OIS - Firearms Discharges

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request the following records:

1) Incident-level data on Richmond (VA) Police Department officers’ drawing their weapons/firearms in the course of their duty: I request data from years 2000 to 2020, including the time, date, and street address (e.g. 123 Main St) for all incidents where an officer drew their weapon/firearm;
2) Incident-level data on the Richmond (VA) Police Department officers’ discharging their weapons/firearms in the course of their duty: I request data from years 2000 to 2020, including the time, date, and street address (e.g. 123 Main St) for all incidents where an officer discharged their firearm;
3) If incident-level data on the Richmond (VA) Police Department officers’ discharging their firearms in the course of duty from years 2000 to 2020 inclusive is available, I also request associated data on whether the shootings by the officers were lethal (i.e. suspects or civilians died as a result of gunshots from officers’ weapons) or were non-lethal (i.e. suspects or civilians were shot but did not die); and
4) Demographic data on the officers and suspects or civilians involved in each incident of Richmond (VA) Police Department officers drawing, discharging, and/or striking (lethal and non-lethal) of suspects or civilians.

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,

Tom Nash, a citizen of Virginia, in coordination with Michael Owens.

We thank your the reply, Ms. Carr, including the information requested. We're wondering why the city completed the request without first notifying us what the charge for its completion would be. Our original request stated "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." In reply, two times, the city noted "At your request, an estimate of the anticipated cost can be provided to you. If we estimate that it will cost more than $200 to respond to your request, we may require you to pay a deposit before responding to your request."

So, to now receive the information with an invoice for ~ $700 is surprising. Is there any possibility the city could either reduce its invoice or not charge at all for this public information, especially in light of the city forgetting to follow a key step in the process? I hope there is some way we can amicably resolve the matter of the invoice. As we noted in our initial request for the data we are not pursuing commercial purposes with the data. It's purely a request in the public interest.