Public Records Request for police arrest reports
Dear Atlantic City,
Please accept this electronic request for public records made under OPRA and the common law right of access. I am not required to fill out an official form or use a particular software platform to submit my request per NJSA 47:1A-6(f), which states that an email from a requestor including all of the information required on the adopted form shall suffice in place of a completed form as a valid government record request.
I HAVE NOT been convicted of any indictable offense under the laws of New Jersey, any other state, or the United States.
I WILL NOT use the requested government records for a commercial purpose.
I AM NOT seeking records in connection with a legal proceeding.
Records requested: I am formally submitting a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for the disclosure of all arrest reports from 01-01-2023 to 12-01-2024 of cases where a suspect was charged with a minimum of one count of Resisting Arrest or Obstruction
For more clarity, I am looking for the arrest report to include the narrative of the arrest
Please let me know if I need to narrow or broaden the request to make your search easier.
Thank you for your time
My preferred delivery method for response(s) to this request is by E-mail as attachments. Please confirm you have received this request. If you are not the custodian of records, please forward my request to that person and provide their email address to me for future reference.
Yours faithfully,
Mark Jones
Good morning:
Please be advised, the response to your request is as follows:
Your request is denied as overbroad and beyond the scope of the Open
Public Records Act (“OPRA”).
“Although OPRA favors broad public access to government records, it is not
intended to be a research…to force government officials to identify and
siphon useful information. Thus, to prompt disclosure under OPRA, requests
for information must be properly circumscribed.” Simmons v. Mercado, 2021
N.J. LEXIS 557, *4, 2021 WL 2639771.
A proper request under OPRA 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. See Bent v. Stafford
Police Dept., 381 N.J. Super. 30, 37 (App. Div. 2005).
As drafted, your request would require government officials to research or
analyze information to determine responsiveness and/or identify and siphon
information that is not readily searchable, neither of which is required
by OPRA. See MAG Entm’t, LLC v. Div. of Alcohol Beverage Control, 375
N.J. Super. 534 (App. Div. 2005); Burke v. Brandes, 429 N.J. Super. 169
(App. Div. 2021) (OPRA does not cover “research or analysis” to identify
responsive documents)
Accordingly, the request is denied. See N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1 et seq.
Thank you.
Eddie Lax
Keyboarding Clerk 4
City Clerk’s Office
City of Atlantic City
[1]cid:image001.jpg@01D77E21.AEF596B0 1301 Bacharach Blvd – Room #704
Atlantic City, NJ 08401
(609) 347-5510
Email: [2][email address]
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