BLM comms (Jefferson County Sheriff)
| 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 Kentucky Open Records Act, 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: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Kentucky Open Records Act request, copied below, and originally submitted on June 8, 2020. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response.
Thanks for your help, and let me know if further clarification is needed.
From: Jefferson County Sheriff
Please be advised that the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office is in receipt of your attached respective open records request.
At this time, I am researching to see the amount of time it will take as well as the agencies capability to respond to such request. Obviously as journalist you are aware that this jurisdiction had multiple months of protest this agency participated in. There is an unknown possible amount of records relative to your request.
I will advise.
Thank you for your patience.
Bo Glass
Director, Administrative Services Division
Jefferson County Sheriff's Office
(502) 574-5435
[cid:image003.jpg@01D5E637.DFEE16D0]
Notice of Confidentiality: This e-mail, including any attachments, is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential information that is legally privileged and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are notified that any review, use, disclosure, distributing, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy (delete) all forms of the original message
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From: Jefferson County Sheriff
Ms. Best,
I am again following up on the attached Open Records Request received from you on April 14th, 2021.
I have been working with the IT Unit of this agency to determine how long it would take to respond to your request with the records you are seeking, and whether that is reasonably possible to accomplish with the resources we have.
In an attempt to estimate the time and resources needed to identify, locate, and gather these records, the IT Unit ran a report using two words of the search criteria you submitted in your request: "BLM" and "Antifa".
The search was begun on 04/20/2021 and after 19 hours, the search was stopped. The IT Unit assumed that there may have been an issue with the search; however, when stopped, the search did return 1000+ emails. This was without covering the entire time frame of the request, any of the other keywords, or the other types of documents sought. Based on this information, we would expect the search alone could take weeks.
Upon completion of the search, the documents would need to be reviewed individually to determine whether they are in fact responsive to your request and for possible redactions pursuant to exemptions. That function would have to be completed primarily by one staff member, or possibly with other staff reassigned from said employees' normal functions.
With this information, such a broad request would undoubtedly put a burden and hardship on this agency that would require time, manpower and resources not available and would hinder other functions within the office. If we were to bill some portion of those costs to you, it is unclear how much they would run.
Based on the aforementioned, I believe your request could be denied under KRS 61.872(6): "If the application places an unreasonable burden in producing public records or if the custodian has reason to believe that repeated requests are intended to disrupt other essential functions of the public agency, the official custodian may refuse to permit inspection of the public records or mail copies thereof."
Also based upon a 2005 Kentucky Attorney General Opinion, (05-ORD-057 - John K. Huston / Oldham County Police Department ), in which the Attorney General stated "our view is that a request for any and all records of a particular type, or which contain a specific name, term, or phrase, is not a properly framed open records request, and generally need not be honored."
As submitted, the request is too broad to formulate a response at this time. However, I would be happy to work with you to narrow the search to items of most interest to you, using a more limited time frame, more precise terms, more identifiable records, etc. Please let me know if you wish to do that.
Bo Glass
Director, Administrative Services Division
Jefferson County Sheriff's Office
(502) 574-5435
[cid:image003.jpg@01D5E637.DFEE16D0]
Notice of Confidentiality: This e-mail, including any attachments, is intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential information that is legally privileged and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are notified that any review, use, disclosure, distributing, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy (delete) all forms of the original message
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