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2020PB / police-brutality

Repository containing evidence of police brutality during the 2020 George Floyd protests
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FOIA Requests for more evidence? #603

Open 01210210 opened 4 years ago

01210210 commented 4 years ago

Should users who are able/willing begin filing Freedom of Information Act requests for additional evidence such as police body cameras? MuckRock makes it very easy here is an example FOIA request for body camera footage.

The only downside is someone has to attach their real name to requests.

ghost commented 4 years ago

I am OK attaching my name to FOIAs should a few folks want to draft and use this mechanism to add to the effort.

01210210 commented 4 years ago

Okay great. The process would be for each entry in the database for which the state might have additional evidence (police bodycams, arrest and incident reports, police dashcams...etc) to file an open records request. This is a huge job obviously and we would need more people willing to work on it, but the process is quite easy once you've done it. All you need to know is the name of the police department, and what info you're looking for, and their template takes care of the rest. Blank form on Muckrock

They charge $100/mo for an organizational account with 5 users, and there are additional fees for a certain number of requests. I would be happy to contribute to that.

I think we should try to gauge interest from others before proceeding.

RooneyMcNibNug commented 4 years ago

I can vouch for this being a useful tool, especially regarding the aftermath of events and arrests (although arrest reports don't always capture things in their full detail...)

I've been filing a lot of FOIA requests pertaining to the protests that I have been adding to the following Project page on MuckRock: https://www.muckrock.com/project/documents-pertaining-to-protests-after-the-murder-of-george-floyd-766/ - responsive records here could yield supplemental information in a lot of these incidents.

I will take a look at some listed incidents here and do further FOIAs respectively, fwiw.