Walter Scott

Ms. Russell - our initial search suggests that there may be thousands of pages that may meet your broad initial search criteria. I believe this includes a large amount of material that is outside of what you are looking for. For instance, in the few weeks immediately after the shooting NCPD was flooded with FOIA requests for everything imaginable related to Scott and Slager. If you go with "sent by" and add a filter to exclude emails with the term "FOIA" you might be able to cut out a lot of extraneous pages. (Since most of the FOIA requests during the aftermath seemed to quickly end up in print media or on TV my guess is that you probably have already seen that information at one time or another.) In addition, switching to "and" instead of "or" in a few reasonable places may be sufficient to get you down to a number of results that a human, as opposed to a computer, could actually read.

Thus, I would propose something along the lines of:

Emails sent or or after April 4, 2015, by NCPD employees that meet the following parameters:

((Feiden" and "Santana") or ("Walter" and "Scott") or ("Pierre" and "Fulton") or ("Michael" and "Slager")) BUT EXCLUDING "FOIA" and EXCLUDING "freedom of information" and EXCLUDING communications with legal counsel.

Note - the computer folks may have to adjust parameters a bit to make my proposed query work since I am, admittedly, not a computer scientist.

Please advise if something along the lines I describe will be acceptable and we can rerun a search to see if the results come in as something relevant and manageable size-wise. If we still end up with an enormous flood of marginally relevant hits we can consider further refinement of the query.

Thank you

Ms. Russell -

Correspondence with legal counsel is, by state statute, specifically exempt from FOIA production. Undertaking a search to find non-exempt communication of this nature is anticipated to be quite expensive. A rough estimate for such a search would likely be in the range of $3,000 - $4,000, perhaps more. We would ask that a deposit of $3,000 be placed before we begin such a search. Once that initial deposit is exhausted the City would cease searching until an additional deposit is placed on file with the City. In the unlikely event that the total cost for this item falls below the deposit, any unused portion would be refunded to you. Please advise whether you wish to place a deposit or would prefer for us to use the described computer search query to exclude legal counsel electronically without additional cost.

Regarding FOIA, the City does not contend that prior FOIA requests and prior FOIA responses are exempt from production. However, I am not sure you have an understanding of the magnitude of what you are requesting. The City has received probably hundreds of FOIA requests or related inquires mentioning Slager, Santana, and/or Scott since April of 2015 and has produced thousands of pages in response. During that same time period the City has received probably a thousand or more non-Walter Scott FOIAs. The time and expense required to search for, locate and re-produce all the Walter Scott related FOIA's at once in response to your request is expected to be enormous. I think a rough estimate would probably start at nearly $2,000 and may end up being significantly higher. As described above, the City would need a deposit placed before commencing work. Please advise whether you wish to place a deposit or instead have us exclude prior FOIAs from the scope of our current search query.

Sincerely,
Beth Woodall
Legal Assistant

January 3, 2017
North Charleston Police Department
Public Information Officer
PO Box 62558
North Charleston, SC 29419

This is a follow up to a previous request:

That's acceptable to me, with the exception of excluding communications that include "FOIA" and "Freedom of Information." Also, I believe the communications with legal counsel could be included so long as certain information is redacted prior to release. Please let me know if this request needs any further adjustment. Thanks!
Caitlin Russell
---

Dear Caitlin-

Using the search parameters we discussed, our computer department has come up with more than 3,300 hits. We estimate somewhere between 5 - 10,000 pages are involved, though it may be more.

It might be advisable to narrow the query to try to get down to some number that won't wear out anyone's eyesight. One way that readily comes to mind would be to search for ("Scott" and "Slager") rather than "or." I think that would exclude unrelated "group" emails that might have been addressed to the entire department (including Slager) and still leave you with emails that you are probably looking for (emails dealing with both Walter Scott and Slager). Another approach might be to use a date range restriction from April 1, 2015 to July 1, 2015 would put it down into a more manageable number. Please let me know if we can proceed as described above.

Thank you,

Beth Woodall
Legal Assistant
City of North Charleston
2500 City Hall Lane
North Charleston, SC 29406
bwoodall@northcharleston.org<mailto:bwoodall@northcharleston.org>
Tel: 843.740.2550
Fax: 843.745.1082

www.northcharleston.org<http://www.northcharleston.org/>
a great place to live, work, or play

[cid:image001.jpg@01CA7F32.DA178FB0]
Please do not print this e-mail unless necessary.

It is at printers right now. I'd say within a week, but don't quote me on that.

A copy of documents responsive to the request.