Louisiana police certification 2022-09-19

To Whom It May Concern:

This is a public records request made via MuckRock under the Louisiana Public Records Law, seeking records related to law enforcement officer certification in this state.

This request is brought by Big Local News along with a collaboration of news organizations, including ABC News, KQED, MuckRock, the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism and other news organizations. Big Local News is a program of Stanford University’s Journalism and Democracy Initiative and helps journalists collect, process and analyze public data.

We are seeking two categories of certification records:

* All certified officers
All law enforcement officers who are actively certified as of the date of this request (or when the request is processed). If your system maintains historical records of previously certified officers who are no longer active, please include them as far back as possible. If correctional officers are certified by your agency, please include them as well.

* Decertified officers
All law enforcement officers who have been decertified through revocations, voluntary surrenders, suspensions or any other actions going back as far as possible. Please include records for decertified correctional officers if available.

Data elements for certified officers:
* Officer unique ID number
* POST or state certification ID number
* Officer’s full name
* Officer’s date of birth or, if not releasable, year of birth or current age
* Officer’s city and/or zip code of residence
* Officer’s last/current department or agency
* Officer’s last/current department or agency start date
* Officer’s last/current position and/or rank at that department or agency
* Officer’s previous departments/agencies (employment history), with start and end dates
* Officer’s positions and/or ranks at previous departments or agencies
* Officer’s original date of certification
* Current status of certification (active, lapsed, expired, suspended, etc.)
* Last action taken on certification
* Date of last action on certification
* Disciplinary actions taken against this officer’s certification
* Dates of disciplinary actions taken against this officer’s certification
* Training history/additional certifications of this officer, if available

Data elements for decertified officers:
* Officer unique ID number
* POST ID number
* Officer’s full name
* Officer’s date of birth or, if not releasable, year of birth or current age
* Officer’s city and/or zip code of residence.
* Officer’s last department/agency, with start and end date
* Officer’s last position and/or rank at that department or agency
* Decertification action taken (revocation, suspension, voluntary surrender, etc.)
* Date decertification action taken
* POST case number, if applicable
* Reason for decertification or similar action

If your certification system contains data elements not listed above, please include them in the response, provided they are releasable under the law. On the other hand, we recognize some of the information we are asking for may not be tracked by your system. If that is the case, we are willing to accept as many of the data elements as your agency maintains. If some records are more readily available, we are happy to receive partial information as soon as possible while the remaining request is processed.

In addition to the data elements listed, we request documentation necessary to understand and interpret the data, including but not limited to record layouts, data dictionaries, code sheets, lookup tables, etc.

Our preference is to receive structured data provided in a machine-readable text file, such as delimited or fixed-width formats. We can also handle a variety of other data formats including SQL databases, Excel workbooks and MS Access. If there are additional formats your agency would prefer to provide, please let us know.

We are seeking this information as a news media organization on a matter of public interest concerning the conduct of government. As such, we ask for a waiver of all fees, if allowed under state law. If fees are necessary to reimburse the agency for actual costs, we agree to pay up to $100. If costs exceed that amount, please let us know before fulfilling the request.

Please send clarifications and questions via electronic communication at any time. Thank you very much for your time and attention to this request.

Stephanie Quinn
Reporter
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism

Good afternoon,

I am writing to follow up about a public records request under the Louisiana Public Records Law that I filed Monday. I wanted to confirm that you received it. Please let me know if you have any questions or need clarification.

Thank you very much!

All the best,
Stephanie Quinn
Reporter
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
University of Maryland

Dear Bob,

Thanks so much for your reply and for sending the decertification records.

I'm talking with my editors about the possibility of paying for records of currently certified officers. In order to get permission to do this, though, we need to know a little bit more about the process of accessing the records and possibly hiring a specialist to access the data from the POST system.

Would it be possible to schedule a 15-minute phone call to discuss this in the coming week? Please let me know when would work for you.

Thanks again!

All the best,
Stephanie Quinn
Reporter
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
University of Maryland

Dear Bob,

Hope this message finds you well. I wanted to double-check that you received my email from a couple of days ago. Would it be possible to schedule a brief call next week?

Thanks so much for your help!

All the best,
Stephanie Quinn
Reporter
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
University of Maryland

Hi Bob,

Thanks for getting back to me. Monday sounds good. How about 10:30 a.m. eastern/9:30 a.m. central time? And is 225-342-1667 still a good number to reach you?

Stephanie Quinn
Reporter
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
University of Maryland

Hi Bob,

Thanks for talking with us today. We sent in a separate request for two officer history reports. After we have a chance to review those, we'll send back a note with parameters for a SQL query that we think can be used to extract the data we need from the database, keeping in line with public records law.

Thanks again!

All the best,
Stephanie Quinn
Reporter
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
University of Maryland

Dear Bob,

I'm sorry about the last message you received on this request. We're using an online platform for our public records requests, and it looks like it sent an automatic follow-up to this original request, even though you had responded to us. Apologies for that!

I'll send you a message in our more recent request about the SQL query. Thanks so much for all your help.

All the best,
Stephanie Quinn
Reporter
Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
University of Maryland