City Of Indianapolis Continues To Mislead To Obstruct Public Records Requests

Advance Indiana has caught the City of Indianapolis misleading the state's Public Access Counselor about the manner in which the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department compiles information about disciplinary records on sworn police officers of the department. This latest effort by the City of Indianapolis to obstruct efforts by Advance Indiana to obtain information deemed a public record under the state's Access to Public Records Act ("APRA") is confirmed by a newly-issued advisory opinion authored by the state's Public Access Counselor Luke Britt and sources Advance Indiana has spoken to within IMPD.

On October 2, 2015, a public records request was made to inspect or copy disciplinary records of sworn police officers disciplined by the department between the period of October 1, 2013 and October 1, 2015. The City quickly denied the request in a response dated October 6, 2015 based upon a lack of reasonable particularity. Two follow-up e-mails sent by Advance Indiana to the city's PAC counselor, Justin Paicely, seeking clarification for the reason for the denial were ignored. Paicely now claims he has no recollection of receiving those e-mail responses. In response to a complaint filed with the state's PAC, IMPD conceded the information Advance Indiana requested is a public record pursuant to I.C. 5-14-3-4(b)(8)(C) according to Britt's opinion. Because the request made by Advance Indiana covers "groups of employees" and is not particularized by name, IMPD says the law does not impose on it a requirement to publicly disclose personnel information on all employees or groups of employees.

So the City expects the requestor to have advance knowledge of every single sworn officer within the 1,500-plus force of police officers who has been the subject of a disciplinary action, knowing full well the information wouldn't be requested if the requestor knew the identity of every single police officer who has been disciplined since October 1, 2013. When Advance Indiana made the request, it knew based on information obtained by knowledgeable sources within IMPD that the department's internal affairs division generates the very information Advance Indiana requested from the department's internal computer software program it uses for maintaining personnel records. Britt could not speculate in his opinion on the existence of the information in compiled form, which he concludes in his opinion is a public record IMPD would have to provide to Advance Indiana for inspection or copying. "A public agency does not have to create a list or report synthesizing information on human resource disciplinary data, but to the extent it does exist, it is my opinion you have the right to inspect it," Britt wrote.

In Advance Indiana's complaint to the state's PAC, it was pointed out that the department has provided the exact same information requested of Advance Indiana in the past to the Indianapolis Star and other news organizations. In one such case, the department provided The Star access to records of all officers disciplined by the department between a six-year period from 1992 through 1997. "I do not know when or why this information was collected and disseminated, but you are correct in your assertion if IMPD allows inspection or copying of data to one requestor, it must extend the same courtesy to another," Britt wrote. "Public agencies cannot pick and choose to whom to release information upon request." Yet that is precisely how the City of Indianapolis has handled every public records request made by Advance Indiana. It repeatedly denies this news blog access to public records it readily provides to other news organizations in Indianapolis.

Advance Indiana has learned from sources that IMPD actually prepared and disseminated this past week the very similar information the City says IMPD cannot produce in response to our public records request. "The department has just gone through every merit police employee's file and developed lists with the implementation of the new matrix system," quoting a source who said the lists included information regarding officers' disciplinary history. One source says Sgt. Brian McEwen in Internal Affairs distributed the information to department supervisors, who are required to inform individual officers of which matrix schedule they are currently on based on their disciplinary record. Britt's recommendation to IMPD in his advisory opinion is to "explore whether IMPD creates these kinds of reports or documents and if it does, to release them to you for the requested time period." We'll see how the City responds, if at all, to the PAC's advisory opinion.