ProPublica: Hate crimes data for Anchorage, Alaska

Ms. Nasa
We are in receipt of your letter requesting records relating to:

"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)"

Under the Anchorage Municipal Code (AMC) we are to provide you with the requested documents within two days of a request. If we are unable to do so we are to make further inquiry of you as to whether you still wish to have the documents. If so then, assuming the documents exist, we are to provide them within a reasonable amount of time, consistent with the orderly conduct of municipal business:

3.90.060 Response to requests for public records.
All municipal officers and employees shall, consistent with the orderly conduct of municipal business, make a good faith and diligent effort to provide a rapid and intelligible response to requests for inspection of records made pursuant to this chapter.

AMC 3.90.060 C. All requests for records and information made pursuant to this chapter shall be responded to within a reasonable time period. If the records and information cannot be located in time to make a response within two working days of the request, the requesting party shall be promptly advised, and, if the requesting party still desires the information or records, a reasonable and diligent search shall be made for it.

This is to advise you that we cannot provide the requested documents within two days, but we will provide the documents in a reasonable amount of time provided:

1) You advise us that you still want them;
2) They exist; and
3) That you are willing to pay in advance for the search and retrieval of the records and any associated costs such as photocopies or CDs based upon the estimate we send you. Under our code we can charge up to $40 per hour for search and retrieval. Additionally, photocopies are .30 per page.

AMC 3.90.050 Departmental regulation of time, place and manner of inspection of records.
The mayor shall, pursuant to Chapter 3.40, adopt municipal regulations for each municipal department as to the time, place and manner of inspection of public records held by the municipality. Such regulations may also provide:

A. That a fee may be required. The fee shall not exceed the actual cost to the agency. No fee shall be charged when a person simply requests access to the information, however employee time may be charged when the nature of the information requires custodial observation of the access. If the person is unable to pay any requested fee, and signs an affidavit to the effect he is indigent, there will be no cost to such person.
AMC 3.90.005 Record retrieval charges.
In addition to the fee for copying a record, a municipal agency may charge a fee for employee time to search for, retrieve, and redact as necessary, the record at a rate not exceeding $40.00 per hour.

As noted above, we cannot provide with the documents in two days. As such, at this point I just need to know, whether you are willing to pay, in advance, the costs associated with the search, retrieval and redaction of the documents. At this time the cost is estimated to be $150. Please keep in mind that even if the cost exceeds the estimate you would need to pay the full amount once the records search is complete. If you are willing to pay, in advance, the amount indicated please advise by return letter or email and provide a form of payment.

Please be aware that should you decide to pay for the "search, retrieval and redaction" of documents based on the estimate provided, you may not receive copies of all of the documents we find that are relevant to your request. Some of the documents may be legally exempt from production under our public records ordinance. Until we have performed the search and examined the documents we will not know if any exemptions apply.

Captain Bill Miller

To whom it may concern.
As you can see from the attached e-mail below the Anchorage Police Department responded on February 26th 2018.

Right now we are waiting for the original requestor to let us know that they still want the records AND that they agree to pay and indeed pay the estimated cost of $150 before any further work is initiated.

If you have any questions feel free to contact me at this e-mail address.

Sincerely
Captain Bill Miller

Hi again.

I looked at the data we originally provided. That report includes the Bias Motivation. The only way to get more information is to pull each individual report and read it. The best we could do is pull and redact each report and send them to you to do your own analysis.

The estimated cost to pull, redact and copy those reports is going to be $500. As stated earlier please keep in mind that even if the cost exceeds the estimate you would need to pay the full amount once the records search is complete. If you are willing to pay, in advance, the amount indicated please advise by return letter or email and provide a form of payment.

Please let me know how you would like to proceed.

Bill