Good Afternoon:
The Office of the Clerk of the City of Newark makes a formal request for
clarification regarding the specific documents your request seeks.
The text of your request states :
Under the Public Records Act, I am formally requesting to receive copies
of all police reports and dispatch logs for landlord-tenant disputes
between 01/01/2019 to 5/01/2021.
Please provide requested records in Excel format if available.
If up-to-date data is not available, please provide the most recently
available information.
Fulfilling this request in its current form would require the custodian as
well as the police liaison to complete research in contravention of the
statute. "While OPRA provides an alternative means of access to government
documents not otherwise exempted from its reach, it is not intended as a
research tool litigants may use to force government officials to identify
and siphon useful information. MAG Entm't, LLC v. Div. of Alcoholic
Beverage Control, 375 N.J. Super. 534, 546 (App. Div. 2005). Furthermore,
a records custodian "is not required to conduct research among its records
and correlate data from various government records in the custodian's
possession." Id. at 546-47. Nor does OPRA authorize a party to make a
blanket request for every document a public agency has on file. Bent v.
Twp. of Stafford Police Dep't., 381 N.J. Super. 30, 35 (App. Div. 2005).
Rather, a party requesting access to a public record under OPRA must
specifically describe the document sought. Id. As such, a proper OPRA
request must identify with reasonable clarity those documents that are
desired and a party cannot satisfy this requirement by simply requesting
ALL of an agency's documents." Id.
Upon information and belief, the police liaison cannot sort through
incident reports using the terms "landlord tenant dispute" or "landlord
tenant" as searchable fields. Therefore, fulfilling your request would
require the police liaison to access every single incident report from
1/1/2019 to 5/1/2021, read each report to determine whether it involved a
landlord-tenant dispute, and then provide you with those Incident reports
and corresponding logs. This is the definition of research under OPRA's
case law. Therefore, if you still seek documents, please specifically
describe the documents you are seeking or identify documents that the
police liaison could access through a search rather than by performing
research.
Sincerely,
Samora Noguera