Independence MO, PD Citizen Complaints

Alexander Cartwright and Jennifer Dirmeyer filed this request with the Independence Police Department of Independence, MO.
Est. Completion None
Status
Fix Required

Communications

From: Alexander Cartwright and Jennifer Dirmeyer

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Missouri Sunshine Law and the Missouri Public Records Law, I hereby request the following records:

We are Economics Professors in the College of Business at Ferris State University, and are engaged in an empirical research project on police behavior and citizen complaints. This project requires us to request data from your department. If you have questions about this request or suggestions, we would be happy to discuss them with you.

1. What is the total number of citizen complaints (allegations of misconduct) made against your department’s officers annually for the last 10 years? If your department logs complaints in a database, spreadsheet, or other log, a copy of those logs is fine instead.

Please include the type of complaint (i.e., use of force, abuse language, unwarranted search) and the result of complaint (i.e., sustained, exonerated).

2. What is the total number of complaints police officers made against their peer officers in department annually for the last 10 years? If your department logs complaints in a database, spreadsheet, or other log, a copy of those logs is fine instead.

Please include the type of complaint (i.e., use of force, abuse language, unwarranted search) and the result of complaint (i.e., sustained, exonerated).

3. What is the total number of calls for service your department received annually for the past 10 years? If your department logs calls for service in a database, spreadsheet, or other log, a copy of those logs is fine instead.

4. What is the annual number of officers involved in shootings in your department for the past 10 years? Any documentation or reports that detail the annual number of officer-involved shootings in your department for the past 10 years would be sufficient.

Please include documentation regarding how many of these officer-involved shootings involved disciplinary action. (Please list officer firearm discharge directed at a person separately from a shooting involving an animal and separately from accidental firearm discharges).

Please include the number of officer-involved shootings resulting in discipline.

5. Which of the above data are published publicly? Please provide a link to any and all publicly available reports containing the data above.

Collecting this information is very important to our research, so we would like to emphasize, if you have questions about my request or suggestions, we would be happy to discuss them with you.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 3 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Alexander Cartwright and Jennifer Dirmeyer

From: Muckrock Staff

To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following request, copied below. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.

From: Independence Police Department

Good Morning,
I have received your sunshine law requests from our records unit. Some of information you requested is not normally kept or published or are considered confidential work products by this department. We did upgrade our Internal affairs system this past year to better track these incidents. However, to capture this information from all the requests that were sent, our hard copy files will have to be searched by hand. This as you can imagine this will take quite a few manhours to go through.
If you could allow us 30 days to attempt to compile these statistics. I will also keep track of the hours spent as well as resources used to get an accurate billing to give to you.
Thank you,

Carl W. Perry
Major Carl W. Perry #835
Policy And Compliance Division
Office: (816)325-6943
E-Mail: cwperry@indepmo.org<mailto:cwperry@indepmo.org>

From: Independence Police Department

You received a response on 8-26-2020 with a requested amount of time, which you did not respond to again I am requesting at least 30 days to gather the information requested as we attempt to compile the volumes of information that is being requested as well as obtaining legal advise on which confidential work products fall under these requests.
Thank you for your patience while we work through this.
Carl

Carl W. Perry
Major Carl W. Perry #835
Policy And Compliance Division
Office: (816)325-6943
E-Mail: cwperry@indepmo.org<mailto:cwperry@indepmo.org>

From: Independence Police Department

See the below listed response from our department.

Carl W. Perry
Major Carl W. Perry #835
Policy And Compliance Division
Office: (816)325-6943
E-Mail: cwperry@indepmo.org<mailto:cwperry@indepmo.org>

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