FOIA Friday: Requesting police records and a Historic District Commission update

Requesting Ann Arbor police records

If you go to Ann Arbor City Hall, first floor, police records, you can fill out a form requesting information about an incident. If the incident was not in the City of Ann Arbor, then you can typically find the information about where to go to with a request on the city or agency's web site.

You'll need to know the time, date and location of the incident; if you don't know the precise time and date, you can specify a range of times and dates and they will do a search. For example, you can ask for:

"All records regarding police visits, calls for service, police reports, investigations, and complaints between June 1, 2009 and today for 999 Buttercup Lane, Ann Arbor MI 48107."

This is broad (to cover a wide range of time) but very narrow (one very specific address) to make it possible to do a search. It's also possible to specify a range of addresses, e.g. anywhere on the 900 block of Buttercup Lane.

The FOIA process may take time, and you might not get what you ask for the same day you submit the request. In my experience, Ann Arbor police records often takes the full five business days allowed by statute to process a request. They typically do not request the 10 day extension to that time that is allowed, but they can, so be prepared that it might take three calendar weeks to get an answer.

You'll get back a set of records, which should include some set of things you want, some set of things you don't care about and a notice typically that some things were not provided for one of several reasons. Police agencies routinely redact or fail to provide records that are part of an ongoing investigation, and they will often not include names and other identifying information about witnesses to protect them.

If you don't get what you want there's an appeal process, but you can't appeal it until you've asked formally and been officially denied.

City of Ann Arbor records cost $0.05 per page, so be prepared to spend a few nickels.

The Ann Arbor Police records page also includes instructions for getting much more timely access to crash reports. Crash reports since June 13, 2005 can be downloaded; the fees are $11 per report, and you get them right away. And if you're looking for crash records across a wide area, it can be very useful to look at the Michigan Traffic Crash Facts site which has a good search interface and statewide data from 2004 to 2008.

The appeal process continues: Historic District Commission

Last week's FOIA Friday related the story of being rejected in a FOIA request for Historic District Commission minutes, and the subsequent appeal.

The city has not yet responded, and I'm not expecting a response until next week. But, miraculously, the HDC minutes archive now shows five months worth of draft minutes waiting to be approved by the board.

It's unusual and notable for a public body to be this far behind on approving minutes, but I am hoping that the city's official response to my request, which I expect next week, will satisfy my original request from four weeks ago for that information. However, it is within the bounds of the law for the city to extend their response to my appeal for an additional 10 business days (for a total from start to finish of 35 business days to respond).

Since these are historic meeting minutes, I'm willing to wait.

Edward Vielmetti is as patient as he needs to be when asking politely for information for AnnArbor.com. Contact him at edwardvielmetti@annarbor.com.