OPRA request 6/28/21

The request was successful.

Dear Lakewood Township,

This is a request for public records made under OPRA and the common law right of access. I am not required to fill out an official form. I verify that I have never been convicted of a crime. Please acknowledge receipt of this message.

Records requested:

Note: Please send these records via email, not through the township portal.

1. A log of all Police/EMS calls and responses for the time frame 1/1/2015-12/31/2019 for all of County Line Road.

2. Police incident reports, with narratives, for the following 7 incident #s:

C05002379
C06036916
08-41456
08-53722
08-55534
08-76728
09-16818

Yours sincerely,

Resident

Township Clerk, Lakewood Township

Good Morning-
Kindly submit your request on-line through our SDL program which can be found on our website’s homepage since Township buildings are closed and staff is working remotely. Please follow the link below to the OPRA form. Please bookmark the page for future use.

https://www.sdlportal.com/towns/nj/ocean...

Kim Potter
Township of Lakewood | Township Clerk – Vital Statistics
231 Third Street  |  Lakewood, NJ 08701
Email: [email address]
Office: 732-364-2500 ext. 5259 | Work Cell: 732-288-6302

NOTICE OF CONFIDENTIALITY
This E-mail message and its attachments (if any) are intended solely for the use of the addressees hereof. In addition, this message and the attachments (if any) may contain information that is confidential, privileged and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you are prohibited from reading, disclosing, reproducing, distributing, disseminating or otherwise using this transmission. Delivery of this message to any person other than the intended recipient is not intended to waive any right or privilege. If you have received this message in error, please promptly notify the sender by reply E-mail and immediately delete this message from your system.

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Dear Township Clerk,

For the past year while the buildings have been closed and staff has been working remotely, all of my OPRA requests have been requested and fulfilled via the OPRA Machine website. That is my preferred method of receiving OPRA requests, so I will continue to submit them this way.

Thank you,

Resident

Township Clerk, Lakewood Township

In accordance with Paff v. City of East Orange, the Township gets to choose which preferred method to receive a request not the Requestor. Please utilize our online portal

https://www.sdlportal.com/towns/nj/ocean...

Kim Potter
Township of Lakewood | Township Clerk – Vital Statistics
231 Third Street  |  Lakewood, NJ 08701
Email: [email address]
Office: 732-364-2500 ext. 5259 | Work Cell: 732-288-6302

NOTICE OF CONFIDENTIALITY
This E-mail message and its attachments (if any) are intended solely for the use of the addressees hereof. In addition, this message and the attachments (if any) may contain information that is confidential, privileged and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you are prohibited from reading, disclosing, reproducing, distributing, disseminating or otherwise using this transmission. Delivery of this message to any person other than the intended recipient is not intended to waive any right or privilege. If you have received this message in error, please promptly notify the sender by reply E-mail and immediately delete this message from your system.

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Dear Township Clerk,

This same thing happened last week with Mordechai Klein's request: https://opramachine.com/request/police_r...

You first asked him to send it via the township portal. He refused and stated "As per NJ LAW OPRA law a request for government documents does not need to be filed in a SPECIAL online portal, I have no intention of filing it that way. Your office has acknowledge receipt of my OPRA request, please respond as per the request."

You then immediately responded back the same day and did as he asked, approving the request for data collection:

"2021-1072
Date Received: 6/21/2021
Status: Approved for Data Collection"

So, based on that, will you fulfill the request the same way you did for Mr. Klein last week, or do you just get to pick and choose on any random day who you will fulfill requests for?

I will copy and paste Mr. Klein's statement for response: "As per NJ LAW OPRA law a request for government documents does not need to be filed in a SPECIAL online portal, I have no intention of filing it that way. Your office has acknowledge receipt of my OPRA request, please respond as per the request."

If you refuse again, please provide an explanation as to why you agreed to do so for Mr. Klein's request, but not for mine. I believe all members of the public should be treated the same way.

Thank you,

Resident

Township Clerk, Lakewood Township

Dear Sir,

Please be advised that current case law allows the Township to determine the methods to accept electronic OPRA requests and it does not need to include every electronic method. Respectfully, the Township is trying to ensure that all requests are not lost by creating one single place where they are filed electronically. Please submit your request through our portal, submitting requests via email does not guarantee they will be received where an on line portal request sends an acknowledgment so you know your request is received.

The portal can be found here

https://www.sdlportal.com/towns/nj/ocean...

And you may still file your request anonymously.

Thank you.

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Dear Lakewood Township,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Open Public Records Act reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Lakewood Township's handling of my OPRA request 'OPRA request 6/28/21'.

Lakewood Township is refusing to send me the requested information via OPRA Machine, even though they continue to send responses to other people via OPRA Machine.

