Yes!Weekly's push-back back against City secrecy

GREENSBORO, NC -- As the City of Greensboro sets down new policies for access to public records, including a good going over by the police of records requests and police sign-off before documents are released, a Yes! Weekly editorial tells a cautionary tale of the time a city tried to keep documents from the view of Yes! sister publication, The Outer Banks Sentinel. The city lost.

"It applies in the here and now as Greensboro officials attempt to revamp the city’s process for public-information requests. Let it serve as a warning to the crafters of the new policy that the law is on the side of the people when it comes to public records, that denying them can be costly and embarrassing, and that newspaper like ours are relentless in our pursuit of the truth."

— Yes! Weekly

City's new records policies: New bureaucracy, police approval, new fees

GREENSBORO, NC -- The City of Greensboro is about to clinch an iron fist around its records. City staff is recommending or has already implemented the following as changes to how it handles public records requests according to documents:

- Police now review all records requests.
- Police must now sign-off on records before they are released.
- Multiple layers of bureaucratic review that will include individual departments, the police, the legal department and the City Manager's office.
- Fees for "processing large requests" (this almost certain to be unlawful)

Not surprisingly, these recommendations have been made and implemented without one iota of public input.

City council remains silent.

Bill would make withholding public records a crime

This is long overdue. North Carolina public records law is flouted without consequences in Greensboro and the people's representatives, our city council, are apathetic. It's time citizens have an avenue other than law suits and indifferent representatives to rectify unlawful secrecy.

"Officials who refuse to release public records or shut North Carolina residents out of open meetings could face criminal penalties under a bill filed Thursday.

"Senate Bill 125 would make violations of the state public records and open meetings laws a Class 3 misdemeanor. State Sen. Buck Newton, a Wilson Republican, is co-sponsor of the bill introduced by Sens. Thom Goolsby and Tom Tom Apodaca." — The Wilson Times

[Hyperlinks added to quotation.]

Police now first step in Greensboro records request process, City Council informed

GREENSBORO, NC --

"We have made immediate adjustments to our process to ensure that the Greensboro Police Department is now the first step in the email/public information review process."-- Email from City Manager Denise Turner Roth to all Greensboro City Council representatives, January 30, 2013

No public reaction to this by any city council people. I guess they are okay with it.

Good question about DGI

GREENSBORO, NC -- Eric Robert, downtown property owner and restorer, writes this about Downtown Greensboro Incorporated, the downtown advocacy group that city council has decided to reevaluate.

"Technicalities, half truths and nuances too often veil real intentions. As a downtown property owner, I am a reluctant contributor to our current center city administrators, Downtown Greensboro Improvement Corporation dba Downtown Greensboro Inc, aka, Downtown Greensboro Foundation: a 501C3, a 501C4 and a 501C6; Three distinct entities with common officers and membership, specifically engineered to circumvent typical non profit limitations and public scrutiny. For example, a 501 C4 is not allowed to carry on propaganda or influence legislations…well, DGI sure is carrying on about the GPAC and certainly has influenced many legislations and ordinances… the upcoming “good repair “ ordinance was originally redacted by DGI …what DGIC is not permitted to do as a 501 C4 can be legally accomplished as a 501 C6, or a 501 C3. It is legal but is it ethical?"

Robert has more to say about downtown in his remarks.

Greensboro City Attorney buffaloes council, public

GREENSBORO, NC -- At last night's city council meeting, Mayor Robbie Perkins recognized city staff for a period of speeches not, for some reason, on the agenda. (The public is allowed to speak on agenda items, so maybe that inconvenience was to be avoided.)

The City Manager, Police Chief and City Attorney Mujeeb Shah-Kahn spoke, each taking on a slice of the controversy surrounding the recent Yes!Weekly police surveillance story and the failed attempt by the city to stop Yes! from publishing its story.

Shah-Kahn's presentation was less than genuine.

Deception #1

"The city did not wish to prevent a media outlet from publishing, rather the City sought delay so that it could determine what information had been disclosed and take steps to protect those citizen involved." -- Mujeeb Shah-Kahn, Greensboro City Attorney*

That the City only sought "delay" is false.

