swat - Vacaville Police Department

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the California's Sunshine Amendment (Cal. Const. Art. I, § 3(b)), I hereby request the following records from the Vacaville Police Department:

1.
a) The dates and reasons of all S.W.A.T. team deployments for as far back in time as such records exist. If the tactical operations unit in your agency goes by another name besides “S.W.A.T.”, (e.g. “TAC” or “PPU”), then please provide the above information for that unit.

b) If possible, please provide the above information in a spreadsheet in which each row contains the following information: the date of each deployment (month, day, and year); the reason for the deployment (e.g. "hostage barricade"; "warrant service”).

c) If the information is readily available, please also supply in the spreadsheet: the location of each deployment (the city or zip code); whether the S.W.A.T. team used force on any individuals during the deployment; whether any S.W.A.T. team members were injured during the deployment.

d) If only some of these data fields are able to be supplied, (for example, if dates and reasons can be supplied, but locations and data on the use of force and injuries cannot), then please fulfill the portion of my request for which data is available rather than reject the entire request outright.

2. If the above spreadsheet does not exist and it is infeasible to generate it, I hereby request the following:

a) Copies of all incident reports, (sometimes called "after-action reports"), pertaining to all of your agency's S.W.A.T. team deployments for as far back in time as such records exist.

b) If these reports contain sensitive information that cannot be released to the public, please release them in redacted form if possible.

3. If providing the responsive materials to items 1) or 2) is not possible, please instead provide me with monthly counts of S.W.A.T. team deployments in all months for which records are available. If monthly counts are not available, please provide annual counts for as far back as such counts are available.

4. If your agency's S.W.A.T. team works in partnership with other jurisdictions (i.e., multiple city or county agencies contribute members to a common S.W.A.T. team), please provide me with the names of those other agencies, noting which agency commands the unit.

5. Please inform me of the date of the creation of your agency’s S.W.A.T. unit. If the exact date is not available, please provide me with the month or year of the unit's creation.

If this request should have been sent to another city employee or department, please forward my request accordingly, or reply and inform me as to where the request should be sent.

This request is being made for academic, not commercial, purposes, and the information it generates will eventually be made available to the general public. As such, I request that any fees generated by this request be waived. In the event that fees cannot be waived, 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. If paper documents are the only option, please mail them to me at:

Jonathan Mummolo
235 Olson Way, #404
Sunnyvale, CA 94086

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,

Jonathan Mummolo
Stanford University
Dept. of Political Science
(202)-527-5640

Hello,

Thank you for the reply. The responses you have noted are not appearing in the email you sent. Can you please resend the email to jmummolo@gmail.com ? I apologize for the inconvenience.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Mummolo
Stanford University
Dept. of Political Science

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on July 10, 2015. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

Hello,

Thank you for the update. The documents can be mailed to:

Jonathan Mummolo
235 Olson Way, #404
Sunnyvale, CA 94086

Sincerely,

Jonathan Mummolo

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on July 10, 2015. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

Hello,

Apologies for the automated email that was sent to you. I am traveling but my mail is being forwarded to me and your package just arrived yesterday. Thank you very much for this extremely helpful reply to my request. As a courtesy, I wonder if someone could please clarify the following:

1. Is it possible to obtain these reports in electronic (.pdf) format?

2. Do you believe these records to be a complete record of all SWAT callouts dating back to 2001? That is, is it agency policy to create a report after each SWAT callout, or are reports generated selectively?

Thank you again.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Mummolo
Stanford University
Dept. of Political Science