Suit claims crash-report dillydallying

The Arkansas State Police illegally is slowing down the release of crash reports that the state Supreme Court ruled six weeks ago must be issued uncensored, a law firm claims in a new lawsuit.

Attorney Brad Hendricks of Little Rock and his namesake nine-member law firm sued the law enforcement agency Friday, accusing it of withholding the reports without legal justification beyond the three-day time limit established under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

The Supreme Court in April upheld a Pulaski County circuit judge's order that the state police stop removing mailing addresses and other identifying information of people involved in car crashes from the agency's accident reports.

Hendricks' firm was involved in that case, which was initiated by another law firm.

The six-page suit filed Friday states that Bill Sadler, state police spokesman, never responded when asked to explain how the agency's practice complied with the public-records law.

Sadler, named a co-defendant as the agency's records custodian, did tell the law firm that the reports had to be reviewed for potential redactions before they could be released and that those redactions were typically done by a Highway Patrol Division secretary who could work only part time on the review because of other duties, the lawsuit states.

According to the most recent count, the Arkansas State Police investigated 16,265 crashes in 2014. The agency reported investigating 15,287 wrecks in 2013, which accounted for about 25 percent of all the vehicle crashes statewide.

According to the lawsuit, Sadler told the law firm that the agency wants to release reports as soon as possible but that it cannot set a "hard and fast deadline" because it also must make sure that the reports are properly redacted.

"It is the position of the Arkansas State Police that employees assigned to review and redact crash investigation reports or other public records as provided by the [Freedom of Information Act], do so in a timely manner," Sadler states, according to the suit.

"However, due diligence should be exercised in these assignments to ensure compliance in protecting the statutory exemptions, without a hard and fast deadline. In other words, each page, often as many as thirteen pages or more must be reviewed for applicable redactions."

Hendricks argues that the only redactions allowed are for a new exemption added to the law in 2015, which makes the names and addresses of children involved in car crashes secret.

Despite the new exemption, the open-records law states that agencies can't withhold an entire report just because it contains information that has to be withheld, the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit states that a Hendricks employee discovered the practice in May when he went to conduct a regular review of crash reports at the state police office in Hope and found that far fewer reports than usual had been released. He was told he couldn't see the others because they had not undergone a redaction review.

"When the employee inquired as to why so few reports were available for inspection, he was advised that representatives of the office responsible for reviewing redactions had limited time to do so, and reports would only be made available once reports were reviewed and redactions were made," the suit states.

That practice violates the Freedom of Information Act if the reports are not released within three business days of the request to view them, the lawsuit states.

Hendricks asked Sadler on June 1 to explain how the agency thinks its practice is legal, but had not received an answer 10 days later, when the lawsuit was filed.

Hendricks is asking for a hearing within the week, and the suit has been assigned to Circuit Judge Chip Welch.

Welch is the same judge who ruled that the agency was violating the public-records law last year when it began redacting mailing addresses and "descriptive information" found in the crash reports.

The state police claimed that it needed to remove such information from the reports because officers wrote their reports using information that comes from motor vehicle records that federal lawmakers have ordered to be kept from public disclosure.

Welch ruled against the state police, citing an exemption in the federal law that excludes crash reports from the secrecy law and federal court rulings that state crash reports were not included in the records that federal lawmakers had excluded from public disclosure.

The police agency appealed, represented by the attorney general's office. The Arkansas Supreme Court sided with Welch in April and ordered the practice to end.

The Wren Law Firm of Little Rock initiated that lawsuit, which also involved the state police citing the new children's exemption as grounds for denying a request to release reports in bulk, according to the May 2015 lawsuit.

Lawyer brothers Daniel and Keith Wren sued under the Freedom of Information Act after Daniel Wren had tried to review crash records but was refused by the police agency.

Agency officials told Wren he couldn't see any reports because redacting children's names from them was too much work, but that he could buy copies for $10 each, according to the Wren lawsuit.

Metro on 06/11/2016

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