Officer-involved shootings historical data

To Whom It May Concern,

Pursuant to the Vermont Public Records Act, I am writing to your office to request historical records regarding officer-involved shootings in Vermont.

Specifically, I am any requesting lists, tables, or data sets your agency may have compiled on the subject, going back in time as far as data is available. Such a list might include information like the date and location of the shooting, the name and agency of the officer, the the name of the shooting victim, whether there were injuries or fatalities, and the legal outcome decided upon by your office, the courts, or similar.

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 3 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,
Brian Waters

Thank you Ms. Clark.

I'm interested in historical data going back as far as available. I did find one document from the VSP going back to about 1977 or so, that has information about shootings that involved VSP officers (and I'm also aware of the Digger's work, thanks). I will contact the state archives as you mentioned, I think that's a good suggestion, and maybe circle back to your agency in the future if that makes sense.

In the meantime, we're certainly interested in the table you located detailing shootings going back to 2017. We would also accept the draft tables you found, if they would not incur an extra cost for review and redactions.

As for searching your agency for more documents, before we ask you do take that, can you give a sense of what the availability of this sort of thing? I'm not very familiar w/ your agency and don't know your policies as far as retention, etc.

Thank you,
Brian Waters

P.S, the VSP document is available here: https://vsp.vermont.gov/sites/vsp/files/documents/20190910%20OIS%20spreadsheet.pdf

Hello Ms. Clark,

I just wanted to follow-up on my public records request regarding historical officer-involved shooting data. When we last corresponded on 9/4, I clarified that I was interested in receiving a copy of a table you identified containing data going back to 2017. I also asked you if you could give me a general sense of the availability of older data, and the search time that might be involved to dig into that further. (That correspondence should be reproduced below.)

Do you have any updates on this? In particular, we're interested in a copy of the table you identified.

Thanks,
Brian Waters