Tag Archives: Groupwise

LAPD

You Know How War Criminals Shred All Their Documents When Anti-Fash Forces Start Getting Too Close? — LAPD Destroyed Or Misplaced All Of Its Emails Prior To January First 2016 — They Are All Gone — The History Of Our City Is Being Destroyed Either Intentionally Or By Idiocy And There Is Presently No Legal Remedy — Also Interesting That In March 2016 LAPD Was Being Sued — And Didn’t Produce Emails Required For Discovery — And Blamed It On Technical Difficulties But Did Not At That Time Mention The Loss Of All Emails — And Also Dorner — February 2013 — All Emails Related To Dorner Are Gone — Which Is A Huge Relief To Some Folks I’m Sure — Also Some Important Technical Info On How LAPD Discovery Processes Cases

July 20, 2020 Mike 1 Comment

I mean, the headline says it all. If you ever make a request for public records involving emails from LAPD their NextRequest platform will tell you:

Please be advised that with regards to requests for Department e-mails, the Department only has access to e-mails from January 1, 2016 to present. E-mails that were sent or received prior to 2016 are not available to be queried or otherwise retrieved. When requesting e-mails, please be as specific as possible as to time frame, subject matter, key words, etc. that will enable the Department to conduct a thorough search for responsive records.

And LAPD has lied to me so often, so thoroughly, and so needlessly, that for a long time I just assumed that they were lying about that also and didn’t think much of it. But at some point I started to wonder, so I made a request for public records relating to the statement, and, amazingly, they produced a whole set of emails about it!¹

And it appears to be true that they no longer have any LAPD emails from prior to January 1, 2016. They’re just gone. The date, by the way, is when LAPD switched from Groupwise to Outlook for email. According to LAPD Info Tech officer Javier Macias:

Groupwise/Retain emails are no longer available as that email server is out of service. Our IT staff and vendors attempted for 4 months to revive this server without any success and we no longer can retrieve any data from it. Only Dept emails on the Outlook e-discovery server are available from 1/1/2016 to present.

Continue reading You Know How War Criminals Shred All Their Documents When Anti-Fash Forces Start Getting Too Close? — LAPD Destroyed Or Misplaced All Of Its Emails Prior To January First 2016 — They Are All Gone — The History Of Our City Is Being Destroyed Either Intentionally Or By Idiocy And There Is Presently No Legal Remedy — Also Interesting That In March 2016 LAPD Was Being Sued — And Didn’t Produce Emails Required For Discovery — And Blamed It On Technical Difficulties But Did Not At That Time Mention The Loss Of All Emails — And Also Dorner — February 2013 — All Emails Related To Dorner Are Gone — Which Is A Huge Relief To Some Folks I’m Sure — Also Some Important Technical Info On How LAPD Discovery Processes Cases →

LAPD, Public Records Act Pragmatics

The Story Of A Request For Emails From LAPD — And All The Ridiculous Reasons They Propounded For Not Producing — And How They Then Produced!

September 17, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

On January 13, 2019 I asked the Los Angeles Police Department for emails between CD13 staffer Dan Halden and any LAPD employee from January 1, 2016 through December 31, 2018. Yesterday, eight months later, they produced emails from October and November 2018 with the promise of more to come. How we got to this point is the subject of today’s post.² Here’s what the request said exactly:

Per my rights under the California Public Records Act, please provide all correspondence between anyone who works in the Los Angeles Police Department AND daniel.halden@lacity.org, for the time period of January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2018. Correspondence is defined as all emails, texts or other communications.

To be honest, when I made this request in January 2019 I was expecting LAPD to refuse to produce the records on technical grounds,³ And on January 18, 2019 they did exactly that. They gave two separate and mutually contradictory reasons for refusing to produce.

First they told me that “[y[our request does not describe the records sought clearly enough to permit my staff to determine whether any responsive documents exist.” This claim is based on the CPRA at §6253(b), which requires of requests that they “reasonably [describe] an identifiable record or records”. LAPD’s second reason for refusing to produce was that it would be too much work:

A search of email communications and correspondence for “anyone who works in the Department” would be unduly burdensome for the Department as interpreted in the “public interest” provision of section 6255 of the Act, and would require a separate search of each individual email account of approximately 14,400 Department email accounts.

