PHOENIX — Right now, it could take more than two years to get police body camera footage among other long wait times for public records. A new fee structure aims at bringing the long delays down.
Phoenix City Council approved new fees this week for public record requests. The police department said they plan to hire staff with the increased funds to work through a 40,000-request backlog.
"The Police Department’s public records backlog is unacceptably long,” Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said. “New full-time employees to help fulfill these requests will go a long way to make sure we are better serving our residents, who expect and deserve timely access to important records.”
Phoenix Police expects to receive upwards of 140,000 public records requests by the end of the year.
Laveen resident Dwane Mixon said he has been trying to get a copy of a police report for weeks.
"I am a victim of identity theft…and in order to process the fraud claim, I need a police report,” Mixon said. "This is my first time and it has been a horrible experience."
He's not alone, attorney Steve Benedetto said he’s been sounding the alarm on long record request times for years. He said his office recently received an invoice for a public records request from 2021.
“The timelines have always been pretty ridiculous. They’ve gotten more ridiculous recently,” Benedetto said.
In addition to the wait times, Benedetto said the process leads to more confusion between different police report numbers, request numbers and invoice numbers.
“Then they will assign an invoice number that’s totally different than the request number so very often when we receive invoices for public records we’ve requested, we’re not even able to figure out what it relates to,” Benedetto said.
The department said the new fee increases, which start on Nov. 1, mostly target commercial requests.
For commercial document requests, the department will change a $10 flat fee plus $0.25 per page.
Videos with a medium blur are free, while more in-depth requests with standard redactions will charge $23 per 30 minutes reviewed.
Non-commercial document requests will remain free for electric copies, while physical copies will be $0.25 per page, up 1 cent from before.
Do you have a concern in your community or a news tip? We want to hear from you!
Connect with us: share@abc15.com
Want more news in your community? Add ABC15 as a preferred source on Google below:
