Department policies, guidelines, or instructions regarding FOIL requests following repeal of CRL 50-A (New York City Police Department)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the New York Freedom of Information Law, I hereby request the following records:

Any written record of instruction, policy, regulation or guidelines for agency personnel involved in the review, evaluation and/or fulfillment of Freedom of Information Law requests, within the time period of June 12, 2020 to the date of this message.

These records may include references to the repeal of Civil Rights Law 50-A and/or changes to the Freedom of Information Law of the State of New York to cover disciplinary records; however, all records instructing staff with the aforementioned duties should be considered responsive.

Records may be from within Agency chains of command (including Commissioner and staff), from the Office of the Mayor of New York City as chief executive, or from New York City Law Department (also known as the Office of the Corporation Counsel).

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 5 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

T. McElwee

Subject: FOIL-2020-056-11639 [APPEAL]

To whom it may concern:

I appeal the agency Records Access Officer's denial in my FOIL request (assigned the identifier FOIL-2020-056-11639).

This appeal is on the grounds that the denial is a complete non-sequitur, that states that FOIL "does not necessitate the creation of a document" in spite of no language requesting the creation of a new document.

My original request is attached in full in the attached PDF. For the sake of brevity, I will also recap the request in the simplest terms possible:

"Any written record of instruction, policy, regulation or guidelines for agency personnel involved in the review, evaluation and/or fulfillment of Freedom of Information Law requests, within the time period of June 12, 2020 to the date of this message [August 7, 2020]."

This is a reasonable request to search and fulfill. This would be a simple search for documents in the collection most likely to include instructions, policies, regulations and guidelines for FOIL requests, that date from the time period between June 12, 2020 and August 7, 2020, and include the term "Freedom of Information."

I am aware of my rights under the Freedom of Information Law and the administrative appeals process, and remind the appeals officer that obstructing a lawful FOIL request exposes the agency to a possible Article 78 proceeding and the recouping of legal costs at the agency's expense.

I pray that the agency complies with Freedom of Information Law by making a good faith effort to search and return the requested documents.

-T. McElwee