don't actually have the constitutional power to send enforcers into the States and apprehend so-called "illegal" immigrants. The most they can do is deny such people recognition as U.S. citizens
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The actual New York state law: http://www.dos.ny.gov/coog/foil2.html#s87 [ny.gov]
The form to submit with its requirements for the NYPD: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/legal_matters/dclm_doc_production_foil.shtml [nyc.gov]
What do they expect? (Score:2)
NYPD is the single most corrupt police department in the united states, they make the LAPD look like honest angels.
If they were not corrupt they would happily abide by the law and answer these. What are they hiding? It has to be illegal and unethical activities.
1/3 =/= "most" (Score:1)