As the complaint filed by the City with the court clearly states, the City sought from the Court "an Order permanently restraining and enjoining Defendants from using, publishing, disseminating, or otherwise releasing said criminal intelligence information to the public."

"Permanently."

Shah-Khan told City Council and the public that the City only wanted to delay publication. That explanation does not align with the actions the City undertook,

Deception #2:

"Some have suggested that the City requested a restraining order to protect the police department from having its lawful criminal intelligence activities from being disclosed to the public. That is not the case. The city's goal was to protect the citizens named in those documents from harm." -- Mujeeb Shah-Kahn, Greensboro City Attorney*

The city's own court filings say that one of the reasons it sought a temporary restraining order was because the emails provided to Yes! contained "confidential" information including: "Methodologies of gathering information not generally known to the public" which, if released, the City contended, would "significantly impair or impede the ability of the Greensboro's law enforcement [sic] to anticipate, prevent, or monitor possible violations of law."

Shah-Kahn told City Council and the public that the City was not trying to keep secret police intelligence activities. That explaination does not align with the pleading the city made to the Court.

Deception #3:

"The city did not wish to prevent a media outlet from publishing, rather the City sought delay so that it could determine what information had been disclosed and take steps to protect those citizen involved." -- Mujeeb Shah-Kahn, Greensboro City Attorney

Yes, there are two deceptions here. The second is in Shah-Kahn claiming that the city needed a restraining order to determine what had been disclosed. Just a minute earlier, he said that the city needed to persue a restraining order precisely because it already knew what had been released.

"[M]y office sought a temporary restraining order from Judge Ronald Spivey to delay the publication of the story by Yes!Weekly which the the city understood would disclose the identity of confidential informants and disclose criminal investigative information obtained by the city."

"... [I]t was clear that sensitive information had been released inadvertently and there was the possibility that publication of this information could create the risk of serious injury or death." -- Mujeeb Shah-Kahn, Greensboro City Attorney

So, which is it? Did the City seek to restrain Yes!Weekly's publication because it knew what information had been released or because it needed to determine what information had been released?  Shah-Khan is at odds with himself and cannot be correct on both counts.


* All quotations from Mr. Shah-Khan herein are from the February 19, 2013 city council meeting (video here, comments start at 26:45)

City Manager reiterates commitment to transparency

"We remain committed to providing public records to the public as quickly and as efficiently as possible. We will not let process become an excuse for delaying access to public records, and I can't emphasize that enough." -- Greensboro City Manager Denise Turner Roth, February 19, 2013 City Council Meeting

"Please provide me all records of any communications in any form from January 23, 2013 through today, inclusive, regarding Yes!Weekly, including but not limited to any records documenting discussion options for or attempts to restrain the paper's distribution." -- Roch Smith, Jr, January 30, 2013.

My request above of 21 days ago remains unfilled. The last communication I received about it said I should get the requested information today.

I have also asked for information about the "internal team" set up to review the City's response to public records requests without, apparently, any citizen input. That unfilled request was made 9 days ago.

Good job Channel 13

GREENSBORO, NC -- I commonly write about my perceived failings and shortcomings of local government. I worry sometimes that it may seem as if I'm sour on government employees. I'm not. I cringe when I see people turn what should be policy corrections or a need for action into personal battles. Believe me, I understand, when governmental workers are unresponsive or worse, deceptive, there is a great temptation to call that person out -- and maybe, after a point, they deserve it.

Nonetheless, I cannot be a critic of local government without also observing the good things it does and let's face it, while we are falling down on some important stuff at the moment, our fair city does get a lot right.

One of the good things is the video taping of City Council meetings. The folks (or person) running the show know who people are and understand the undercurrents and friction points of current topics. The result is lively coverage of meetings where reaction shots of involved people are interspersed with shots of the current speaker. Someone is doing more than just showing up. They are paying attention and it's noticeable in a superior production.

