Friday, April 5, 2013

Burlington Police Chief Michael Schirling tries to violate V.S.A. 316 and 318 and fails

According to my Public Records Requests with the Burlington Police Department, there are "19" reports with my name in them. After being allowed to view only fifteen of them Deputy Chief of Police Andi Higbee confirmed what Greta Dumas had previously informed me of in way of a $20.00 per report copy fee. Since most of the fifteen reports were just one or two pages, this would have been more than the "actual cost" of copying them. It also represented a violation of Vermont's Access to Public Records Legislation and notably: V.S.A. 316 (c)(d) and (e). So not believing our Chief of Police, and in view of the numerous and gratuitous errors in many of the reports I examined I decided to take a closer look.
After not hearing back I sent a reminder :


NOT at all satisfied, I requested Discovery and Detail on the Chief's allegations of a legitimate $20.00 fees for copies of "reports." This is was my response :

I finally got a letter from the City's Custodian of Public Records :

Then, finally, just as I suspected and yes, sweet victory !

So with this I reiterated my request to the Burlington Police Chief and this was his response :

I have yet to re examine these "reports" of me but from what I remember of them at my first examination; I'm not super anxious to find errors in basic facts such as where specific traffic stops actually took place. I'll take a look and post the reports in which "facts" I found amusing or entirely false at a later date.