Public Records Request for Data on School Policing (Westwood Police Department)
It is a clone of this request.
| Multi Request | Public Records Request for Data on School Policing |
| Submitted | Jan. 11, 2024 |
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Communications
From: katherine stathulis
To whoever it may concern:
This letter constitutes a request pursuant to the Public Records Act, G.L. c.66, §10, for public records in the custody of your school district. 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 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 school incident reports on each school-related arrest and 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).
3. 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,
4. Any records instructing or informing police personnel of, or otherwise describing data reporting requirements and procedures for complying with G.L. c. 71 § 37P(b).
5. The cost to the school district of assigning a school resource officer to each school; and,
6. The total number of school resource officers and total number of guidance counselors for each school in your district for school years 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and,
7. The total number and a brief description of 911 calls from schools in your district to local police departments conducted during the 2018-2019, 2019-2020, 2020-2021, and 2021-2022, and,
8. A description of the proposed budget for mental, social, or emotional health support personnel for the school district.
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 school district 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. 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 by phone at (617)-373-5862 or by email at k.stathulis@northeastern.edu. Thank you in advance for your prompt response to this request.
Sincerely,
Katherine Stathulis, Esq.
Center for Public Interest, Advocacy, and Collaboration
Northeastern University School of Law
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 Jan. 16, 2024. 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:
Attorney Stathulis:
In response to your request for records, I am going to break down the attachments by the numbers in your email, with commentary as necessary.
I note that your email referred specifically to the school years from 2018 to 2022, and parenthetically "up to the day the records are produced." Therefore, our records were searched from January 1, 2018 to February 1, 2024.
Item 1: I was not able to produce an extract from the two records management systems employed by the Westwood Police Department in the time frame above. Therefore, I opted to include the relevant records under the next item.
Item 2: Four police reports where juveniles were charged with crimes through the complaint process. There were no arrests of juveniles in the time frame cited above.
1. Incident #18-150-OF, 02-26-18, Threats to Commit a Crime/Threats to a School: Report provided with redactions taken under Exemption C (privacy) to the Massachusetts Public Records Law. This exemption provides for the withholding of "personnel and medical files or information; also any other materials or data relating to a specifically named individual, the disclosure of which may constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy." In addition, the names of all juveniles have been redacted from the report, as well an any additional information (parent's name, address, etc.) that might tend to identify them.
2. Incident #18-1220-OF, 12-06-2018, Drug Possess to Distribute Cl D/Drug Violation Sch Zone: Report provided with redactions as described above.
3. Incident #2200015180, 05-20-22, Extortion: Report provided with redactions as described above.
4. Incident #2200029314, 10-03-22, Possess False ID: Report provided with redactions as described above.
Item 3: I have attached a copy of the department policy and procedure for School Resource Officers, as I believe it is responsive to your request. As the policy refers to the MOU between the Westwood Police Department and Westwood School Department, I have included a copy of the memorandum currently in effect.
Item 4: I have included quotations from the cited chapter and section of the Massachuestts General Laws that refer to reporting requirements. All seem to be incumbent upon entities other than the Westwood Police Department.
Item 5: The cost to the Westwood School Department is zero. Since the inception of the SRO program, the cost has been borne entirely by the Westwood Police Department. The SRO receives a salary contractually based on the officer's rank and seniority during their period of service.
Item 6: There is currently a single SRO appointed within the Westwood Police Department. For the period of September 2023 to December 2023, there were two SRO's appointed. During this time period the outgoing SRO was training the replacement SRO. The Westwood Police Department does not have records related to the number of guidance counselors employed at the various Westwood schools. A request for that information should be addressed to the Westwood School District Office, located at 220 Nahatan Street, Westwood MA 02090 220 Nahatan Street, Westwood, MA 02090, Phone:781-326-7500 Fax:781-326-8154
Item 7: Over the course of the specified time period, the Westwood Police Department has employed two different records management programs. For records provided from 01-01-18 to 12-13-20, the system is known as IMC. From 12-14-20 to 02-01-24, the department has utilized a system known as Nexgen. The two systems compile records differently. With regards to the 911 call records from IMC, you are receiving what is called a "basic" log printout, with minimal details/commentary. However, as you will see the 9-1-1 calls were all accidental or otherwise, denoting they were not true emergency calls. For the period covered by NexGen, the records appear in more of digest format. As to the disposition of the calls, the second column of those reports is generally denoted by the code "SR" and indicates that "services rendered" by the responding officer (not always the SRO). Other codes employed in these reports were "RO" and "BC" and those represent "referred to other agency" in the case of a misdirected call received by Westwood Police, or "building check." If the code "IV" were to appear, it would indicate the call resulted in an investigation and likely a narrative report would be prepared. I did not see any of the NexGen calls marked with an "IV" when reviewing them. The two different sets of reports are attached above.
Item 8: Per the statute cited above in Item 4, the budget proposals are the purview of the superintendent of schools. The Westwood Police Department does not have any records related to this issue.
If you have any questions, you can reach me at the above email address, or at 781-320-1055, Monday through Friday.
Regards,
Lt. Christopher Sheehy
The Attorney General has determined that email correspondences are public records unless the content of the email falls with one of the stated exemptions under the Public Records Laws
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