California county retirees' pensions ruled public info

"The pensions of retired county employees are public information, a state appeals court in San Francisco ruled Monday.

The First District Court of Appeal granted a request by the Santa Rosa Press Democrat to learn the names and pension benefits of all members of the Sonoma County Employees' Retirement Association.

"The records of expenditures of public funds must be open to public inspection," the court said in a 3-0 ruling, similar to recent decisions in cases from Sacramento and San Diego counties.

The court overturned a Sonoma County Superior Court judge's ruling that also allowed the newspaper to learn each employee's age at retirement, saying state law makes such personal information confidential. But the justices said the news media and the public are entitled to disclosure of benefit levels to keep tabs on reported pension abuses.

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Washington State Supreme Court orders broad disclosure of police records

"In a landmark decision, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that investigative reports into alleged misconduct by police officers must be made public even if the accusations are not upheld.

Eight of the nine justices found that the reports can't be withheld on privacy grounds because the public has a "legitimate interest" in knowing how the allegations were investigated.

But five justices found that the names of officers who have been exonerated may be redacted from the records for privacy reasons.

The ruling means the public, private attorneys and the media will have greater access to information that could shed more light on police investigations and help shape decisions regarding potential lawsuits and news stories."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: Ruling Raises the Bar to Access Long-Term Cell Phone Records

"Authorities must establish probable cause and secure a warrant before obtaining information from cell phone providers that can indicate the round-the-clock whereabouts of customers, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday.

Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches apply to the so-called cell-site-location records as surely as judges of a previous generation found that they applied to people using pay phones, Eastern District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis determined yesterday. In fact, he said, cell phones have all but rendered pay phones obsolete as a means of communication and are rarely out of the reach of users."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Montana lawsuit filed to get salaries of state employees

"A Bozeman nonprofit group has filed a lawsuit to find out additional information about the salaries and compensation for all 13,000 Montana governmental employees.

The Montana Policy Institute, a Bozeman-based think tank that advocates government transparency, in its lawsuit filed last week in District Court in Helena contends that the state Department of Administration did not provide it with the workers' actual compensation, including bonuses and overtime.

"We want to know what each state employee made, with bonus and OT (overtime) — the W-2 number," said the institute's president, Carl Graham. "We started in 2010 and wanted the previous years. Now we want the most up-to-date numbers."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: Rhode Island witness statements in police reports are public records

"The Rhode Island Department of Public Safety now acknowledges that a witness statement in a crime, a motor vehicle accident or other kinds of police incidents is a public record.

That implied acknowledgment is contained in proposed changes to department rules that would be adopted to implement the state Access to Public Records Act.

In effect, and at least for the time being, the department has bowed to advocates of government transparency who complained about the proposed rules changes."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: "Private" public records kept secret from public

"They may collect millions of dollars from area residents in fees, but the operators of the region’s busiest license offices — called deputy registrars — say how they spend money running their offices is none of the public’s business.

Efforts to privatize Ohio government functions to cut costs could increase the number of private agencies that look and sound like government offices but claim to fall outside the state’s public accountability laws.

An attempt by the Dayton Daily News to get copies of records that would show how the local deputy registrar offices spend the public fees they collect was rejected by local operators of the largest license bureaus, as well as by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Hawaii property addresses, but not Social Security numbers, are public record

"The addresses of Hawaii real property owners are public records, but the last four digits of their Social Security numbers are not.

That's according to an Aug. 4 advisory opinion from the state Office of Information Practices. The opinion was issued at the request of the City of Honolulu's Property Assessment Division after CoreLogic, one of the nation's largest database firms, requested an electronic database of the 2011 Oahu Assessment Notices.

OIP opined that mailing addresses, including the home addresses, of people who own property in the state are public records, even if they do not live at the address of the property in question.

