The ACLU wants to see SPDs files related to a demonstration last year where police guarded a Christmas tree during a lighting ceremony, but says it's been stymied by delays and redactions.
The ACLU wants to see SPD's files related to a demonstration last year where police guarded a Christmas tree during a lighting ceremony, but says it's been stymied by delays and redactions. Eli Sanders

The ACLU of Washington is pissed off at the Seattle Police Department over alleged foot-dragging and over-redaction on a public records request related to Black Lives Matter protests. Today, the department's chief operating officer, Mike Wagers, apologized for the delays and said the department would reexamine the redactions.

"This is completely unacceptable," said Jared Friend, technology and liberty director for the ACLU of Washington. "Our experience with this records request is emblematic of SPD's struggle with transparency and accountability."

The ACLU sent a letter to the department laying out its concerns in detail on July 29. Letters like that are sometimes precursors to lawsuits.

The records request was for police materials relating to protests in Seattle on Black Friday in 2014, days after the Ferguson grand jury decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson for killing Mike Brown. The records request was made in February. So, it's been seven months since the request was made. On the day of the grand jury decision, protesters nonviolently disrupted the Westlake tree-lighting ceremony and forced Westlake Center's mall to close early by holding a die-in.

The SPD delivered an incomplete batch of records in May and said it would provide more records in August. Friend said SPD missed its own deadline to furnish more records by last week, then pledged to deliver the records by September 9.

"Our conversations with other requesters," the ACLU writes in the letter, "lead us to believe that these unacceptable delays are part of the Seattle Police Department’s standard operating procedures. These activities contravene the purposes of our state’s public records laws, as they inhibit effective oversight over government activities."

Wagers, SPD's top civilian administrator, said the department screwed up, in part because it has a nine-person staff handling thousands of records requests. "We got 5,200 requests [so far this year], and I think we made a mistake," he said. "I think it was mishandled… There's no explanation other than out of 5,200 requests, we're going to make some mistakes. Something happened, we're not quite sure, and we're trying to fix it with the requester."

"We own the delay," he added. "I'm sure there are others out there as well where we've made mistakes."

City auditors harshly criticized SPD's public disclosure unit in March, saying in a report that SPD should take "immediate action" to strengthen the unit by hiring a manager and using new software. Wagers said the manager position is being filled, new records management software will be online by October, and in-house hacker Tim Clemans is developing a program that auto-redacts proper nouns from police reports, so that it doesn't have to be done by hand.

Still, the ACLU said what few records it has received have been improperly and overly redacted. Twenty-seven out of 29 pages of the the department's incident action plan for the post-Ferguson protests contain redactions. In its letter, the ACLU notes that under the public records act, each individual redaction requires its own individual justification, but SPD didn't identify them.

One of the reasons for the redactions, according to SPD, is that disclosure would "expose specific vulnerabilities, response plans, and/or endanger citizens/law enforcement personnel" regarding "Terrorism."

The front page of the incident action plan notes, "This record has been prepared, assembled or is maintained to prevent, mitigate or respond to criminal terrorist acts." (PDF)

The reference to terrorism is boilerplate language the department uses on incident action plans for large events, according to SPD spokesperson Sean Whitcomb. The same disclaimer is on the department's incident action plan for May Day and the Super Bowl. "There are some factions in the country that will seek out large political gatherings to commit acts of terror," he said. "Any large event is a possible target for a terrorist."

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But the language in the incident action plan is pretty clear: It says the document prepares the department to respond to protests, and elsewhere, it says the document was prepared to respond to a terrorist act. If you're a beat cop reading the action plan, it'd be logical to assume that the protests are a potential terrorist threat.

Friend said the language represents mission creep. "The word 'terrorism' is systematically misused by law enforcement and intelligence agencies as a tool for fearmongering," he said. "This word has an extraordinary dehumanizing effect and should not be used lightly... From my perspective, there's a distinct difference between a large sporting event that involves 40,000 people and a political demonstration of a few hundred people."

Even if it is boilerplate language, Friend said, it paints demonstrations with a broad brush and "demonstrates a lack of thoughtfulness as far as SPD's relationship with protesters and activists."