City's snow job

GREENSBORO, NC -- In response to the Yes!Weekly story on Greensboro Police surveillance (that the City of Greensboro attempted, unsuccessfully, to stop from seeing the light of day by suing for an injunction), the News & Record's Doug Clark wrote an editorial in which he called the events "bizarre and disturbing." He came to this conclusion:

"The City Council must demand a full accounting of police surveillance policies and activities — not about their tracking of criminals but of citizens who are exercising their constitutional rights."

The City Council has remained mum on the matter, but top city staff countered with an opinion piece of their own a few days later. It was authored by the City Manager Denise Turner Roth, Chief of Police Ken Miller and the City Attorney Mujeeb Shah-Kahn.

Let's look at the meat of their response and expose it for the snow job it is, shall we?

"[Doug Clark's] editorial suggests police investigative practices are suspect and in need of oversight. Actually, multiple mechanisms exist to ensure high integrity of criminal and internal investigative processes"

They write "multiple mechanisms" but identify only two. Let's take the second one first.

"The department also conducts a community survey to receive feedback critical to the calibration of its performance."

This survey, conducted by telephone of 401 people in May of 2011, asked people their impressions of the GPD (see it here). Sure, it's not unimportant to sample the community's impressions, but this doesn't address surveillance policies or activities at all. Surveillance isn't even mentioned once. Although city staff put forth this survey as germane, it is irrelevant—a red herring. It doesn't address surveillance.

The other of the two "multiple mechanisms" the city's top dogs describe like this:

"[T]he department is nationally accredited since 1985 and earned special recognition in 2011. This process examines and validates the effectiveness of all policies, standards and practices. It produces and publicly shares an annual report that describes all facets of how the department polices itself, including an analysis of data to inform revisions to policy, procedure and training."

There is only one of these reports, from 2011 (see it here). Despite the claims of city staff, it does not examine or validate the effectiveness of "all" policies, standards and practices. It does not address surveillance activities or policies, the very issue under discussion.

The vast majority of this report covers how the police department handles complaints against the police. It also offers some interesting statistics about the frequency of police use of force, use of weapons and vehicle pursuits, but surveillance? No. The word "surveillance" is only even mentioned once, as a category of reason for use of force. The report does not address surveillance policy or activities. It's just not there. This is another red herring.

So of the two mechanisms the City Manager, Attorney and Police Chief held up to the citizens of Greensboro to reassure us that police surveillance activities and policies are on the up and up, neither addresses police surveillance activities or policies.

I don't know if the writers missed the point of the editorial to which they were responding or if they intentionally set about to placate people by citing irrelevant reports. Either way, the fact remains, the City has not come forth with an accounting of the city's surveillance policies and activities that Clark and recent events rightly demand. A snow job by the City's top staff in response is even more reason for City Council to take the reins.

Records contradict top city staff

GREENSBORO, NC -- In an opinion piece published in the News & Record and written by Greensboro City Manager Denise Turner Roth, Police Chief Ken Miller and City Attorney Mujeeb Shah-Kahn, defending the city's surveillance of law-abiding citizens, they wrote:

"[M]ultiple mechanisms exist to ensure high integrity of criminal and internal investigative processes. First, the department is nationally accredited since 1985 and earned special recognition in 2011. This process examines and validates the effectiveness of all policies, standards and practices. It produces and publicly shares an annual report that describes all facets of how the department polices itself, including an analysis of data to inform revisions to policy, procedure and training."

That sounds reassuring—a process of accreditation since 1985 that results in a publicly available annual report.

So I asked for the last three of those annual reports.

I received one internal report for 2011. When I asked for the others, this was the reply:

"The 2011 PSD Report is the first year of that report."

The opinion piece was deficient to begin with in sidestepping the issue at hand, which is accountability to the public of police surveillance of law-abiding citizens, now we learn that it was also misleading.

Where is city council on this and other issues of our civil liberties? Missing in action.

[Updated: 2:17 P.M. corrected Turner Roth's name.]

Hammer's big lie

"Last week we reported that Greensboro had given out confidential police reports to Yes! Weekly." -- John Hammer, Rhinoceros Times 

"Information that falls under the criminal investigation or criminal intelligence exception to the public records law is not public record, but it is not confidential." Frayda S. Bluestein, North Carolina School of Government, to Ben Holder.

