Jackson County Or
| Submitted | Nov. 16, 2015 |
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Communications
From: Jamiles Lartey
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Oregon Public Records Law, I hereby request the following documents:
A list of all criminal cases prosecuted by your office in which Medford police officers Lt. Curtis Whipple, Detective Sgt. Ben Lytle, Sgt. Geoff Kirkpatrick, Detective Corey Schwab, or officers R.J. Josephson, James Swanson and Arturo Vega appeared as the prosecuting witness, or as another witness for the prosecution, or was the author of the prosecuting affidavit or similar charging document.
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 fees cannot be waived, 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 would request your response within ten (10) business days.
Sincerely,
Jamiles Lartey
From: Beth Heckert
I am trying to determine if I can obtain what you are requesting from my computer system. You did not state a time frame in your public record request, are you looking for just cases in 2015? I am also not certain what information you are wanting. In your request you say "witness for the prosecution", are you only wanting cases in which the listed Officers testified in court? Or are you wanting a list of the cases that were submitted to the Jackson County District Attorney for prosecution by those Officers? Is the list you are wanting going to be the name of the person prosecuted or a list of Medford Police Department case numbers? If I understand your request, I will be better able to see if we have an existing report that would pull that information from my computer system.
Sincerely,
Beth Heckert
District Attorney
From: Jamiles Lartey
Hi Beth,
Records going as far back as reasonable would be useful, perhaps five years worth?
I am looking for any case where the officer's oral or written testimony led to an indictment, so cases submitted which were not pursued by your office are not necessary, but ones which resulted in pleas based on the officers testimony would be.
The name of the person prosecuted would be more useful than the case number, but even a raw number would be useful if such a list is impractical, i.e. "Officer John Doe was witness/submitted an affidavit in 25 cases pursued by the D.A. in 2015, 18 cases in 2014, etc.
I understand this is a complex request and I appreciate your time and consideration in trying to assist me.
Best,
Jamiles Lartey
From: Beth Heckert
Dear Jamiles Lartey,
I wanted to show you what my system could produce before I ran the report on all the Officers you requested. Attached is the report of all cases in which Lt. Curtis Whipple was listed as an Officer. The computer system that we currently have, we obtained in 2013. So the data older than 2013 was transferred and we have seen inaccuracies in the transfer. What this list provides you is File # which is a number our system assigns each case, Court # if the case was filed in court than the Court number is listed, name of the defendant, the Stage of the case and the assigned prosecutor. In the cases listed he may have been the arresting officer, back-up officer or in some other capacity. Lt. Whipple could have been a witness on other cases, but if he was not listed in our computer system as an Officer related to that report, then the report would not locate that case. Please let me know if this is the type of information you were looking for. If it is, I can run the report on the remainder of the officers.
Please let me know,
Beth Heckert
District Attorney
From: Jamiles Lartey
Beth this is exactly what i'm looking for, thank you. Please send me these reports for the other officers at your earliest convenience.
-Jamiles
From: Beth Heckert
From: Beth Heckert
From: Beth Heckert
From: Beth Heckert
From: Beth Heckert
From: Beth Heckert
From: Beth Heckert
From: Beth Heckert
From: Beth Heckert
From: Beth Heckert
From: Beth Heckert
I believe that completes your Public Records Request.
Beth Heckert
District Attorney
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