BLM comms (Newark Police Department)

Emma North-Best filed this request with the Newark Police Department of Newark, NJ.
Multi Request BLM comms
Submitted June 8, 2020
Est. Completion None
Status
Fix Required

Communications

From: Emma North-Best

Subject: New Jersey Open Public Records Act Request: BLM comms (Newark Police Department)

Mail


To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the New Jersey Open Public 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 7 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Emma Best

From: Newark Police Department

Subject: City of Newark OPRA request OIT-21-0007 CV-19

Email

Good Afternoon:

The Office of the Clerk of the City of Newark has assigned your request tracking number OIT-21-0007 CV-19 and forwarded it to the Police Division.

In order to gather the documents responsive to your requests, the OPRA unit sends your requests to the respective City Departments, which actually created, received, or retained these documents. Since the State of Emergency, crucial City Staff have retired, become sick, and work a staggered schedule, which makes the time needed to gather responsive documents far longer than usual.

This Office received your request on June 3, 2021, and anticipates a request on before July 3, 2021.

From: Newark Police Department

Subject: Re: New Jersey Open Public Records Act Request: BLM comms (Newark Police Department)

Email

Good Morning:

The Office of the Clerk of the City of Newark has received the attached memo from the Office of Information Technology, which states that there are more than 12,300 possibly responsive communications to your OPRA request. The services of an attorney are required to review these communications and determine which should be released in full, released with redaction, or withheld. This office approximates that an attorney can review these emails at a rate of 100 per hour for a total of 123 hours. When a filling a request requires custodian's staff to complete extraordinary expenditure of time, a custodian imposes a fee pursuant to N.J.S.A. 47:1A-5(c). This fee is equal to the hourly rate of the lowest person qualified to complete the work multiplied by the number of hours. The hourly rate of the lowest paid qualified person is $43.45 and the expected time is 123 hours. Thus, before you can receive these emails and the corresponding Vaughn Index, the City will require you to pay $5,355.42. The attorney will not begin review until you agree to pay the fee.

Attached please find copies of the following documents:

1. OPRA request OIT-21-0007 CV-19
2. Responsive memo from the Office of Information Technology
3. 14-point analysis

Sincerely,

Samora Noguera

Files

pages

 Close