As he is so very good at, Rhino Times editor and publisher John Hammer has begun constructing a narrative through his tried and true tactic of the firm and steady repetition of a claim he never bothered to explain or substantiate in the first place.

This time, Hammer is attempting to implant the notion in the public conciousness that the emails released by the City of Greensboro to his competitor Yes!Weekly were "confidential." (From here, it's an easy slide into Hammer's favorite past time of berating city staff as incompetent, which seems to be his real objective.)

One problem: The records are not "confidential." (They are not "reports" either, as Hammer says. They were emails. "Confidential police reports," sounds more sinister, I suppose, but it was emails that were released, not reports and Hammer surely knows that.)

As Frayda Bluestein of the North Carolina School of Government explains, courtesy of Ben Holder, "confidential" has a specific meaning in regard to government records and the documents to which Hammer is referring don't meet the test.

City employees, even police, cannot simply slap the word "confidential" on an email and make it off limits. These records fall into the area where cities have some discretion about their release. The records the City released are of the kind that Bluestein explains:

"[T]he statute leaves it to the public agency to decide whether and when to release this type of material."

The city legally released this information. It offered a glimpse of the way local police conduct surveillance on law-abiding citizens and revealed that at least one police lieutenant considered a city council person to be a "confidential informant."

I would argue that it's good for civilians to have this kind of insight into their police force and elected representatives. Others may disagree, but it's a big lie to express that disagreement by pretending that that such records are "confidential." They are not and Hammer should stop saying they are. He's misleading his readers.

Yes!Weekly: Emails appear to contradict Council representative, city leadership

GREENSBORO, NC -- Yes!Weekly has made available some of the emails that were the foundation for their story Under surveillance which led to a  failed attempt by the City of Greensboro to get an injunction to stop publication of that story and a subsequent attempt to justify that action in an opinion piece co-authored by the City's manager, police chief and attorney.

Yes!'s Eric Ginsberg writes:

"Read the files on Abuzuaiter here, including the e-mails Abuzuaiter claimed she did not send. The councilwoman denied all correspondence with Detective Rob Finch, and also said she never communicated with Capt. John Wolfe about the Beloved Community Center or Latin Kings."

Ginsberg also says the emails call into question whether the city's explanation of its attempts to stop the publication of the article were for the reasons they gave to the public or if the attempt at an injunction was to protect the councilwoman.

Privatization of Guilford health services cuts availability of psychiatric medications

GREENSBORO, NC -- From Michele Forrest in the comments at Ed Cone's blog:

"Monarch, which contracted with Sandhills to provide mental health services in Greensboro, is not offering financial assistance with psych meds. Previously, Guilford Center offered meds at lower prices and provided free meds for homeless people (and maybe others, as well -- it was based on income).

Our StreetWatch team is finding that some homeless people are now going without medicine for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD, depression and other mental illnesses that can result in them harming themselves or others, and/or engaging in other criminal behavior. This is a serious problem. From a cost/benefit perspective, it's less expensive to subsidize meds than to pay for jail beds. And it's inhumane to allow mentally ill people to suffer because they're poor."

Are our County Commissioners going to wait until someone goes off and hurts somebody before addressing this problem? Probably. 

UPDATE: News & Record's Joe Killian reports, Jail trying to cope with mentally ill

Local CEO pulls up short in national debt critique

GREENSBORO, NC -- Tonya Martin Cockman, CEO of Greensboro company ClearDefense LLC writes a guest blog post at the Triad Business Journal about what she calls, "the unsustainable trajectory" of our national debt. Cockman serves on  the N.C. Steering Committee of the Campaign to Fix the Debt a committee of wealthy people who have theirs and have volunteered to tell the rest of us what we are going to have to forego to fix a problem that many of them had a hand in creating (to the extent that it is a problem, which is debatable).

Not surprisingly, Cockman advises that part of the remedy will be spending cuts and she specifically mentions "entitlement programs" (i.e., Social Security and Medicare). While Cockman avoids taking partisan sides by also calling for tax increases, there's one area that she side-steps: cuts to the Military.

