Records request from BuzzFeed News: Incident reports for crimes of aggravated assault

Good morning Peter,
I am writing to acknowledge your public records request.
I created a request ticket (#W007280-021318 - Open Records Request) and will keep you apprised of any updates I receive.

Orlando Rodriguez
Public Relations Agent
Miami Police Dept.
Public Information Office
Phone: 305-603-6420

Good morning Peter,
I am writing to update you on your request.
Our crime analyst generated a report for all crimes of aggravated assault recorded in 2016 that includes signal type, date/time, incident report# and address. In total, there were more than 1,300 of these crimes reported that year.
I know you requested the files electronically, but our records unit will undoubtedly print all these reports for me to review and redact exempt information. That also means you would be charged the 5cent per page duplication fee as well as a possible administrative fee for the time required to print/redact the reports.
I wanted to advise you of this before proceeding, as the cost might be prohibitive. Otherwise, you can simply request the aforementioned crime analyst report. Let me know.

Peter,
In regards to your earlier question, based on my experience, a typical incident report can range from 3-5 pages.
I don't think there our dept. maintains the types of electronic records you mentioned, but I can contact our records custodian to see if there is a way to extract the narrative portion of the reports.
Regards,
Orlando

Peter,
I forwarded your email to our Records Custodian, and she basically confirmed what I thought: we can print only the narrative pages but generating a report for them is not feasible (unfortunately, our dept. is still very paper-based, a bit slow in going totally digital).
That said, it's still pretty going to be a little costly (1,303 reports x .05 per page duplication fee= $65.15). That would be the minimum-like I said they may charge an administrative fee.
Anyway, if you are still interested let me know and I will contact Records to start the printouts.
Cheers

Based on previous public records requests I've handled, Records generally calculates the Extensive Use Charges described in FL Ch119 at a rate of $24 per hour. I asked the Records Custodian to estimate how many hours of work it will take to review and generate more than 1,300 pages of report narratives, and she said she was unable to do so based on the extensive scope of work the project will entail.

But let's say hypothetically it takes 30 hours (a figure I'm basing on a previous request that was as relatively time intensive as your), at minimum you'd be looking at $720 fee (excluding duplication fees). But again this is all speculation since this is not an official quote. Let me know how/if you want to proceed.

Also FYI: Here's a snip of the Extensive Use Charges section that you might find helpful if, say, you wanted to re-request a formal quote; this however would require a down payment:
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Attached are sample incident reports as you requested. Cheers!

Hello Peter,
Unfortunately, my email requesting a quote as well as an answer as to whether domestic violence incidents can be removed from the match received the following response:

Good morning,

There's a total of 1303 case numbers associated with the timeframe 1/1/2016 to 12/31/2016.

Alex attached the incident numbers to the request (please see attachment).

Please confirm the amount of incident reports for aggravated assault with Alex first before contacting the requester.

Thank you.

The cost per page is 0.15 and an administrative fee of $24.00 an hour will apply, based on the printing of the reports.

I also sent a follow-up email to the IT analyst about the DV cases but learned that he will be out of the office for the next 2 weeks. In that same email I emphasized that you are primarily concerned with the narratives, to see if only those pages could be printed (as you can see in the response, printing the reports seems to be the only way Records can fulfil your request).

The crime analyst just informed me this discrepancy is because the UCR counts "counts." In other words, one MPD assaults case may contain multiple charges and victims, which be counted only once in our CAD system, but multiple times in the UCR system. He informed me that the only way to obtain the narratives would be for our Records Unit to generate each individual report. He's also unsure if Records would be able to remove DV cases. Lastly, he said coming up with a quote/estimate would be virtually impossible given the sheer volume of reports. But he said would be willing to work with Records to minimize duplication fees but that it will involve numerous hours (which would reflect on the final invoice). He said to let him know if you wish to proceed. Cheers!

Hi Peter,
Enclosed is the report the crime analyst generated in response to your request. As you can see, there were 1,303 aggravated assaults reported in 2016. However, the report does not include any incident report narrative info. I will advise the Records Unit that you would like to begin the process of generating the reports in order to include narrative info in this spreadsheet (minus domestic violence incidents, if possible)--- with the understanding that you are on a budget of less than $1,000 and do not agree to any open-ended costs.
I'll keep you posted.