Bristol County Sheriff absences

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Massachusetts Public Records Law, M.G.L. c.66, §10, I hereby request the following records for the sheriff’s absences for the following years: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018:

• Dates, times, cities, states, countries, and purpose of absence for all occasions on which Sheriff Hodgson was not present at a Bristol County Sheriff’s Office facility, in court, or participating with the Massachusetts Sheriff Association from 2014-2018; Vacation time taken during this period; and All conferences attended during this period, identifying the sponsoring organization.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

Preferred format is vCalendar or iCalendar, but a spreadsheet would suffice. In the event of a fee that cannot be waived, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request to be filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter.

I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 10 days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

David Ehrens

To Whom It May Concern:

We have not received a response to our May 23, 2018 request for the following, pursuant to the Massachusetts Public Records Law, M.G.L. c.66, §10:

• Dates, times, cities, states, countries, and purpose of absence for all occasions on which Sheriff Hodgson was not present at a Bristol County Sheriff’s Office facility, in court, or participating with the Massachusetts Sheriff Association from 2014-2018; Vacation time taken during this period; and All conferences attended during this period, identifying the sponsoring organization.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes. Preferred format is vCalendar or iCalendar, but a spreadsheet would suffice. In the event of a fee that cannot be waived, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request to be filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

We should have received a reply within 10 days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

David Ehrens

Hi Jonathan,

This request was previously sent to lorrainerousseau@bcso-ma.org, an earlier public records contact. Can you help us get it processed? Let me know if there's a better contact, and have a great Fourth of July.

Dear Mr. Darling,

On May 23rd I filed an information request via Muckrock for travel records which was sent to lorrainerousseau@bcso-ma.org. On July 3rd, having not heard back within the mandated response period, Muckrock sent you another communication, "Hi Jonathan, This request was previously sent to lorrainerousseau@bcso-ma.org, an earlier public records contact. Can you help us get it processed? Let me know if there's a better contact, and have a great Fourth of July." On July 9th, you replied, "Mr. Ehrens, the best email address is publicrecords@bcso-ma.org. I will pass this along to legal to see what the status of your request is." On, July 20th you sent another communication, "Please direct all inquiries about public records requests to publicrecords@bcso-ma.org. Thank you, Jonathan Darling"

Did the sheriff’s office not receive the original request? If not, Muckrock or I can re-send the original request from May 23rd. Kindly let us know the precise status of this request.

David Ehrens

Thank you. My address is:

David Ehrens
24 Sunset Lane
S. Dartmouth, MA 02748

We did receive the flash drive. However, the BCSO's response to our request was incomplete and included totally irrelevant material. Specifically:

- The sheriff has attended many more National Sheriff's Assoc. and Federation of American Immigration Reform events in the five years requested than we received. Thus, we doubt the completeness of the BCSO response.
- Sponsoring information is missing from the data. Many of the travel documents merely say "Sheriff's DC trip." Trip to where? Trip to visit whom?
- Data received apparently depended on the existence of BOFA billing records and actual events were not reported from any other source. Thus, if a bank statement did not provide a clue to the event, we did not receive it. The sheriff has made hundreds of media appearances in this time and there is almost no record of any of them.
- Intermixed in the response are numerous bills for floor scrapers, transmissions, and maintenance materials. This calls into question the thoroughness of the response.

We would ask the BCSO to go back and return ALL travel from the five years requested, whether BOFA invoices exist or not. This would include media appearances and coordinated activities with groups external to the jail.

We have asked the BCSO to provide more complete travel data, augmented with sponsoring information which was requested but not provided.

In the interim we are posting a public link to the information we have received:

https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/w5WP0sulbLhXdb96lQd0t1rwQGVf5e8438NBlJbTtF3

Travel records from August 2014, September 2014, May 2015, June 2015, August 2016, May 2017, August 2017, September 2017, November 2017, and December 2017 were not provided by the Sheriff's Office.

Please transmit these missing records to the address provided earlier.

There may be another request for public health records, but this one is for travel records, dates, with sponsoring organizations.

We are still waiting for the missing months and events which are not exclusively reflected in your BofA statements. Please send them. This has been under review far too long.