Iowa police certification 2023-03-03

To Whom It May Concern:

This is a public records request made via MuckRock under the Iowa Open Records Law, seeking records related to law enforcement officer certification in this state.

This request is brought by Big Local News along with a collaboration of news organizations, including ABC News, KQED, MuckRock, the Invisible Institute, and other news organizations. Big Local News is a program of Stanford University’s Journalism and Democracy Initiative and helps journalists collect, process and analyze public data.

We are seeking two categories of certification records:

* All certified officers
All law enforcement officers who are actively certified as of the date of this request (or when the request is processed). If your system maintains historical records of previously certified officers who are no longer active, please include them as far back as possible. If correctional officers are certified by your agency, please include them as well.

* Decertified officers
All law enforcement officers who have been decertified through revocations, voluntary surrenders, suspensions or any other actions going back as far as possible. Please include records for decertified correctional officers if available.

Data elements for certified officers:
* Officer unique ID number
* POST or state certification ID number
* Officer’s full name
* Officer’s date of birth or, if not releasable, year of birth or current age
* Officer’s city and/or zip code of residence
* Officer’s last/current department or agency
* Officer’s last/current department or agency start date
* Officer’s last/current position and/or rank at that department or agency
* Officer’s previous departments/agencies (employment history), with start and end dates
* Officer’s positions and/or ranks at previous departments or agencies
* Officer’s original date of certification
* Current status of certification (active, lapsed, expired, suspended, etc.)
* Last action taken on certification
* Date of last action on certification
* Disciplinary actions taken against this officer’s certification
* Dates of disciplinary actions taken against this officer’s certification
* Training history/additional certifications of this officer, if available

Data elements for decertified officers:
* Officer unique ID number
* POST ID number
* Officer’s full name
* Officer’s date of birth or, if not releasable, year of birth or current age
* Officer’s city and/or zip code of residence.
* Officer’s last department/agency, with start and end date
* Officer’s last position and/or rank at that department or agency
* Decertification action taken (revocation, suspension, voluntary surrender, etc.)
* Date decertification action taken
* POST case number, if applicable
* Reason for decertification or similar action

If your certification system contains data elements not listed above, please include them in the response, provided they are releasable under the law. On the other hand, we recognize some of the information we are asking for may not be tracked by your system. If that is the case, we are willing to accept as many of the data elements as your agency maintains. If some records are more readily available, we are happy to receive partial information as soon as possible while the remaining request is processed.

In addition to the data elements listed, we request documentation necessary to understand and interpret the data, including but not limited to record layouts, data dictionaries, code sheets, lookup tables, etc.

Our preference is to receive structured data provided in a machine-readable text file, such as delimited or fixed-width formats. We can also handle a variety of other data formats including SQL databases, Excel workbooks and MS Access. If there are additional formats your agency would prefer to provide, please let us know.

We are seeking this information as a news media organization on a matter of public interest concerning the conduct of government. As such, we ask for a waiver of all fees, if allowed under state law. If fees are necessary to reimburse the agency for actual costs, we agree to pay up to $100. If costs exceed that amount, please let us know before fulfilling the request.

Please send clarifications and questions via electronic communication at any time. Thank you very much for your time and attention to this request.

Sam Stecklow
Journalist
Invisible Institute

Hi Jill

Thanks for this response.

I'm wondering if you can clarify what would need to be reviewed for confidential material? In our experience with these requests, the only information that's been redacted has been information like Social Security Numbers — which have generally been removable as an entire column, not requiring line-by-line review. I'd just love to get a better idea of what the costs are going to.

Thanks

Sam

Hi Jill

Thanks for providing this. I'd still appreciate more detailed information about what we're being asked to pay. Can you please clarify the time and hourly cost estimates, and how you arrived at them? I've been advised by Randy Evans of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council that Iowa law only permits agencies to recover actual costs, and therefore I'd like to know how long each task is estimated to take, and the hourly pay rate the charge is calculated on.

Thanks

Sam

Hello

I'm following up here.

Thanks

Hi Jill

If ILEA has "reports including all certified/decertified officers," including the status of certifications, why does ILEA need to consult with an outside database and spend time redacting information from that? Unless I'm missing something, we can just remove that portion from the response.

Let me know how that sounds, and could you please provide a cost estimate for that?

Thanks

OK, and can you please clarify why court records need to be pulled, if the fact of a decertification is within ILEA's data? We're looking for data or spreadsheets, not individual records on decertifications. Could you also please clarify what the "training documents" that are being pulled are? I would love to find a way to reduce the administrative assistant hours, so if I can do that by narrowing the request at all, I would like to.

Let me know if you'd like to discuss over the phone.

Thanks

Sam

Hi Jill

Thanks for clarifying. We do not need a copy of the actual decertification order, if the fact of an officer's decertification and reason is present in data that is being provided.

Could you please provide an estimate in which the training data is removed from the request, but we still receive certification information & status, and employment history data?

Thank you!

Sam

Hi Jill

Let me consult with other members of the team on this project, and I'll get back in touch with you shortly.

Thanks

Hi Jill

Can you clarify whether the $322 estimate includes pulling the decertification order from court records? If so, could you please remove that from the estimate?

Thanks

Sam

Got it. Thank you.

To Whom It May Concern:

Please find enclosed a check for $322.52 to satisfy the fee associated with the attached public records request.

Thank you.

Thank you!