2. Police blotter.

By statute, Massachusetts requires all municipal police departments (including deputized college and university police departments) to “make, keep and maintain a daily log, written in a form that can be easily understood, recording, in chronological order, all responses to valid complaints received, crimes reported, the names, addresses of persons arrested and the charges against such persons arrested. All entries in said daily logs shall, unless otherwise provided in law, be public records available without charge to the public during regular business hours and at all other reasonable times….”  G.L. c. 41, § 98F.

Daily police logs constitute public records and do not fall under the CORI exemption from the public records definition. Commonwealth v. Holt, Nos. CRIM.A. 95-0026, 95-0021, and 95-0042, 4 Mass. L. Rptr. 539, 1995 WL 670141, *2 (Mass. Super. Ct. Oct. 17, 1995) (“police logs are public records, are non-CORI material, and fall outside CORI’s scope of protection”); Tomczak v. Town of Barnstable, 901 F. Supp. 397, 404 (D. Mass. 1995); see also G.L. c. 6, § 172, ¶ 8 (CORI statute, noting that “public records” include “police logs, arrest registers, or other similar records compiled chronologically, provided that no alphabetical arrestee, suspect, or similar index is available to the public, directly or indirectly…”); 803 CMR 2.04(7) (“CORI shall not include public records as defined in M.G.L. c. 4, § 6 [sic] including police daily logs under M.G.L. c. 41, § 98F”). Thus, the daily police logs not only have to be maintained, they must also be produced, without redaction, pursuant to a public records request. Indeed, a Secretary of State publication implies that the request for a “police daily log” would be a routine inquiry under the statute. Guide to Mass. Pub. Rec. Law (Sec’y of State, rev. March 2009), at p. 1.