Source: https://njopra.com/category/articles/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 08:11:40+00:00

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Happy New Year! 2018 was a very busy year for the OPRA team at Pashman Stein Walder Hayden.
Partner CJ Griffin argued before the New Jersey Supreme Court two times, representing amicus curiae in Brennan v. Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and Paff v. Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office.
The Appellate Division issued a published opinion in Scheeler v. Atlantic County Joint Municipal Insurance Fund, granting our client’s appeal and ruling that one does not need to be a New Jersey citizen in order to access records under OPRA.
In a published opinion, the Appellate Division ruled in our client’s favor in Wronko v. New Jersey Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and affirmed the lower court’s decision that the NJSPCA was subject to OPRA. They say that transparency is the best disinfectant–shortly after the ruling and a damning report by the State Commission of Investigation, the Legislature stripped the NJSPCA of its police powers.
We sued the City of Newark for our long-time client, Steve Wronko, and gained access to it’s Amazon HQ2 Proposal.
We filed the first lawsuit of its kind in NJ seeking access to records within Facebook accounts held by public officials and we won.
We made a new relationship with Reclaim The Records and helped them gain access to New Jersey’s Death Index, which they used to create an awesome website for use by genealogists, historians, researchers, and journalists.
We successfully represented Natural Resources Defense Council in a lawsuit against the City of Newark seeking records relating to the lead contamination in Newark’s drinking water.
We sued and helped The Record gain access to a councilman’s racist chain emails and the video of the Paramus school bus crash.
We represented Libertarians for Transparent Government and sued to obtain the separation agreement that Rutgers University had with its former athletic director, Julie Hermann.
CJ Griffin, a member of Pashman Stein Walder Hayden’s Media Law Group, was interviewed by Marketplace regarding a prior OPRA lawsuit she brought against the City of Newark seeking its Amazon HQ2 bid.
The public radio program, “What’s in Those Amazon HQ2 Bids? It’s Not Entirely Clear” by Renata Sago and Leila Goldstein, aired on Tuesday, November 6th.
For more background on the lawsuit, click here.
Every year, transparency warrior Senator Loretta Weinberg introduces a bill which would modernize and improve OPRA. This year’s bill is S107. Given that Democrats now control the Senate, Assembly, and Governor’s Office, we are hopeful that the bill has a chance of passing.
While the bill overwhelmingly improves OPRA, through a series of blogs we will highlight how some small provisions of the bill that seem non-controversial can actually cause some major problems for requestors.
Currently, agencies cannot charge a copying charge to send requestors PDFs of documents. One creative way that agencies try to stall access to records is to think of a way to charge for them. Sadly, S107 will make such conduct perfectly legal.
S107 amends N.J.S.A. 47:1A-5(b) so that “a public agency may charge the fee for each copy made in the process of responding to a government record request made during the redaction process.” What this means is that if an agency has to print a copy of a record to redact it, it can charge for that copy even if it ends up scanning the record to the requestor in a PDF.
John Doe files an OPRA request for a copy of an employee’s one-page pay stub. The Custodian is obligated to redact the employee’s social security number from that document, so she prints a copy of it and redacts it. S107 allows her to charge 5 cents for that record. She emails John Doe and tells him that he has to pay 5 cents before she will email the pay stub to him and that he can either mail in a check or come pay by check at the clerk’s office.
John Doe now has to find his checkbook, write a check for a measly 5 cents, pay 49 cents for a sttamp, and wait 1-3 business days for it to arrive and the Custodian to email the pay stub to him. Or, he can take time off work to go drop off a check during the Custodian’s business hours. That’s an awfully big hurdle to receive a pay stub! It’s not the cost is too much, but the hassle of having to arrange to pay the fee discourages and delays access. But, S107 permits it.
This is not a crazy hypothetical, by the way. Things like this actually happen all the time. The GRC has addressed this issue several times, such as in Galloway Township News and Paff.
Hopefully this provision will be removed as the S107 works its way through committees.
We previously wrote about an OPRA lawsuit we filed on behalf of citizen seeking a list of users that various public officials from Glen Rock have blocked from their official Facebook accounts. Today we are happy to report that the suit was successful.
The court also rejected Glen Rock’s argument that those who were blocked by the public officials had a right to privacy.
Last week, Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal issued Attorney General Law Enforcement Directive No. 2018-1, which provides instructions to law enforcement agencies in this State regarding public access to dash camera and body camera footage of police-involved shootings. We find that there are both pros and cons to this new directive.
On one hand, we are very happy to see that the new Attorney General clearly understands that transparency advances public trust in law enforcement. The overall spirit of this directive is positive and it recognizes that law enforcement do not need permanent confidentiality over their records–the directive requires disclosure of police shooting videos within 20 days, in most cases. The presumption of access is important and we hope that agencies will follow the directive and will not seek constant extensions of time to release these videos.
On the other hand, the new directive does not give the public any more access than already existed pursuant to the Supreme Court’s decision in North Jersey Media Group v. Township of Lyndhurst. If anything, the new directive may make access to police shooting videos slower, as the Lyndhurst decision held that access must be granted “within a few days” and the new directive sets a timeline of 20 days. We fear that requestors will now need to wait for 20 days after an incident to file an OPRA request, then wait an additional 7 business days to gain access to the video. This is much slower than what we have experienced the past several months since the Lyndhurst decision was issued.
We are also disappointed that the directive only applies to videos which depict the use of deadly force or where other force results in “serious bodily injury.” We think that the spirit of the Lyndhurst decision makes it clear that most police videos should be released relatively soon after an incident occurs, but the new directive applies Lyndhurst very narrowly and the public will still struggle to gain access to police video which shows other types of misconduct or more minimal uses of force. For example, we think that if a police officer uses a racial slur toward a suspect while arresting them, the public should be able to see the video. The new directive, however, would not require disclosure unless the suspect was seriously injured. This is problematic.
PSWH Partner CJ Griffin was quoted in NJ Advance Media’s article on the new directive.
For assistance with OPRA matters, please contact CJ Griffin at 201-488-8200 or cgriffin@pashmanstein.com.
Last week, the Appellate Division issued a published decision that is very important to transparency. While the court’s analysis of its standard of review over GRC decisions will excite appellate attorneys, it is the more substantive portion of the court’s decision that grabbed our attention.
The case is Conley v. N.J. Dep’t of Corrections, ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. Jan. 12, 2018), and it involves an OPRA request that was filed by Kevin Conley, an inmate at the New Jersey State Prison.
Mr. Conley filed a complaint on his own in the Government Records Council (tip: we advise going to court instead!) and lost. The GRC accepted the DOC Custodian’s certification that it did not possess the monthly reports and ruled that it did not violate OPRA.
What does this mean for OPRA requestors? This case builds upon the Supreme Court’s recent holding in Paff v. Galloway, which held that electronically stored information is a government record that must be produced. Where an agency is obligated by law to produce a certain type of report or a specific document each month (or year) and it fails to do so because it has moved to an electronic database, it cannot avoid its obligations under OPRA. It would need to pull data from its database to produce the report/document to the requestor.
We recently blogged about how you can use OPRA to gain access to records which shine light on the use of force by police officers. This blog discusses other types of police records that will help you monitor your local police department.
The Attorney General’s Internal Affairs Policy requires law enforcement agencies to release an annual summary report to the public which “summarizes the types of [internal affairs] complaints received and the dispositions of those complaints.” This report, usually in the form of a chart, will help you monitor the types of complaints that are being lodged against officers.
Requirement 10 of the Attorney General’s Internal Affairs Policy also requires law enforcement agencies to periodically disclose to the public “a brief synopsis of all complaints where a fine or suspension of ten days or more was assessed to an agency member.” While the report will not identify the officer by name, it should briefly outline the nature of the transgression and the fine or sentence that was imposed. This permits the public to see details of more serious internal affairs allegations that were sustained and will highlight an agency’s most egregious problems.
Vehicle pursuits not only put the suspect and police officers at risk, but also other people who happen to be in their way. Every year there are reports where innocent bystanders are injured or killed when a vehicle slams into theirs during the course of a police pursuit.
There are two reports which will help you monitor vehicle pursuits. First, pursuant to the Attorney General’s Police Vehicular Pursuit Policy an officer must complete a “Police Pursuit Incident Report” for every pursuit. If you read about a pursuit in the newspaper, you can request this report to find out more details about who was involved in the incident.
Second, the Attorney General’s policy requires every municipal police agency to submit an annual agency “Vehicular Pursuit Summary Report” to the county prosecutor, which will detail the total number of pursuits and other useful information. You can compare these reports to other towns or look to see if any particular officer engages in pursuits more frequently.
Police officers have the ability to arrest and detain suspects, to seize property, and to lawfully use force against people when justified. Because police officers are given these tremendous powers, we hold them to very high standards—we expect that they will be honest, trustworthy, and follow the law and the Constitution.
In a two-part series, we will discuss how you can use OPRA to monitor police conduct. This blog highlights records you can request to monitor the use of force by police officers.
Pursuant to the Attorney General’s Use of Force Policy, every time an officer uses any level of force against an individual they must complete a Use of Force Report (“UFR”). A UFR is a simple one-page report that provides information about a specific use of force incident, such as the names and biographical data of those involved and the type of force that was used. A model form is available here.
You can request UFRs relating to a single specific incident of force that you read about in the news or you can request all of an agency’s UFRs for a specific timeframe. By requesting all of an agency’s UFRs during a specific timeframe, you can determine how often force is used and whether there are any patterns that emerge, such as whether a specific officer uses force far more frequently than other officers or whether certain races are the target of force more often than others.
Where deadly force is used, a “Police Use of Deadly Force Attorney General Deadly Notification Report” must also be completed. This is true even if the deadly force does not actually result in death. If a police officer shoots at someone, that action constitutes the use of deadly force even if the officer misses. A model AG Notification Report is available here.
Recently, The Lab @ DC released a report which suggests that Body Cams do not change police behavior and cause them to use force less often. Body Cams do, however, promote transparency over the police. For example, The Trentonian has recently published Body Cam footage that has exposed police officers bragging about roughing up suspects. The public obviously has a significant interest in knowing that its officers are behaving this way so that it can advocate for discipline or leadership change.
Because Body Cam Footage is required to be made and maintained by Attorney General Law Enforcement Directive No. 2015-1, it cannot be exempt under OPRA’s criminal investigatory records exemption. It may, however, be exempt under the ongoing investigation exemption depending on the nature of the tape, when it was created, and whether releasing it would be harmful to the public interest. The Supreme Court, however, has said that the public’s interest is in disclosure where police use of force is involved and that an agency should not need to withhold police video for more than a few days in most instances.
The Supreme Court has recently ruled that dash camera videos that relate to criminal incidents are not subject to OPRA because there is no law that requires it to be made, thus it is a criminal investigatory record. That may change when the Court decides Paff v. Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office next year. In the interim, the Court has made it clear that dash cam footage should be routinely disclosed under the common law right of access. Accordingly, make sure to invoke the common law when you file your records request.
Dash camera footage that relates to a non-criminal incident, however, is subject to OPRA. So, if your mayor was caught on tape after being pulled over for a DWI, that video should be publicly accessible.

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