Costs of public record arrest reports found illegal, after ACLU of Missouri files suit
ST. LOUIS – A judge has ordered the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department to provide arrest reports at a much lower cost after he found the department chose not to tailor its recordkeeping to make it easy to comply with the Sunshine Law, but instead forced citizens to pay a cost for public records that is more than allowed under the law.
In a lawsuit, the ACLU of Missouri said the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department violated the Sunshine Law when the department said it would charge $1,377 for all 138 arrest reports from June 1, 2016 to June 2, 2016.
Police charged $6.50 per report, plus $480 in staff time for searching, retrieving, and redacting certain information from the reports.
“Public records should be easily accessible and not cost prohibitive,” said Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU of Missouri. “Citizens have the right to know what happens in their communities – and they should not have to pay excessive amounts of money to access what is theirs as members of the public.”
Circuit Judge Robert H. Dierker agreed.
The judge found the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department’s charges exceed what is allowed under the Sunshine Law. The department does not maintain records in a format that coincides with definitions in the Sunshine Law and requires an extra expense to produce “arrest report” information. The $6.50 fee is “essentially shifting the cost of generating the ‘arrest report’ on to the citizen,” wrote Dierker.
The judge ordered the department to immediately stop charging $6.50 per report and must provide arrest reports at a cost of no more than 10 cents per page plus staff time.
“The Sunshine Law is designed to protect the public and keep the government accountable,” said Jeffrey Mittman, executive director of the ACLU of Missouri. “We will fight for the rights of all Missourians when we see institutions maintaining less-than-open records.”
The ACLU of Missouri is investigating other police departments that charge similar flat fees for records.