Virginia Beach, VA PD Citizen Complaints

To Whom It May Concern:

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

We are Economics Professors in the College of Business at Ferris State University, and are engaged in an empirical research project on police behavior and citizen complaints. This project requires us to request data from your department. If you have questions about this request or suggestions, we would be happy to discuss them with you.

1. How many officer-involved-shootings were there per year for the last 10 years in your department? Any documentation or reports that detail the annual number of officer-involved shootings in your department for the past 10 years would be sufficient.

Please include documentation regarding how many of these officer-involved shootings involved disciplinary action. (Please list officer firearm discharge directed at a person separately from a shooting involving an animal and separately from accidental firearm discharges).

Please include the number of officer-involved shootings resulting in discipline.

Collecting this information is very important to our research, so we would like to emphasize, if you have questions about my request or suggestions, we would be happy to discuss them with you.

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.

Please note that I am a citizen of Virginia, and am using MuckRock's services to help manage and track my request.

Sincerely,

Tom Nash

Hello,

Thank you for the update. I understand the request is extensive and that this justifies a fee. I understand you cannot tell me an exact amount, but could you approximate exactly how many hours will be required?

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Respectfully,
Alex Cartwright

Hello,

I would like to proceed, but is there a way we can cap the research time at 10 hours in order to keep the total expense under $200?

Thank you,

Hello VAPD Internal Affairs Division,

Thank you for the information you have provided. However, we requested the data on an annual basis ("per year") and you have provided the total number of officer involved shootings that took place in the last ten years. We need to know how many of those shootings can be attributed to each year: for example 2007 - 8 shootings, 2009- 5 shootings etc.,

Respectfully,
Alex Cartwright

Hi,

Thanks so much for your help with this request! I really appreciate it.

Sincerely,
Alexander Cartwright and Jennifer Dirmeyer