Reply
So I went to the Department to pick up the information and this is what I was furnished.
TempleResponse.pdf
While I was there, I noticed there was no sign posted. The Texas Public Information Act requires a government agency to display a sign that displays the rights of the requestor.
Nope, no sign. Here is a close up of the sign visible on the right of the photo:
The above was representative of the interaction I had with the department. The records guy was not very helpful but there is no sense in raising a fuss there, I followed up with another e-mail.
A few days later, I received this response from the "Office Assistant":
Here is the request - OPEN RECORDS REQUEST_041113SCAN.pdf
Here is the interesting thing about an AG request. Since the requester does not get a copy of the information, all an agency has to do is "forget" to send information in their possession and the AG rules only on information sent. If they only send information they know is exempt, the response is always in their favor or as they desire it to be.
The catch is, since it is not permissible to see what they sent, it is almost impossible to prove the information sought was not submitted for the AG to rule on.
The other problem is 99.9% of people who take the time to make a request give up after the initial rejection. It's not like the government would lie or do something unethical.
Sure enough this is the response from the AG:
The AG open records people crack me up sometimes. They are not stupid. You have to check the line that goes: However, you must release the basic information, including a detailed description of the offense, pursuant to section 552.108(c) of the Government Code.
Ms. Rodriguez is standing behind the police department and has not made "a detailed description of the offense" available. The response narrative said "See offense report" and the offense report narrative was determined to be excepted information.
On 4-26-13, I called to follow-up on the e-mail above and was told Ms. Rodriguez was in a meeting and unavailable. I left a message but she did not return my call by close of business. I was not particularly shocked about that.
I also filed a complaint with the County Attorney.
They did not have a clue what to do with this. After jacking me around for 45 minutes, a guy names Guess came out to talk to me. He acted like I was the stupidest person on the face of the planet. Then I received this response:
It must be great to be so important you have assistants to send e-mail on your behalf. Minor thing? Probably but here is the response I provided to the County Attorney.
As of close of business on 4-26-2013, I have received no response to the above. Have no fear, I was not holding my breath on this one either.
Perhaps next week, almost a month after the initial request, someone with integrity will stand up and make the public information available.
