In an undercover project in CA. one small police department made the grade for doing what ? Following the written law of the land. Grades were as low as 5% and averaged about 25%. Rights to document were refused, abusive officers states, and even city and state crime stats were refused. Some asked for fees in advance that would put off most. Some wanted your S/S Number to see if you had outstanding warrants. The only charge for services is for a photo copy ! All the Chiefs were suprised . This was city, county and state highway patrol offices. This was done by the Daily Review in Hayward CA. a division of Angnewspapers .com dailyreviewonline.com . It seems some are running their on little kingdoms with in kingdoms. Some also asked for identification which is illegal. Some came up with excuses that only a county supervisor could release asked for information. I do not believe all I read but this type of information is wrong to keep from citizens.
I'm not sure I'm following you here. Can you give a little more information or reference to the study? I lived for a time in Oceanside, CA (in an old ambulance down by the beach among the homeless) and can say most certainly that both the police department and the city itself have many many problems... Though that was seven years ago and I am not aware of what changes may have taken place since then.
Try pulling the article up from the Dailey review. One small town made almost a perfect score when being put through a series of feedom of information etc. The rest were all to one degree or another not cooperative or did not know the law or, or, . I pitched the papers for the week or I would send you the article. The URLs are above for the Parent company and the Dailey Review. It was done state wide and shows a real lack of cooperation with the citizens of California. We have seen signs of this but never knew how far it went. The article is called "Access Denied " and is the front page story and covers another complete page. Date january 12 , 2007 . www.dailyreviewonline.com Use the search " Police deny access"
Not living in California anymore, and not needing access to any of these types of California documents, and pretty much expecting this type of cooperation from police out there anyway...I guess none of this surprises me. About a year ago I needed a copy of a letter sent to our local poilce and I was told all I had to do was fill out a brief freedom of information act (FIA) form and wait ten days and they would send it to me. It couldn't have been easier. You can get copies of almost anything you want if you just fill out the FIA form and wait ten days. If you start a paper trail it tends to make them sit up and take notice. Your city clerk has the forms.