For example, please refer to this OPRA Machine request by Moredechai Klein: https://opramachine.com/request/police_r...

After Mr. Klein was asked to send his OPRA request via the township portal, Mr. Klein refused and stated he had no intention of sending it via the township portal. The town clerk then immediately complied and entered the OPRA request into the system as per his wishes (all of this happens on June 21). However, when I refused to send my request via the township portal yesterday, I did not get the same response from the town clerk. My request was refused. As I stated to the clerk, I'm all for fairness and treating every person the same way. Why did the town clerk accommodate Mr. Klein's demand that the response be sent via OPRA Machine, but the next week, refuse mine? The main gist of the Paff case law that the town clerk cited seems to deal with some townships not having access to fax machines, and thus not being able to respond via fax machine. That has nothing to do with this case. Lakewood has the ability to respond via email (and thus, via OPRA Machine's email system). I should not be forced to sign up for the township portal. All of the townships in Ocean County send responses via OPRA Machine. Lakewood should be no different, since Lakewood has the capability of responding via email.

A full history of my OPRA request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://opramachine.com/request/opra_req...

Thank you for your time,

Resident

twpclerk@lakewoodnj.gov, Lakewood Township

2021-1127
Date Received: 6/28/2021
Status: Approved for Data Collection
Applicant: Resident
Information Requested: This is a request for public records made
under OPRA and the common law right of access. I am not required
to fill out an official form. I verify that I have never been
convicted of a crime. Please acknowledge receipt of this message.

Records requested:

Note: Please send these records via email, not through the
township portal.

1. A log of all Police/EMS calls and responses for the time frame
1/1/2015-12/31/2019 for all of County Line Road.

2. Police incident reports, with narratives, for the following 7
incident #s:

C05002379
C06036916
08-41456
08-53722
08-55534
08-76728
09-16818

Response: BE ADVISED ALL TOWNSHIP BUILDINGS ARE CLOSED. STAFF IS
WORKING REMOTELY. THEREFORE, THIS MAY AFFECT THE DUE DATE OF YOUR
REQUEST AS ACCESS TO CERTAIN FILES MAY NOT BE POSSIBLE. YOUR
UNDERSTANDING AND PATIENCE IS APPRECIATED. WE WILL ENDEAVOR TO
RESPOND AS SOON AS POSSIBLE UNDER THE CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES.

Township of Lakewood has received your Open Public Records Act
(OPRA) request. The official Records Custodian received your
request today. As such, the Township will respond as soon as
possible but no later than seven (7) business days.
Spatial Data Logic 2021

twpclerk@lakewoodnj.gov, Lakewood Township

7 Attachments

2021-1127
Date Received: 6/28/2021
Status: Completed
Date Completed: 7/7/2021
Applicant: Resident
Information Requested: This is a request for public records made
under OPRA and the common law right of access. I am not required
to fill out an official form. I verify that I have never been
convicted of a crime. Please acknowledge receipt of this message.

Records requested:

Note: Please send these records via email, not through the
township portal.

1. A log of all Police/EMS calls and responses for the time frame
1/1/2015-12/31/2019 for all of County Line Road.

2. Police incident reports, with narratives, for the following 7
incident #s:

C05002379
C06036916
08-41456
08-53722
08-55534
08-76728
09-16818

Assignments
Police Status: Completed
   Action: Redactions for personal identifying information
Incident 08-76728 denied as a criminal investigatory record
Spatial Data Logic 2021

Dear Lakewood Clerk,

I had requested a log of all Police/EMS calls and responses for the time frame 1/1/2015-12/31/2019 for all of County Line Road. However, the person who did the records search accidentally typed the road's name without any spaces (CountyLine) , which produced hardly any results. Please re-send the requested information with the correct spelling of the address : County Line

Thank you,

Resident

Township Clerk, Lakewood Township

1 Attachment

Good Morning-
Please find the document attached.

Kim Potter
Township of Lakewood | Township Clerk – Vital Statistics
231 Third Street  |  Lakewood, NJ 08701
Email: [email address]
Office: 732-364-2500 ext. 5259

NOTICE OF CONFIDENTIALITY
This E-mail message and its attachments (if any) are intended solely for the use of the addressees hereof. In addition, this message and the attachments (if any) may contain information that is confidential, privileged and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you are prohibited from reading, disclosing, reproducing, distributing, disseminating or otherwise using this transmission. Delivery of this message to any person other than the intended recipient is not intended to waive any right or privilege. If you have received this message in error, please promptly notify the sender by reply E-mail and immediately delete this message from your system.

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Dear Township Clerk,

Thank you for re-sending the info. Much appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

Resident