BLM comms (Louisiana State Police)
| Multi Request | BLM comms |
| Submitted | June 8, 2020 |
| Est. Completion | None |
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Communications
From: Emma North-Best
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Louisiana Public Records Law, I hereby request the following records:
Emails, letters, and memos to or from police/law enforcement unions, the National Guard, or federal officials between May 1, 2020 and the present.
I also request copies of emails containing any of the following: "protest", "protests", "Black Lives Matter", "BLM", "riot", "riots", "antifa", "antifascist", "anti-fascist", or "militia".
I am a member of the news media and request classification as such. I have previously written about the government and its activities, with some reaching over 100,000 readers in outlets such as Gizmodo, MuckRock, Motherboard, Property of the People, Unicorn Riot, and The Outline, among others. As such, as I have a reasonable expectation of publication and my editorial and writing skills are well established. In addition, I discuss and comment on the files online and make them available through non-profits such as the library Internet Archive and the journalist non-profit MuckRock, disseminating them to a large audience. While my research is not limited to this, a great deal of it, including this, focuses on the activities and attitudes of the government itself. As such, it is not necessary for me to demonstrate the relevance of this particular subject in advance.
As my primary purpose is to inform about government activities by reporting on it and making the raw data available, I request that fees be waived.
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,
Emma Best
From: Louisiana State Police
Ms. Best: your public records request referenced above was forwarded to me for review and response. Please be advised that LSP has no documents responsive to your first request for communications between police unions, national guard and federal officials during the relevant time period. With regard to your second request for a search of emails for the list of words or phrases, your request is denied as overly broad and overly burdensome. LSP/DPS does not have the ability to conduct this search itself. The search must by conducted by the State Office of Technology Systems. Their system is not within the control of LSP. The search you request necessitates a search of all Department of Public Safety employees' emails for a number of words and phrases that are commonly used and referenced currently. Past searches conducted similar to yours have yielded tens of thousands of pages in response to the requested terms. The search engine used results in identification of both responsive and non-responsive documents. Those documents have to be reviewed for documents which should not be released such as ongoing investigations, private documents, intelligence documents and non-business related documents. Our experience demonstrates that the work involved in identifying responsive documents, reviewing responsive documents, redacting responsive documents and removing non responsive or non-business related documents far outweighs the public interest in documents one cannot specifically identify or know to actually exist. I trust this satisfies your request. fdm
Faye Dysart Morrison
Assistant Secretary, DPS Office of Legal Affairs
7979 Independence Boulevard
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70806
P. O. Box 66614
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70896
225-925-6103 (Office)
225-718-2691 (Cell)
225-925-4624
Files
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