What he’s finding, however, is a very mixed picture, particularly in terms of police department openness:

Time after time journalists are raising this issue: They can’t get anything out of police anymore. As I do sessions I ask the old timers to describe what it was like to cover cops 20 years ago. Then I ask a new reporter to describe what it is like today. Here is how it goes:

20 years ago: Walk into the police station and go to the incident reports, kept in a basket or clipboard. Flip through all the reports for the past 24 hours, with no redactions. Everything is there – name of suspects, full address, name of victims – the works. If you had a question you asked the sarge on duty, or even called the officer who handled the call. If we heard something on the scanner we could ask about it. We got news out fast and we got it complete.

Today: You walk into a police station and talk to a PIO, who tells you what the police think is newsworthy, sanitized and little detail. No looking at incident reports. No interviewing the officer or getting information from a sarge in charge. Some agencies are encrypting their scanner channels so nobody can hear what is happening. We are at the mercy of what a PIO wants to tell us, or not tell us. Secret police.

Read on for other great tips and his thoughts on the state of FOI.

An anonymous tipster writes in with  a great resource for those of you trying to look up information on federal inmates: Federal Bureau of Prisons documentation on how inmate information is stored (PDF). Knowing what documents to look for is perhaps the most critical piece of any Freedom Of Information: Request the wrong thing or make a request that’s too vague, and you’ll end up with either a rejection or thousands of dollars in handling fees, when the properly phrased request could have gotten you the exact data you’re interested in in a timely, hassle-free fashion.

This 26 page document details the organization and maintenance rules surrounding Inmate Central File System, which contains:

• Conduct, Work and Quarters Reports for federal inmates
• General correspondence about inmates
• Parole materials for inmates

Download the full document from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, or if that’s down use our alternate download hosted on MuckRock’s servers.

Photo licensed under Creative Commons Share Alike from Decade_Null. See original.