School-Based Arrest Data Request (New Bedford Police Department)
| Multi Request | School-Based Arrest Data Request |
| Submitted | May 12, 2022 |
| Est. Completion | None |
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Communications
From: Erin Stewart
To Whom It May Concern:
Pursuant to the Massachusetts Public Records Law, I hereby request the following records:
To whoever it may concern:
This letter constitutes a request pursuant to the Public Records Act, M. G. L.c.66, §10, for public records in the custody of your police department. Under the Criminal Justice Reform Act, school districts and law enforcement agencies must “specify the manner and division of responsibility for collecting and reporting the school-based arrests, citations and court referrals of students to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education” (DESE). DESE began collecting data on school-related arrests in the 2018-19 school year. In the 2019-20 school year, DESE has expanded that collection to include data on all referrals to law enforcement. DESE has defined these terms as follows, borrowing the same definitions used by the U.S. Department of Education since its 2009 Civil Rights Data Collection.
A school-related arrest “[r]efers to an arrest of a student for any activity conducted on school grounds, during off campus school activities (including while taking school transportation), or due to a referral by any school official. All school-related arrests are considered referrals to law enforcement.”
A referral to law enforcement “[i]s an action by which a student is reported to any law enforcement agency or official, including a school police unit, for an incident that occurs on school grounds, during school-related events, or while taking school transportation, regardless of whether official action is taken. Citations, tickets, court referrals, and school-related arrests are considered referrals to law enforcement.”
I request the following public records, as defined in M. G. L.c. 4, § 7 (twenty-sixth):
1. An extract of your records management system or database that includes each school-related arrest and each referral to law enforcement conducted during the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced). Specifically, we request an extract of the database to include the following columns:
a. Date of arrest or referral to law enforcement
b. Time of arrest or referral to law enforcement
c. Charge (or charges)
d. Whether the individual(s) was arrested or referred to law enforcement
e. Sex of individual(s) arrested or referred to law enforcement
f. Age of individual(s) arrested or referred to law enforcement
g. Race of individual(s) arrested or referred to law enforcement
h. Ethnicity of individual(s) arrested or referred to law enforcement
i. Disability status of the individual(s) arrested or referred to law enforcement
j. Whether the individual arrested or referred to law enforcement is a student at the school.
k. Name of arresting officer, if applicable, and
l. Badge number of the arresting officer or the officer that referred the youth to law enforcement, as applicable.
2. If such an extract of the database in question 1 is not possible, please provide police reports and school incident reports on each school-related arrest conducted during the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced).
3. Please provide an unduplicated count of arrested students for each school year including 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced).
4. If such an extract of the database in question 1 is not possible, please provide police reports and school incident reports on each referral to law enforcement conducted during the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced), per the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection for that year. For each referral to law enforcement, please include the school, demographic, and incident information described in DESE’s School Safety and Discipline Report Data Handbook v. 20.0.
5. Please also provide an unduplicated counts of referrals to law enforcement (as defined above) for each school year including 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced).
6. A copy of any active memorandum of agreement and/or standard operating procedures between your police department and local school districts regarding police placement or activity in schools.
7. A copy of any active standard operating procedures developed with the police department and/or other law enforcement agencies regarding police placement or activity in your corresponding school; and,
8. Any records instructing or informing police personnel of, or otherwise describing, data reporting requirements and procedures for complying with M. G. L.c. 71 § 37P(b).
As this request involves a matter of public interest and will not be used for any commercial purpose, we ask that all fees associated with this request be waived pursuant to 950 C.M.R. 32.07(2)(k). The purpose of this request is to determine whether your school district and police department are complying with their reporting obligations under the Criminal Justice Reform Act. “The public has an interest in knowing whether public servants are carrying out their duties in an efficient and law-abiding manner.”
It would be ill-advised to impose a fee for data that your police department may have failed to report in violation of statutory and regulatory duty. Moreover, as you know, municipalities with a population of over 20,000 may not assess a fee for the first 2 hours of time spent searching for, compiling, segregating, redacting and reproducing a requested record. Finally, pursuant to 950 C.M.R. 32.07(2)(i), a records access officer shall assess no fee greater than the lowest hourly rate of a person capable of compiling, segregating, redacting and reproducing a requested record. In the event that a charge is incurred for this request which you will not waive, please so indicate and include an itemization of estimated good faith costs.
Please provide public records to a requestor in an electronic format unless the record is not available in an electronic format. M. G. L.c 66, § 6A(d).
The Public Records Act requires that you comply with this request within ten (10) business days following receipt. If you believe that documents or data responsive to any request herein is not public record and thus not subject to disclosure, please set forth in writing the specific reasons for such assertion, including the specific exemption or exemptions that you believe apply. To the extent that you determine that records need to be redacted in order to be produced under any law protecting the privacy of named individuals, please do so rather than withholding them in their entirety.
If you have any questions about this request, or need additional time to respond, please contact me. Thank you in advance for your prompt response to this request.
