Whether the government agrees is another story.
The Valley Indy filed a complaint against state police after the publication was unable to gain access to a “use of force” report regarding the February 2014 shooting of Maurice Beall by Ansonia Police Officer Joseph Jackson.
Beall, a Derby resident with a long criminal history, survived.
The Valley Indy asked for the report after Beall was sentenced to jail.
The report, which had already been released to the Ansonia Police Department and a prosecutor, cleared Jackson of any wrongdoing in the shooting.
In an effort to confirm what the officials were saying, the Valley Indy attempted to get the state police use of force report as part of a story about the conclusion of Beall’s criminal case.
Ansonia police referred the Valley Indy to state police, because the investigation into the shooting was handled by state police, per the department’s protocol.
But a state police spokesperson would not provide the Valley Indy with a copy of the “use of force” report in January, even though Beall’s criminal case was closed, and the use of force report was gathering dust somewhere in the state bureaucracy like the box at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
Instead, the Valley Indy was told to call the records department, fill out a form, pay $16, and wait up to six months.
The two staffers at the Valley Indy thought this was strange because the case was closed — and the public has an obvious right to know whether an officer-involved shooting was justified without being held up by red tape for up to six months.
So, instead of paying 16 bucks and waiting six months, Fry filed a Freedom of Information request for the report. After two weeks went by with no response from state cops, he filed a complaint with the state’s Freedom of Information Commission.
A 30-minute hearing on the complaint happened Wednesday morning in Hartford. It is posted at the top of this story.
The government was hung up on the fact the Valley Indy didn’t pay $16 to get the report, which isn’t surprising, and that they’re overworked — though the state was able to produce the report for other state agencies and the Ansonia Police Department without delay.
The Valley Indy’s position: sure, we’re willing to pay, but that doesn’t justify a six-month wait to find out whether your neighborhood cop was right to pull a trigger.
The state police red tape is not necessarily the norm. Just last week a Superior Court in New London faxed a court transcript to the Valley Indy less than 24 hours after the publication requested it, along with a bill for $135. The court didn’t even make the publication pay in advance.
No decision has been made on the Valley Indy’s FOI complaint, though testimony from a state trooper revealed (about 15 minutes into the recording) that parts of the Department of Public Safety were plagued earlier this year with Microsoft Outlook problems (which could explain why state police previously ignored a Valley Indy Freedom of Information request for 911 tapes from a murder in Oxford).
Video by Valley Indy intern Marco Rumbin.
