swat - ventura county sheriff

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 Ventura County Sheriff's Department:

1. 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. 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.

2. If your agency or legal counsel determines that these reports contain sensitive information, and therefore cannot be released to the public in their entirety, I instead request the following:

a) The dates, reasons, locations, and outcomes (i.e. whether the deployment resulted in the use of force; and whether any S.W.A.T. members were injured during the deployment) of all S.W.A.T. team deployments for as far back in time as such records exist.

b) If possible, please provide the above information in a spreadsheet in which each row contains the following information: the date of each deployment; the reason for the deployment (e.g. "hostage barricade"; "warrant service"); the location of the deployment (the city or zip code in which the deployment occurred); 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.

c) If only some of these data fields are available, (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.

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

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on July 2, 2015. Please let me know when I can expect to receive a response, or if further clarification is needed.

Thank you for your help.

To Whom It May Concern:

I wanted to follow up on the following Freedom of Information request, copied below, and originally submitted on July 2, 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 this update. I apologize for the additional emails that were sent as part of Muckrock's automated system. Those have been disabled now and no more should follow.

Thank you.

Jonathan Mummolo
Stanford University
Dept. of Political Science