Continue reading The Story Of A Request For Emails From LAPD — And All The Ridiculous Reasons They Propounded For Not Producing — And How They Then Produced! →

Lawsuits

City Files Response to Application for Contempt and Sanctions Stating Essentially that they did Hand Over Documents, they are Handing Over Documents, and they Will Hand Over More Documents and the Computer Ate their Homework so it’s not their Fault

March 18, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

On Wednesday the plaintiffs in the LACW/LACAN lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles and the Central City East Association filed materials in support of their application for contempt and sanctions against the City of Los Angeles, who, they claim, is not producing discovery materials according to the already-much-extended schedule. Tonight the City filed two documents in response: A declaration of Ronald Whitaker, who’s the Assistant City Attorney handling the case for the City, and a declaration of LeShon Frierson, who is a senior system analyst with the LAPD, and is the Person Most Knowledgeable (PMK) regarding the LAPD’s email systems.
Continue reading City Files Response to Application for Contempt and Sanctions Stating Essentially that they did Hand Over Documents, they are Handing Over Documents, and they Will Hand Over More Documents and the Computer Ate their Homework so it’s not their Fault →

Lawsuits

Documents Filed Mere Moments Ago in LACW/LACAN v. CCEA/City of LA Case Quite Plausibly Accuse City of Los Angeles of Inaccurate Representations Regarding LAPD Discovery Capabilities

February 23, 2016 Mike Leave a comment

Last week attorneys for Los Angeles Catholic Worker and LA Community Action Network filed an application requesting that the City be held in contempt for its misfeasance in what has turned out to be painful, drawn-out discovery process. This morning, mere minutes ago, plaintiffs’ attorney Shayla Myers filed a supplemental declaration in support (along with an exhibit) in which she states:

I am producing this supplemental declaration to update the Court about facts which Plaintiffs have discovered since the ex parte motion to hold the City in contempt was filed. In particular, Plaintiffs have discovered that certain representations by the City of Los Angeles appear to be inaccurate. While the City of Los Angeles has maintained since July 2015 that it cannot do a global search of emails in the possession of the LAPD, Plaintiffs discovered at a deposition of the Person Most Knowledgeable on behalf of the City on February 22, 2016 that the LAPD employs e-discovery software that allows the LAPD to search all emails sent and received by LAPD officers since March 2013, that the software is designed to facilitate global keyword searches, and that when the LAPD has done such a search in the past, it was completed within a week.

Continue reading Documents Filed Mere Moments Ago in LACW/LACAN v. CCEA/City of LA Case Quite Plausibly Accuse City of Los Angeles of Inaccurate Representations Regarding LAPD Discovery Capabilities →

Lawsuits, Public Records Act Pragmatics

LAPD Senior Systems Analyst’s Declaration in LACW Lawsuit Provides Further Insight into LAPD’s Secretive and Cavalier Attitude Towards Public Records, Legal Obligations

December 13, 2015 Mike Leave a comment

A house of secrets: LAPD headquarters at night.

Papers newly filed in federal court reveal an astonishing unwillingness on the part of the City of Los Angeles and the LAPD to release public records and other documents to the plaintiffs in the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and LA Community Action Network lawsuit. A few days ago I wrote about these filings in general and today I’m going to discuss some specific details about the City’s claims regarding the LAPD’s email system and how, they say, it’s preventing them from complying with the discovery process in the suit. This topic is, of necessity, mostly inside baseball both legally and technologically, and maybe you want to skip it if that bores you. If so, the TL;DR is that the LAPD contradicts itself constantly about the availability of its emails for legal discovery, and the LAPD only looks even more furtive when facts related to Public Records Act requests are considered. All four of the documents I discuss below were extracted from Part 2 of Catherine Sweetser’s declaration, filed with the court on December 8, 2015.
Continue reading →