Sincerely,
Erin Stewart
Citizens for Juvenile Justice
(617) 338-1050
I also request that, if appropriate, fees be waived as we believe this request is in the public interest, as suggested but not stipulated by the recommendations of the Massachusetts Supervisor of Public Records. The requested documents will be made available to the general public free of charge as part of the public information service at MuckRock.com, processed by a representative of the news media/press and is made in the process of news gathering and not for commercial usage.
I expect the request to be filled in an accessible format, including for screen readers, which provide text-to-speech for persons unable to read print. Files that are not accessible to screen readers include, for example, .pdf image files as well as physical documents.
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 10 business days, as the statute requires.
Sincerely,
Erin Stewart
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Massachusetts Public Records Law request, copied below, and originally submitted on May 16, 2022. 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: New Bedford Police Department
Hello Ms. Stewart,
I'm responding on behalf of the New Bedford Police Department to your email sent today (5/26). In it, you wished to follow up on a public records request sent by you to the Department on May, 16, 2022.
To answer your question, the Department will be providing you with a response to your public records request by May 31, 2022 (10 business days from the 16th). Under the Massachusetts Public Records Law, a records access officer has 10 business days to respond to a request for records.
Thank you and please let me know if you have any other questions,
-Nick DeMarco
Nick DeMarco
Associate City Solicitor
City of New Bedford
133 William St., New Bedford, MA 02740
(508) 979-1400 x.67067 or (508) 979-1460
From: New Bedford Police Department
Dear Ms. Stewart,
I am responding on behalf of the New Bedford Police Department (hereinafter "the Department") to your recent request for records pursuant to the provisions of G.L. c. 66, § 10 (hereinafter "the Public Records Law"). Your request, received on May 16, 2022, was as follows:
I request the following public records, as defined in M. G. L.c. 4, § 7 (twenty-sixth):
1. An extract of your records management system or database that includes each school-related arrest and each referral to law enforcement conducted during the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced). Specifically, we request an extract of the database to include the following columns:
a. Date of arrest or referral to law enforcement
b. Time of arrest or referral to law enforcement
c. Charge (or charges)
d. Whether the individual(s) was arrested or referred to law enforcement
e. Sex of individual(s) arrested or referred to law enforcement
f. Age of individual(s) arrested or referred to law enforcement
g. Race of individual(s) arrested or referred to law enforcement
h. Ethnicity of individual(s) arrested or referred to law enforcement
i. Disability status of the individual(s) arrested or referred to law enforcement
j. Whether the individual arrested or referred to law enforcement is a student at the school.
k. Name of arresting officer, if applicable, and
l. Badge number of the arresting officer or the officer that referred the youth to law enforcement, as applicable.
2. If such an extract of the database in question 1 is not possible, please provide police reports and school incident reports on each school-related arrest conducted during the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced).
3. Please provide an unduplicated count of arrested students for each school year including 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced).
4. If such an extract of the database in question 1 is not possible, please provide police reports and school incident reports on each referral to law enforcement conducted during the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced), per the U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection for that year. For each referral to law enforcement, please include the school, demographic, and incident information described in DESE's School Safety and Discipline Report Data Handbook v. 20.0.
5. Please also provide an unduplicated counts of referrals to law enforcement (as defined above) for each school year including 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced).
6. A copy of any active memorandum of agreement and/or standard operating procedures between your police department and local school districts regarding police placement or activity in schools.
7. A copy of any active standard operating procedures developed with the police department and/or other law enforcement agencies regarding police placement or activity in your corresponding school; and,
8. Any records instructing or informing police personnel of, or otherwise describing, data reporting requirements and procedures for complying with M. G. L.c. 71 § 37P(b).
The Department has provided an answer to each of your requested topics in the order that you bulleted them in your initial public records request:
1. An extract of your records management system or database that includes each school-related arrest and each referral to law enforcement conducted during the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced).
The Department is not in possession of an extract of its records management system that includes each school-related arrest and each referral to law enforcement conducted during the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school years. However, the Department has conducted an initial search of its records management system and found there to be 88,571 documents total that pose to be potentially responsive to your request for records; of these 88,571 documents, 53,516 of them are incident reports, 1,848 of them are field interview reports, 18,734 of them are citations, 12,547 of them are warrant applications, and 1,926 of them are arrest reports.
In order to determine the responsiveness of these documents, the following departmental procedure must be adhered to:
The Department estimates that it will take approximately 5 minutes to review each document, verify its responsiveness, copy said document and redact the document in accordance with the Public Records Law if need be. Based on the Department's past experience dealing with similar records requests, it is anticipated that redactions and other withholdings may need to be made pursuant to Exemption (a) of G.L. c. 4, §7 (The Statutory Exemption):
* Personal information, including, but not limited to, social security number,
driver's license pursuant to. M.G.L. Chapter 93H.
* Victim and victim family information pursuant to M.G.L. Chapter 66, §10B.
