School-Based Arrest Data Request (Southbridge Police Department)
| Multi Request | School-Based Arrest Data Request |
| Submitted | May 12, 2022 |
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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:
On 05/16/2021, we received a request pursuant to the Massachusetts Public Records Law from Erin Stewart for the following records:
1. All School-related arrests and law enforcement referrals to law enforcement conducted during the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021 school years. To include date, time, charges sex, age, race. Ethnicity, student status, disability status, identifying information of the arresting officer, active memorandum of agreement and/or standard operating procedures between the police department and local schools and a copy of records instructing or informing police personnel describing data reporting requirements and procedures.
Pursuant to Section 10(d)(iv) of Chapter 66 of the General Laws, and 950 CMR 32.06(4), we are requesting permission to charge the following fees associated with the search and segregation of the requested records. We acknowledge that the Public Records Law provides that the fee must be calculated using the hourly rate equal to or less than the hourly rate of the lowest paid employee who has the necessary skill to complete the search and segregation and that the hourly rate cannot exceed $25.00 per hour unless approved by the Supervisor of Public Records.
This request would require a search and review of approximately 4 years of department logs/records and the redaction of any sensitive information that would be exempt from public record. It should be noted that in 2020 the Southbridge Police Department had a total of 36,790 calls for service.
In order to comply with your request, it will take approximately 10 hours of search and segregation time, based upon the following: 4 hours to review the timeframe in question to locate and reproduce all applicable case documents. 6 Hours to ensure that all documents reproduced, does not contain any information that fall under Public Record Law Exemptions.
The lowest paid employee who has the necessary skill to complete the search and segregation of these records is Officer Gerald Arvelo whose normal hourly rate is 32.38. This is due to the fact that the requested records include personnel information, standard operating procedures/policies/MOU’s between departments and incidents involving of juveniles which is restricted to sworn personnel only.
The total number of hours that we intend to charge for is 8 hours for a total of two hundred dollars ($200). This request will be completed upon receipt of the fee which can be paid by check or money order payable to the Town of Southbridge. If you would like to go forward with this request, please feel free to contact me to make further arrangements.
Respectfully Submitted,
Ofc. Gerald Arvelo
Records Access Officer
Southbridge Police Department
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: Erin Stewart
Hello Ofc. Arvelo:
Thank you for your reply! Just so that I can understand your fee request, how many arrest records does Southbridge have for that four year time period?
It is our understanding that we are requesting data that your department already has an obligation to report publicly. Would it be possible to waive the fees associated with it because of that obligation?
Looking forward to discussing this matter further. We appreciate your willingness to work with us.
Best,
Erin
From: Southbridge Police Department
Good Morning,
At your request I had run an inquiry of our records system during the time period you inquired about. This quick breakdown shows how many total arrest numbers were generated by the Southbridge Police Department during the years; 2018/1620, 2019/1234, 2020/1108, 2021/1074 for a total of 5,036. It should be noted that these numbers are not just physical arrests but also include criminal complaints, protective custody arrests and include both juvenile and adults.
Although this information is saved, our records management system requires a manual search of these records for the specific information you are looking for. In addition, since this information involves juveniles, access is restricted to only certain personnel which will take some time to process. We have given a good faith estimate of approximately 10 hours to fulfill this request with only 8 being subject to the processing fee. In reality we foresee this specific request as taking longer to fulfill but we are willing to waive any additional fees.
It should be noted that the Southbridge Police Department prides itself on being transparent with public records within the confines of the law and has a history as being willing to work out reasonable accommodations with requesters in order to fulfill specific requests. However, with the amount of public records requests submitted to our department daily, it would be likely that this request may cause undue delays in processing other requests that we are legally obligated to provide.
Respectfully,
Ofc. Gerald Arvelo
Records Access Officer
Southbridge Police Department
From: Erin Stewart
Thank you. We are going to go ahead to pay the fee of $200. Does your department accept AMEX payments?
From: Southbridge Police Department
Good Afternoon,
At this time the only acceptable form of payment is by check or money order made payable to the Town of Southbridge.
Respectfully,
Ofc. Gerald Arvelo
Records Access Officer
Southbridge Police Department
From: Erin Stewart
Thank you. Are you able to provide us with an W-9 form?
From: Erin Stewart
Following up on this. We are hoping you may be able to provide us with a W-9 form to pay this fee. Thank you.
From: Southbridge Police Department
Per your request, please see the attached W9.
From: Erin Stewart
Good afternoon,
I have attached an invoice to this message - can you please review it and confirm that the information is accurate? Additionally, it appears that the W9 you provided was signed in 2009. Would you be able to provide one signed in 2022?
Thank you,
Erin Stewart
From: Southbridge Police Department
The invoice attached does match the quote that was given. Attached is the most recent W9 the town has at this time, per your request.
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: Southbridge Police Department
Per our records access officer, the payment for this is to be received prior to our execution and delivery of the requested materials. As noted in the communication on 7/13/22 (in reply to the 7/12/22 post) the amount on the invoice is correct, and the most current W9 was sent as requested. If additional information is needed from us un order to process the payment please let us know and we will address it accordingly.
From: Southbridge Police Department
Good Afternoon,
I have attached your requested files involving the Southbridge Police Dept. School-Based Arrest Data Request. Please feel free to contact me with any further issues.
Thank You,
Ofc. Gerald Arvelo
Records Access Officer
Southbridge Police Dept.
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Records request School Arrests
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