Texas Town Is Charging Us $79,000 for Emails About Pool Party Abuse Cop

[Newsjock]

Source: Gawker

Days after McKinney, Texas, police officer Eric Casebolt was filmed pointing his service weapon at a group of unarmed black teenagers at a pool party this month, Gawker submitted a Public Information Act request to the city of McKinney asking to see Casebolt’s records and any emails about his conduct sent or received by McKinney Police Department employees. Today, we received a letter from the city’s attorneys claiming that fulfilling our request would cost $79,229.09.

The city arrived at that extraordinary figure after estimating that hiring a programmer to execute the grueling and complex task of searching through old emails would cost $28.50 per hour, and that the search for emails about Casebolt would take 2,231 hours of said programmer’s time.

... According to the letter, emails maintained by the city before March 1, 2014, “are not in a format that is searchable by City personnel.”

... Given the stratospheric total number—and the fact that nearly every email client on the planet has some sort of search function—it’s hard to read the letter as anything other than a deliberate attempt to conceal information. We’ll be filing an appeal.

Read more: http://gawker.com/texas-city-is-charging-us-79-000-for-emails-about-pool-1714757746

[HooptieWagon]

1. Sounds like a cover-up.

I wonder what's in that cops file they're hiding?

[cstanleytech]

12. Yup sounds like it. nt

[musiclawyer]

38. My speciality is public records in CA albeit

But I know they are lying. Any software like Defender could pull up emails based on search
If they don't have it , the requester could offer to get it and would cost a fraction of the quote even paying for public employee time which you would have to do in most jurisdictions. Now if they deleted mails through a formal retention program that's another story because even retention policies drafted by any professional would not include deletion of emails on litigation hold or that might be relevant to claims or potential claims ...

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

2. Yeah, that's bs.

Give a COMPETENT programmer access to their mail system, and he can put together a script to do the job in anywhere from 15 minutes to a couple of days tops, depending upon the type of system they use.

[Ed Suspicious]

13. This.

[xocet]

18. Maybe they want the programmer to write in machine code...? n/t

[Thor_MN]

3. They see asshole as a profit center.

or at least "fund some of what asshole is going to cost us".

[Jeff Murdoch]

19. It's Texas,

Isn't this how they fund all their shit?

[peacebird]

4. Sounds like a coverup, no way a search should take over 2000 hours, that's basically a YEAR

They are clearly covering up something and hoping that if they drag their feet for a year no one will care anymore

[rpannier]

5. I'll do it for free

I mean, that way they don't have to hire some guy to sit and tectonically go through the e-mails

[Shrike47]

6. The city is lying and they know it. Not only racists but also thieves and liars. Yeah Texas!

[Person 2713]

7. They rounded off seconds to hours

[RichVRichV]

16. No kidding!

Tell the lawyers to leave the computer work to the IT people.

You don't even have to be a programmer to effectively data mine.

[cui bono]

34. Heh.

[Snotcicles]

8. They should reply with, "No thanks, Wikileaks said they would do it for a grand". nt

[Ed Suspicious]

15. Ha! Some Anonymous soul would probably do it for the fun of it.

[Kalidurga]

26. Ha ha that's what I was thinking.

[Bubzer]

9. I'm curious why city attorneys are sending anything to anyone in place of city officials.

[avebury]

21. I work of a state agency and all Open Records Request

have to go through our General Counsel's Office. They forward all requests to the appropriate departments who responds with required information. The GC's office then prepares the response for the reqeusting entity. That is our policy.

[GeorgeGist]

10. Hackers work cheaper.

[davidpdx]

11. I'd bet most of the emails are already gone anyway

[rurallib]

14. They must have laughed for an hour at a bullshit answer like that

Even a kid in junior high could come up with a more believable story than that.

It could probably be submitted to the Onion as a satirical story and get published.

[Kalidurga]

27. Do it

I would LMAO if the Onion got played and they printed a true story as satire. It would be funnier than all the times people posted Onion stories as true.

[niyad]

17. hey, mckinney, even the dumbest, most incompetent programmer I know wouldn't take more

than a couple of days to go through the emails, even manually.

you money-grubbing, hate-filled, ignorant cretins!!

[avebury]

20. That is BS

All they have to do is do a search with one or two key words and they will find any applicable emails.

We have microsoft outlook on our work computers and I use the search feature almost daily.

They are just trying to make it cost prohibitive to answer the Open Records Request.

[PaulaFarrell]

35. Old emails have probably been archived off

Even so, restoring and searching shouldn't take more than a day or two max. I just don't know why they'd want to get a programmer involved?? Should just need a desktop engineer, and they must have some of those in their IT department.

[eggplant]

22. They should call their bluff.

Crowdfunding would raise this in a few hours, easy.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

23. This is your super efficient government under Republicans....

I'm surprised they didn't offer to privatize it.

Oh wait.

THEY DID.

That figure is what it would cost an outsider to do the job for them.

[Orrex]

24. I have friends in the IT world, and there's actually a technical term for this

[druidity33]

40. composted manure?

That's some nice shit there...

[SheilaT]

25. I've noticed that very often governments

charge outrageous sums for various documents. It is, of course, bullshit, but not sure if they can be obligated to do the simple search necessary.

This is a bit like the crap that Hillary Clinton's emails as SOS were unrecoverable because she'd used her own server. Really?

[MADem]

28. What a crock! I think someone needs to pursue this from another angle!! nt

[Kalidurga]

29. It's like they think only the elites have computers and understand them.

[irisblue]

30. see you in Court counselor

and we have boots too. says Gawker

[cyberswede]

31. They could buy X1 for $70

...or a 14-day free trial.

[silvershadow]

32. Someone should pony up the 79k just once, then make copies to distribute for cost

or even free to anyone who wants them.

[BeanMusical]

33. Bunch of crooks have things to hide.

[cui bono]

36. Don't they have some sort of email filing/categorizing/archiving system?

Why should this be a search? It should just be a pull the 'file' on this guy sort of thing.

Seems to me emails should be being 'filed' just like regular paperwork would be. It's very easy to do.

[brer cat]

37. Any way to get this into court?

I would love to see them explain that to a reasonably tech savvy judge.

[CoffeeCat]

39. I think there is a serious disconnect between...

…the myopic members of this police department who seem to have no grasp of technology--and the general population (especially younger generations who have dealt with technology since they were two).

Gone are the days when you can lie about technology and what is accessible--and just expect that those younger than you or those outside of your system--will just accept those lies. They try to complicate what is not complicated, at all. And they look silly.

Amusing when these people try to assert, "It's just so hard!!" when most outside of that police department----know that it is not difficult at all.

[WillyT]

41. Bull...