* Sex victim and rape report information pursuant to M.G.L. Chapter 265, §
24C and M.G.L. Chapter 41, § 97D.
* Domestic violence reports pursuant to M.G.L. Chapter 41, § 97D1.
* Juvenile Delinquency case information pursuant to Chapter 119, § 60A.
* Registry of Motor Vehicle information pursuant to the Driver's Privacy
Protection Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2721.
* Criminal Offender Record Information pursuant to M.G.L. Chapter 6, § 167.
* Medical records pursuant to the HIPPA Privacy Rule, 45 C.F.R. §
164.502(a)(1).
As such, the following equation calculates the time necessary to complete the procedure outlined above.
(Average of 5 minutes to review, copy, redact and reproduce) * (88,571 documents) = 442,855 minutes
(442,855 minutes) * (1 hour/60 minutes) = 7,380.92 hours
As outlined by the Public Records Law, municipalities may not assess a fee for the first two hours of employee time taken to search for, compile, redact or reproduce the record(s) requested unless said municipality is comprised of 20,000 people or less. The City of New Bedford has a population of more than 20,000 individuals. As such, the Department will be seeking payment for 7,378.92 hours of work [(7,380.92 hours) - (2 hours at no charge)].
The lowest paid employee capable of reviewing the reports for responsiveness is the Management Analyst, whose hourly rate is $32.55. However, the Department will charge you only $25.00 per hour for reviewing the materials, as that is the maximum hourly rate allowable per the Public Records Law. The Department is, therefore, seeking payment of (7,378.92 hours) * ($25.00/hour) = $184,473.00.
As soon as payment is received, we will begin to process your request.
1. If such an extract of the database in question 1 is not possible, please provide police reports and school incident reports on each school-related arrest conducted during the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced).
In answer to this section of your public records request, please see the above stated fee estimate.
1. Please provide an unduplicated count of arrested students for each school year including 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced).
In answer to this section of your public records request, please see the above stated fee estimate.
1. If such an extract of the database in question 1 is not possible, please provide police reports and school incident reports on each referral to law enforcement conducted during the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced), per the U.S. Department of Education's Civil Rights Data Collection for that year. For each referral to law enforcement, please include the school, demographic, and incident information described in DESE's School Safety and Discipline Report Data Handbook v. 20.0.
In answer to this section of your public records request, please see the above stated fee estimate.
1. Please also provide an unduplicated counts of referrals to law enforcement (as defined above) for each school year including 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022 school year (up until the day the records are produced).
In answer to this section of your public records request, please see the above stated fee estimate.
1. A copy of any active memorandum of agreement and/or standard operating procedures between your police department and local school districts regarding police placement or activity in schools.
In response to this section of your public records request, the Department has attached a copy of its Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between itself and the New Bedford Public Schools.
1. A copy of any active standard operating procedures developed with the police department and/or other law enforcement agencies regarding police placement or activity in your corresponding school.
The Department is unable to respond to this aspect of your public records request, as it is not in possession of any responsive documentation.
1. Any records instructing or informing police personnel of, or otherwise describing, data reporting requirements and procedures for complying with M. G. L.c. 71 § 37P(b).
The Department is unable to respond to this aspect of your public records request, as it is not in possession of any responsive documentation.
You have the right to appeal this determination to the Supervisor of Records under 950 CMR 32.08(1) within 90 calendar days of this response. Any appeal shall be in writing and include a copy of your original request and this letter. By law, the Supervisor is required to respond within 10 business days of receipt of your appeal. You may also seek judicial review of an unfavorable response by commencing a civil action in the Superior Court under G. L. c. 66, § 10A(c).
Sincerely,
Nick DeMarco
Associate City Solicitor
City of New Bedford
133 William St., New Bedford, MA 02740
(508) 979-1400 x.67067 or (508) 979-1460
From: Erin Stewart
I attempted to call you this week to discuss this fee. Would it be possible to give me a call at: (605)-405-6229.
Thank you for your cooperation.
From: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Massachusetts Public Records Law request, copied below, and originally submitted on May 16, 2022. 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: Muckrock Staff
To Whom It May Concern:
I wanted to follow up on the following Massachusetts Public Records Law request, copied below, and originally submitted on May 16, 2022. 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: New Bedford Police Department
Ms. Stewart,
As can be seen in your email chain, the Department already responded to your May 16, 2022 pubic records request on May 31, 2022.
In regard to discussing your fee estimate, I called and left a voice mail at the number you provided on June 23, 2022. As to date, I have not received a call back from you.
If you wish to discuss further, you can call or email me directly at the telephone numbers and email provided in my signature block. However, as far as your May 16th request for public records, the Department’s duties have been met pursuant to the Massachusetts Public Records Law.
Best,
Nicholas DeMarco
[cid:image001.png@01D8929D.3FB11400]
Nicholas DeMarco
Associate City Solicitor
City of New Bedford | Solicitors Office
133 William Street, New Bedford, MA 02740
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