June 1, 2004; City of Minneapolis
6/1/2004 10:15:43 AM
This is an opinion of the Commissioner of Administration issued pursuant to section 13.072 of Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13 - the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act. It is based on the facts and information available to the Commissioner as described below.
Facts and Procedural History:On April 8, 2004, IPAD received a letter from Michelle Gross and Christopher Coen. In their letter, Ms. Gross and Mr. Coen asked the Commissioner to issue an advisory opinion regarding their right to gain access to certain data that the City of Minneapolis maintains. In response to Ms. Gross and Mr. Coen's request, IPAD, on behalf of the Commissioner, wrote to Craig Steiner, Data Practices Compliance Official for the City. The purposes of this letter, dated April 16, 2004, were to inform him of Ms. Gross and Mr. Coen's request and to ask him to provide information or support for the City's position. On April 23, 2004, IPAD received a response from Mr. Steiner. A summary of the facts follows. In a letter dated February 13, 2004, Ms. Gross and Mr. Coen wrote to Mr. Steiner, ...we write to request access to and inspection of the Friday, February 6th, 2004 Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) police report regarding Raymond L. Siegler. The incident related to the police report involved Mr. Siegler and MPD officers, and occurred at Andrew Residence on the 1200 block of S. 9th Street. In response, in a letter dated February 23, 2004, Patrick Marzitelli, Assistant City Attorney, wrote, [t]his incident is being investigated by the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office. We have enclosed the public portion of the CCN 04-028424 at no charge. Ms. Gross and Mr. Coen then wrote to Mr. Steiner, in a letter dated March 19, 2004: We received a response from the City dated February 23, 2004. The response includes two pages of data that are said to contain the public data from the relevant MPD police report . . . . In fact, much of the public data is missing. Please see Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13, Section 13.82, Subd. 6. The statute clearly makes public the following missing data: place of the incident, any and all personnel who responded, any resistance encountered, and any weapons that were used by the agency or other individuals. The brief factual reconstruction of the events associated with the action also seems to be missing key information. The data the City sent to us indicates that Other #1 was handcuffed, eventually calmed down, and then had difficulty breathing. Please include the data that is missing from this incomplete brief description of events. According to Ms. Gross and Mr. Coen, Mr. Steiner did not respond to this correspondence as of the date of their opinion request. In his comments to the Commissioner, Mr. Steiner wrote: The Minneapolis Police Department uses a computer system for its police reports. The system, CAPRS is set up to comply with the mandates of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act and other statutes applicable to law enforcement data. When a report is created in the CAPRS system, the officer creating the report is required to enter certain data into fields on the form. This data conforms to the data elements that are public under Sections [sic] 13.82, subd. 2 and 3. Officers are trained to enter all public data in this portion of the report. This public data prints out on the 'public portion' of a CAPRS incident or arrest report. In addition to the public data screen, officers also complete 'supplements' to the report that contain active investigative data. In the instant matter, the case is being investigated by the Hennepin County Sheriff's Department because the case involved a response from the Minneapolis police that resulted in the death of the subject. Nevertheless, Minneapolis officers who participated in the matter filed supplements in the CAPRS system. In response to the request for data about the incident, case number MP-04028424, the City initially produced the 'public data' portion of the CAPRS report. When Ms. Gross and Mr. Coen complained that not all elements of public data were contained in the report, I asked Patrick Marzitelli, the Assistant City Attorney assigned to the Police Department, to review all available documents and provide the missing data elements, if the City maintained them. Mr. Marzitelli reviewed the entire report for MP-04-028424 which involved an independent review of the fourteen supplements made to the report. Mr. Marzitelli discovered additional public data elements and created a separate document detailing the public data. Additional officers were found though in some instances their badge numbers were not listed. Complicating matters further was the fact that most officers were only listed by last name with several officers sharing the same last name. Mr. Marzitelli had to research daily rosters to determine the identities of those officers who were present and mentioned in the reports of other officers, but whose badge numbers were not contained in the existing CAPRS supplements. Furthermore, there were twelve witnesses during the incident, all of which were employed by the Andrews Residence. Mr. Marzitelli contacted Kay Foy, the administrative supervisor of Andrew Residence; she has specifically requested that the staff involved in the incident not be publicly identified. This review process required a considerable amount of time and the City had not had a chance to send this information to Ms. Gross and Mr. Coen prior to receipt of the Commissioner's letter. I am enclosing the document detailing the public data for MP-04-028424 and, by copy of this letter, I am sending the document to Ms. Gross and Mr. Coen. Issue:In their request for an opinion, Ms. Gross and Mr. Coen asked the Commissioner to address the following issue:
Discussion:Pursuant to Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13, government data are public unless otherwise classified. Data that law enforcement agencies collect, create, and maintain are classified pursuant to section 13.82. Certain law enforcement data are always public, certain law enforcement data are never public, and certain law enforcement data may become public depending on the occurrence of certain events. Subdivisions 2, 3 and 6 enumerate the types of data that, as they are created and maintained by a law enforcement agency, are always public, regardless of whether there is an active criminal investigation relating to the incident. Ms. Gross and Mr. Coen requested access to public law enforcement data in a letter dated February 13, 2004. According to Mr. Steiner, the City provided them with access to all of the data by copy of a letter dated April 22, 2004, approximately ten weeks after they made their request. Pursuant to Minnesota Statutes, section 13.03, when an individual requests data of which s/he is not the subject, the government entity is required to respond in an appropriate and prompt manner (see section 13.03, subdivision 2) and within a reasonable time (see Minnesota Rules, section 1205.0300). A response time of ten weeks is neither prompt nor reasonable. The Commissioner has the following additional comments. The type of data request at issue here, namely for public data related to an incident involving the police department, is routine. According to Mr. Steiner's description, the CAPRS system is designed to capture some, but not all, public law enforcement data. The arrest or incident reports produced by that system do not contain all of the public data elements enumerated at section 13.82, subdivisions 2, 3 and 6. In order to respond fully to this request, an assistant city attorney had to conduct an extensive review and create a separate report. It appears that the City does not maintain its public law enforcement data in such an arrangement and condition as to make them easily accessible for convenient use, as it is required to do under section 13.03, subdivision 1. Furthermore, Mr. Steiner implied that the City withheld the name of witnesses to the incident in question, i.e., Andrews House employees, because their supervisor requested that the staff involved in the incident not be publicly identified. However, pursuant to section 13.82, subdivision 17(d), the identities of witnesses may be withheld from the public if the witness specifically requests not to be identified publicly, unless the law enforcement agency reasonably determines that revealing the identity of the witness would not threaten her/his personal safety or property. The statute also requires law enforcement agencies to establish procedures to make the decisions necessary to protect the identities of witnesses. Based on the information available, it does not appear that the City has properly withheld the identities of the twelve employees of the residence home who were witnesses to the incident. The Commissioner is of the opinion that the City did not comply with the requirements of Chapter 13 in responding to Ms. Gross and Mr. Coen's request, because it failed to respond to the request in a reasonable and timely manner and because it failed to provide all of the public data responsive to their request. Opinion:Based on the facts and information provided, my opinion on the issue raised by Ms. Gross and Mr. Coen:
Signed:
Brian J. Lamb
Dated: June 1, 2004 |
Electronic data
Law enforcement data
Easily accessible for convenient use (13.03, subd. 1)
Computer design
Protected identities (13.82, subd. 17 / subd. 10)
