Amid a growing national conversation about police shootings, Salt Lake City police are launching a website to post open data about how often officers use their weapons.
The Utah department is part of a small but growing number of agencies around the country who are moving to put the information online in an effort to be more transparent.
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Read More… from Salt Lake City police launch use-of-force data website
Virginia's Freedom of Information Advisory Council will formally recommend changes to the state's open records and meetings laws as soon as next month.
Among the changes waiting for an up-or-down vote from the council are tweaks that could potentially narrow one of the law's broadest exemptions, which currently lets state and local officials keep a wide and ill-defined swath of documents from public view.
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Read More… from Small changes, homestretch approach in Virginia’s FOIA review
From the 1991 Rodney King beating in California to the 2014 shooting death of Laquan McDonald in Chicago, nothing had more impact on the public than the video evidence. And, in cities across the nation, video of police-citizen interactions have helped inform the debate over police conduct.
In fact, that’s the point behind efforts to equip all cops with body cameras. Along with dashcams, surveillance camera footage and cellphone video, body cams can help give the most accurate accounts of what happens as police officers do their jobs.
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Read More… from Editorial: Minnesota Senate’s police body-cam bill hinders public access
It’s been almost a year since the White House first announced that it would be leading an effort to unite law enforcement agencies around the goal of achieving greater transparency through data.
In April, the White House Police Data Initiative (PDI) celebrated its progress by gathering leaders in the field for a two-day event to discuss the challenges and successes of releasing open police data to the public. The initiative began with 21 participating jurisdictions last May.
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Read More… from Sunlight Foundation: Lessons learned from a year of opening police data
If the unions that represent Chicago's police officers had their way, the records of hundreds of thousands of citizen complaints against cops would have been fed into the shredder by now.
They wouldn't be available for the U.S. Department of Justice as it tries to determine whether police have routinely engaged in behavior that violates the civil rights of citizens. They'd be gone.
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Read More… from Editorial: Lawmakers must act now to save Chicago police misconduct records
Jeffrey Clay, a prominent local government watchdog in southern New Hampshire, was awarded more than $40,000 by a federal judge following a disorderly conduct arrest at an Alton selectmen’s meeting in February 2015.
Clay, 57, of Alton, was arrested during the public input portion of the meeting after asking all of the selectmen to resign because of their “poor decisions.”
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Read More… from New Hampshire watchdog awarded $40K after arrest at a public meeting
An official tasked with improving the operation of the Freedom of Information Act across the Obama Administration is resigning after less than a year on the job, several sources briefed on the move told Politico.
James Holzer took over last August as director of the Office of Government Information Services, which serves as an ombudsman between federal agencies and FOIA requesters. The office also conducts audits of agencies' FOIA operations and proposes ways to streamline those processes.
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Read More… from Sources: Obama transparency official stepping down
Here comes the sun, Here comes the sun, and I say, It’s all right. George Harrison could have written those words about Ohio in recent weeks, as a pair of legal developments have called attention to freedom-of-information issues in the Buckeye State and promise to make state and local government more open.
As one of my friends in the legal world there put it, “Not sure who flipped the switch, but it feels like Sunshine Week … right now.”
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Read More… from Why open government advocates are feeling good about the news from Ohio
Legislation that would grant the public access to records of police misconduct and use of force faces its next test Monday in a state Senate committee.
Sen. Mark Leno’s SB 1286 is our favorite open-government bill in Sacramento this year, the one we endorsed during Sunshine Week because it would shed light on instances of police misconduct that are generally concealed from public view.
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Read More… from Editorial: Another test for public access to police records in California
Legislators are meeting in secret in Juneau on momentous questions that could shape the future of Alaska for decades.
It’s no secret they disagree about the budget, oil taxes, oil tax credits, the return of the income tax, increases in other taxes, whether to restructure the Alaska Permanent Fund and the formula for the Permanent Fund dividend.
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Read More… from Opinion: It’s time to break the Alaska Legislature’s habit of secrecy