In 2011, the last year for which data is available, Cockman's company received 11 defense contracts worth a  total of $1.1 million. I don't know why it bothers me when people benefiting from government largess propose to tell other people to expect less from their government, but it does.

Good news; Greensboro moves forward on public records review

Ben Holder reports that the City of Greensboro has assembled a team to review the City's public records request response system.

That is good news indeed. I look forward to the inclusion of public participation and to the mayor appointing a council liaison to the team.

How well is City Council looking out for our civil liberties?

GREENSBORO, NC -- How active a role are our Greensboro City Council representatives taking in looking out for our civil liberties? The Greensboro Police department has undertaken an effort to establish a regional DNA database with a private company through which they will share DNA with other area law enforcement agencies.

Have any of our city council people thought about the need for any citizen oversight of this endeavor? I made the following records request of the city. It will be interesting to see if City Council has had any involvement.

The News & Record reported on February 7, 2013 that "The [Greensboro] police department and other area law enforcement agencies are about to build a regional DNA database with the help of a privately owned Burlington lab company."

Please provide me with any and all communications in any form between any city employees and/or city council representatives regarding:

1. Procedures for the collection, distribution and sharing of DNA.
2. Policies governing the operation of this database and the police department's participation in this effort.
3. Discussion or mention of the legalities and/or laws governing this effort.

Thank you in advance.

Records request

I submitted the following records request to the City of Greensboro:

In a column published in the News & Record on February 9th, 2013, city staff refer to:

"... an annual report that describes all facets of how the department polices itself, including an analysis of data to inform revisions to policy, procedure and training."

Please provide me with a copy of each of the last three of those annual reports.

and "...a community survey to receive feedback critical to the calibration of its performance."

Please provide me with the latest of those surveys including all responses received to it.

A simple question for the News & Record

GREENSBORO, NC -- What kind of professional standards allow the News & Record to keep an incorrect story posted online without comment or correction? It's not that the facts are in dispute or that there is a difference of opinion. The News & Record reported something that is flat out wrong—demonstrably empirically wrong—and they are letting the error stand.

From the article Transcript in Greensboro police chief’s firing now public:

"Seven years after former City Manager Mitchell Johnson placed then-police Chief David Wray on administrative leave, a transcript of their meeting has become public as part of Wray’s discrimination lawsuit against the city."

That's simply not accurate. The transcript was released in 2007, as reported then by WXII, WFMY and the News & Record itself—by a reporter who is now the N&R's government editor.

Credibility is not an empty buzzword. When people talk about the News & Record not having it, that's not a meaningless taunt, it is a genuinely deserved assessment because they do stuff like this with, seemingly, no awareness or concern.

The sad, sad irony of Grits Gauger's Sunday editorial

After a week in which the City of Greensboro attempted to stop the publication of local weekly newspaper Yes!Weekly;

After a week in which it was revealed that the Greensboro Police Department was spying on peaceful groups with an assist from a City Council representative;

After a week in which one of his reporters and, presumably he, as editor, published a story stupendously wrong on its central fact;

After a week in which said story remained uncorrected and unaddressed;

After a week which the reporter deleted comments about the inaccurate story from her Facebook page and comments on the story itself were out-of-order;

After a week when his paper's lack of response to the mistake became the target of well deserved mockery, what does the News & Record editor Grits Gauger write about for his Sunday column?

Misinformation on the web regarding the Sandy Hook School shootings.

Gauger's complaint:

"It [the web] also has provided a virtual ecosystem where facts may be trampled by the gullible, manipulative and crass."

Gauger is rolling around in a shit-stained bed, deaf to complaints about his paper's reportage, blind to substantive local issues and, instead of changing the sheets, is pointing fingers at bogey men for trampling the facts.

How rich. How sad.

"Based on their facebook page?"

News & Record reporter Travis Fain tweets:

Based on their facebook page, these guys were just openly running a $$ poker game at a bar near #UNCG http://t.co/NEkKy2qw #gso

That's some fine investigation there. Far superior to traveling the 1.3 miles from the paper's office to the open-to-the-public gambling parlor any time during the four months it had been open prior to last night's raid and actually reporting on their activities.

But, you know, Facebook!