FOIA - National Police Association communications (Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department)

Thank you for your interest in public records of the City of Indianapolis and Marion County.

This message acknowledges your request has been received and is being processed in accordance with the Indiana Access to Public Records Act, Indiana Code chapter 5-14-3-1, et. seq ("APRA"). Your request was received in this office on 1/4/2021 and given the reference number P011949-010421 for tracking purposes.

You requested the following records: "To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Indiana Access to Public Records Act, I hereby request the following records:

All emails sent and/or received during the time-frame of January 1st, 2020 to December 29th, 2020 to/from any @nationalpoliceassociation.com email addresses (for example, info@nationalpoliceassociation.com).

Any/all responsive documents should include any items attached to each email respectively (in their entirely).

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 7 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

J Ader

Upload documents directly: https://https://www.muckrock.comhttps://www.muckrock.com/
Your request will be forwarded to the relevant city or county agency for review and a determination of whether there are public records responsive to your request and, if so, whether those public records are disclosable to you. The city or county agency will contact you concerning your request and inform you whether there are public records responsive to your request, if all or part of those public records are not disclosable to you, and the statutory basis for any denial. Information pertaining to any copying fees that may be related to obtaining copies will be provided. Please Note: With respect to public records requests that include e-mail communications, we want to make you aware that these requests generally take longer than requests for other types of information.  First, the City/County receives a large number of requests for email communications, not just public records requests but also related to legal proceedings.  We rely upon our information technology agency to perform these searches and that agency runs these searches (based  upon reasonably particular search terms as set forth by the State Public Access Counselor) in the order in which the requests are received.  Once the email search is completed, there must also be a review of the content of the email communications to ensure that they are not only responsive to your request but also disclosable.  Finally, disclosable email communications will be produced after this review and if we do not disclose all or part of these email communications, we will provide the statutory bases for such denials as required under the APRA.

The APRA requires public agencies to produce responsive and disclosable public records, should they exist, within a reasonable time based upon the circumstances.   Please allow the agency time to review and process your request.  Depending on the nature of the request, this may be several days.

If you have not received any response and at least 10 days have passed since submission, feel free to contact the Public Access Counselor to check the status.  Additionally, if you have general questions about the Indiana Access to Public Records Act, please contact the Public Access Counselor at any time.

You may reach the Public Access Counselor at 317.327.4055 or PAC@indy.gov. (mailto:PAC@indy.gov)

Thank you,

City of Indianapolis and Marion County

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Good afternoon, Please be advised that the Indiana Access to Public Records Act states that a request for records, including emails, needs to be "reasonably particular" (See Indiana Code section 5-14-3-3(a)(1)), and the Indiana Public Access Counselor has opined that “...public records request should not contain language such as ‘any and all.’" ( See Opinion of the Public Access Counselor 16-FC-01.) In order to run a successful email query or search for records, the Indiana Public Access Counselor has stated consistently that requests for emails—in order to be reasonably particular—must identify the following four items: 1. Named sender; 2. Named recipient; 3. Time frame of six months or less; and 4. Particularized subject matter or set of search terms. See Opinion of the Public Access Counselor, 17-FC-52 (2017).) Additionally, the state Public Access Counselor has recommended that there be "four lanes of communication" reference a sender and receiver. "...my guidance has evolved into recommending four “lanes” of communication be requested at any one time. Therefore, one identified sender and recipient would be a “lane” of communication." ( See Informal Inquiry 17-INF-17 While portions of your request are reasonably particular, it is missing key components that the agency needs in order to search for the requested records. If you would like to revise your request to meet the criteria presented by the Public Access Counselor, the agency will be better equipped to conduct a search. Thank you, Tiffany Diefenderfer Executive Assistant tiffany.diefenderfer@indy.gov