ProPublica: Hate crimes data
| Submitted | July 10, 2017 |
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Communications
From: Ken Schwencke
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Colorado Open Records Act, I hereby request the following records:
Any database or other records of hate crimes or crimes evidencing bias of race, color, ancestry, ethnicity, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin or disability reported to or investigated by your agency since Jan. 1, 2010, containing at least the following fields:
the incident number
date of the incident
whether the crime was against individuals or a business / property
number of victims
race or ethnicity of the victims
gender of the victims
the offense classification
the location of the incident
the bias motivation (anti-black, anti-muslim, etc)
I would like the records in a machine-readable, electronic format if possible. If the records are kept in another format, or kept individually, I would still like copies.
This request is made as part of the Documenting Hate Project, a collaboration involving dozens of news organizations, led by ProPublica. Coverage from the project is compiled at https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/hatecrimes#hatecrime-coverage.
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,
Ken Schwencke
From: MuckRock.com
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on July 10, 2017. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Lenore Aljinovich
Sir,
Your request was forwarded to my Records Unit for research and response. Please complete the required application for criminal justice records. Unfortunately, this statistic cannot easily be retrieved from our current record management system, not the breakdown that you are requesting. We will need to use a combination of queries and manual searches in order to provide the statistics from Jan 1, 2010 to current.
The standard fee for this service is $20.00 per hour plus standard printing/coping fees. This is for any large research request/manipulation of data. If you would please provide the initial $20.00 fee in advance and we will begin the process. We will advise you of any remaining fees upon completion of the project.
Thank you
[lenore signature]
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From: Ken Schwencke
Hi Lenore,
Thank you for your prompt response. I'd be happy to discuss limiting the scope of fields requested to lower the search burden. Is there a subset of these records available with fewer fields that would be easier for both of us?
Thanks,
Ken Schwencke
ProPublica
w: 917-512-0253
c: 561-756-6135
From: Lenore Aljinovich
Can I refer you first to 'Crime in Colorado' .. the Colorado Bureau of Investigations webpage for statistical data. We report data direct to CBI.. we would be coordinating through CBI for incident reports and researching manually in our systems for more details.
Perhaps the data collected, to include Hate Crimes, will be helpful.
Please let me know..
Thank you
[lenore signature]
From: Ken Schwencke
Hi Lenore,
It appears that the per-agency reports (see: http://crimeinco.cbi.state.co.us/cic2k15/agencydetails.php?id=120) don't include hate crime. Would it be possible to simply get copies of the reports you sent to the CBI for 2010-2016?
Thanks,
Ken Schwencke
ProPublica
w: 917-512-0253
c: 561-756-6135
From: MuckRock
To Whom It May Concern:
Please find attached the requested form.
Thank you for your help.
From: Lenore Aljinovich
Mr. Schwencke,
I apologize, but we are unable to help with your request for hate crimes. Unfortunately it is not a simple process to just provide reports for 'hate' crimes.
Thousands of reports are processed by Records each year, and 'data' , data only is pulled from the actual reports and then electronically sent to CBI to include in their crime in Colorado report. As there is currently no method to pull such reports directly from our Record Management System, we would first need to coordinate with CBI to see if they could even produce some type of report listing our case report/incidents reported by us for the past six years.
If they were to be able to produce such a report, we would then need to pull up each report and read to provide the data you are requesting, and that is not what my Records Unit is equipped to do.
This is manipulation of data that cannot be accommodated. I am sorry we cannot provide any further assistance with this request.
Thank you
[lenore signature]
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