CORA Logs (El Paso County Sheriff's Office)

Good morning Samuel,

Thank you for submitting your request with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. Your request has been received and is being processed. We will contact you within 3-business days regarding the progress of your request.

Thank you,
Beth DeStefano
Manager - Records & Documents
El Paso County Sheriff's Office
719-520-7976 (desk)
Monday/Thursday – OTS
Tuesday/Wednesday/Friday – Evidence

https://www.epcsheriffsoffice.com/

Good afternoon Samuel,

In response to your CORA request, please see below. I have provided some responses however I am hoping you can provide some further clarification for me as well.

1. All records of CORA requests sent to your department during the specified 180 day period. - attached
2. All records of CORA responses issued by your department in response to external requests within the same timeframe. - can you further clarify what you are looking for - are you requesting the actual documents that were provided in each request?
3. A copy of the fee schedule for processing CORA requests and any associated costs. available on our website - https://www.epcsheriffsoffice.com/public-records-cora
4. A copy of your department's open records policy for reference. - please see Policy 205 at this link https://public.powerdms.com/ElPasoCSO/tree/documents/1811962
5.Correspondence in relationship to CORA requests sent between government entities. - a search of emails specific to the search terms CORA OR ‘Colorado Open Records Act’ and sent to/from the members of the Sheriff's Office who handle our CORA processes of returned over 3000 results for the date range provided by you. We have no way to run an automated search to see how many of these emails would be responsive so the search would have to be completed manually, with an estimated 60 staff hours expended. Could you provide further clarification for this search that may help narrow the scope?

Thank you
Beth DeStefano

Hello -

Reference your response above

2. The documents themselves need not be included. Preference is that they be included. - I understand that you prefer to receive the documents that were provided in response to CORA's. The estimated time to review/redact the records is 5 staff hours ($160.00)

5. The 3000 results. Processed at your discretion.
If you provide the results readily available I could narrow the scope. - At this stage in the process, there are no emails readily available for release. The time estimate to review and redact the emails flagged in our search is 60 hours ($1,920.00).

The combined cost for both items above is $2,080.00. If you would like to move forward with this request, please remit payment in the form of money order, cashiers check, business check or cash, made out to the El Paso County Sheriff's Office, addressed to my attention to 27 E. Vermijo Avenue or dropped off to my attention. We are now accepting payments by credit/debit card as well. To pay by card, please complete the payment through this link: El Paso County Records Requests, CO - Online Payments (pointandpay.net) and reply back to this email with the confirmation number.

Thank you,
Beth DeStefano
Manager - Records & Documents
El Paso County Sheriff's Office
719-520-7976 (desk)
Monday/Thursday – OTS
Tuesday/Wednesday/Friday – Evidence

https://www.epcsheriffsoffice.com/

Hello,

Your request has been forwarded to the appropriate section of the Office for further correspondence.

Thank you,

[cid:05b201b1-406b-4d67-bd30-eeec8e772f57]

Commander Deborah Mynatt

El Paso County Sheriff's Office

2739 East Las Vegas Street

Colorado Springs, CO 80906

Office: 719.390.2433

Cell: 719.330.0560

Good afternoon,

All email searches are conducted with the assistance of the County Open Records Manager. Please see the following information in response to your questions above.

Could you be more detailed on the planned search for the records?
For this request, the search was run using these parameters:
• Date Range: 02-09-2024 – 08-07-2024
• Search terms: “CORA” or “Colorado Open Records Act”
• Email addresses: SHRRecordsRelease@elpasoco.com BethDeStefano@elpasoco.com JenniferHarris@elpasoco.com

What specific steps would be taken? In what order?
As you know, this search flagged over 3,000 emails. The estimate includes time for document retrieval, organization, creating a document summary, attorney review, and necessary redactions.
The County is legally responsible for ensuring that no protected information is released, which requires a thorough review of every word contained in those documents.

Have you verified hours with the IT department or a data analyst?
IT is not consulted on time estimates nor a data analyst, as they are not involved in the reviewing or redacting process. The time estimate is based on over 5 years' experience the County Open Records Manager and I have with responses to email searches.

The challenge is that the search does not tell us how many emails have attachments or the length of those attachments, nor the amount of sensitive information in those documents. With so many variables, the final time required to complete this request could change from the estimated amount. If the actual time expended is less than estimated, we will refund the difference.

Here are suggestions that may cut down the estimate:
• Reduce the Date range
• Provide us with clarification on what records you are seeking
• Specify that for now, you only want the emails, not the attachments. The responsive emails will still list the names of the attachments. This means that you could sift through the emails and then specify which attachments you want.

Additionally, Cmdr Deb Mynatt is no longer a contact for CORA requests. Please update the contact for the El Paso County Sheriff's Office to reflect shrrecordsrelease@elpasoco.com

Regards,
Beth DeStefano