Police records

A Colorado police department plans to release the results of a disciplinary investigation of one of its police officers to a local television station tomorrow after the officer failed to convince an appeals court to prevent it from becoming public.

The Pennsylvania State Police must release records sought by the Associated Press about work its employees perform while off duty, but social security numbers, home addresses, and the times and places of the off-duty work could be redacted from the released records, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ruled this week.

A Manhattan trial judge found that New York City Police Department shooting incident reports fall under the state Freedom of Information Law and must be made available when requested. The Feb. 14 decision, made by state Supreme Court Justice Emily Jane Goodman, found that the reports should be redacted and made available when requested.

The Maryland Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, heard oral arguments Friday in a case that will determine whether internal investigation files related to racial profiling complaints lodged against state police officers are public records subject to disclosure under the Maryland Public Information Act.

A Pennsylvania state appeals court ruled Thursday that incident reports filed by state police officers are not public records, citing an exemption in the state’s Right to Know Law that protects from public disclosure “a record of an agency relating to or resulting in a criminal investigation.”

The court’s 6-1 ruling reversed an earlier decision by the state Office of Open Records that such documents should be made public.

A New Jersey police department has released the seemingly benign use-of-force reports that were the subject of an open records legal battle that cost the city $80,000 and set a precedent for other law enforcement departments statewide, NorthJersey.com reported.

Disciplinary records related to citizen complaints against Chicago police officers will not be released to the public in a lawsuit brought by a reporter and local government officials, a federal appeals court ruled Nov. 10.

A New Jersey appeals court on Monday ruled that police use-of-force reports -- generated any time a police offer uses force against a citizen -- are public records and cannot be withheld as criminal investigatory records.

The Arizona Supreme Court today ruled that metadata – information about the history, tracking and management of an electronic document – is subject to the state’s public records law.