Washington state law requires all known videos by police to be kept for 90 days, but Seattle Police capture dash video from all patrol cruisers and automatically dump it 3-5 days later.
Seattle activist Tim Clemans requested video from the fail-safe dash cam video recording system implemented by private contractor COBAN.
His request was denied.
Co-written with Maya Shaffer
“It is shameful that this is happening in such a progressive state like Massachusetts, which is supposed to value transparency and freedom of information. I believe that nothing short of the threat of legal charges will convince the media relations department of the Boston police to do their jobs. Please do your part to make this happen.”
The City of Miami Beach just asked the Miami Herald for almost $73,000 to hire one of their employees for a year, just to deliver public records documents related to “human-source fecal marker” and water quality.
For the fifth time since 2010, Florida prosecutors were forced to dismiss criminal charges against PINAC reporter Jeff Gray before even going to trial, proving once again what we have known all along.
That his arrests are always unlawful and unconstitutional; nothing but an attempt to keep him from doing his job.
Maxine Trahan, longtime public information officer for the Acadia Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana, was charged Friday with the theft of public funds in excess of $25,000 – six months after Photography is Not a Crime began a public records investigation into allegations against the media spokeswoman.
Trahan, who has worked for the department for more than ten years, is accused of failing to deposit cash seized from citizens into the department’s bank account, pocketing the money instead.
According to the arrest warrant, the thefts date back to 2010.
Behind closed doors in secret meetings, an attorney for a Florida school board appears to have met with a local state attorney in the hopes to pursue felony criminal charges against PINAC reporter Jeff Gray.
According to emails recently obtained through a public records request, it was revealed that St. Johns County School Board Frank Upchurch III planned a meeting with State Attorney R.J. Larizza in the hopes of keeping Gray from exercising his Constitutional rights to record public officials as well as to obtain public records.
A Louisiana Marshal is going to jail for willfully violating public records law, and court orders to comply.
Lafayette’s top cop the elected City Marshal Brian Pope, was sentenced to 30 days under key with all but 7 of them suspended, for blatantly violating Louisiana’s open records law.
“This is what White Castle residents have to deal with.”
Chris Nakamoto is a true professional journalist, giving a deadpanned story lede to his videographer as he was being perp-walked by a burly cop for uncovering small town government corruption.
He’d just uncovered an un-legislated pay raise costing each resident in small town White Castle, Lousiana – each man, woman and child – stuck paying an additional $11 per year in tribute to the elected offical.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — When the editor of a gay-oriented newspaper in Florida requested records that he thought should be public, he cast a wide net, asking that the police emails of every employee of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office be searched for specific gay slurs over a five-month period.
Co-written with Maya Shaffer
It’s Sunshine Week, the annual national initiative to promote open government and access to public records. Meteorologists have predicted rain and clouds across Massachusetts for the next several days—and the outlook for transparency in the Bay State is equally bleak.