'OIP agrees that the mailing address is essential for the city to provide tax assessments and other notices under the real property tax laws,' said the OIP letter, signed by Staff Attorney Jennifer Brooks and approved by Director Cheryl Kakazu Park. 'The mailing address must therefore be considered 'real property tax information' ... so the (Uniform Information Practices Act's) exceptions to disclosure do not apply and the mailing addresses must be disclosed in full.'"

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

New Cook County online database lets anyone see who has outstanding warrants

"A new online database lets people to see who has outstanding warrants in Cook County.

Sheriff Tom Dart said there are about 44,000 people in Cook County who have outstanding warrants. The new online database, he hopes, will help the office get some tips on the whereabouts of those people.

'This has a way of really flushing out the system, as well, and really doing a lot of very positive things because there's nothing good with having this many warrants in the system,' Dart told reporters Friday.

Dart said about a third of the warrants outstanding are for traffic offenses and about 13,000 are for drug or theft charges."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: Connecticut Court ruling could tangle release of public records in state

"The release of public records in Connecticut, including property grand lists and voter registration information, could come to a virtual standstill if municipal officials comply with a recent state Supreme Court ruling.

Local and state officials throughout the state are trying to understand all the implications of the decision, which stems from a Freedom of Information request filed three years ago by Peter Sachs, a Branford lawyer and private investigator.

The court's decision, handed down June 28, requires municipalities to redact the addresses of police officers, corrections officers, firefighters and other members of the 'protected classes' from motor vehicle grand lists before providing the information to the public."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

California Arrest Records | California criminal database: Computerized log poorly maintained

"The criminal records system California relies on to stop child abusers from working at schools and violent felons from buying guns is so poorly maintained that it routinely fails to alert officials to a subject's full criminal history.

The computerized log exists to provide an instant snapshot of a criminal past, informing police, regulators and potential employers of offenses such as murder, rape and drug dealing in a person's background. But nearly half of the arrest records in the database don't say whether the person in question was convicted."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Federal courts destroying old records to save money

"The Center for Public Integrity reports that the federal courts have begun destroying millions of court records “that have been stored in the Federal Records Centers of the National Archives for decades,” in order to save millions of dollars in continuing storage costs.

“The plan is to destroy all records on cases that did not go to trial that were filed between 1970 and 1995,” the center’s story said. “For other records, the federal judiciary has reduced the current record retention time from 25 to 15 years in an effort to cut costs. All cases that went to trial or were filed before 1970 will be kept.”"

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Citing safety and privacy, PA bill would keep 911 time-response log info from public

"Calling for the further protection of Pennsylvanians' privacy, a state lawmaker wants to limit what anyone could potentially learn from emergency 911 calls.

Opponents of the amendment say privacy already is sufficiently protected by current rules and statutes and the change would only hamper the same public's ability to monitor how well police, fire and ambulance crews respond to emergency situations.

The bill's sponsor, Rep. Joseph Hackett, R-Delaware County, maintains that criminals might use 911 information as a way to identify and target victims or to seek retribution against someone who made an emergency call."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Hawaii Open Records Agency Lets Public Down

"There's something terribly wrong in Hawaii when it comes to public records — and it's time something is done about it.

Consider:

* The head of the Office of Information Practices was fired by Gov. Neil Abercrombie after issuing an opinion he didn't agree with. When Civil Beat and the Honolulu Star-Advertiser appealed his refusal to release the names of judicial nominees as she had said was required under the law, the new director said it would be 'futile' to issue another opinion.
* The Honolulu Police Department has kept the names, salaries and job titles of its officers secret for about a year, even though the law clearly requires that such information be made public except when it involves current and former undercover officers. Mayor Peter Carlisle refuses even to address the issue."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Public records law has new teeth

"South Dakota law now allows state and local entities to be fined $50 per day for deliberately stonewalling requests for public records.

Fifty dollars may not sound like much, but over time, the penalty can add up and serve as a meaningful deterrent.

Prior to enactment of the new law on July 1, there was no penalty when government refused access to public records.

South Dakota passed a comprehensive public records law in 2009, but it neglected to include sanctions for violations."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator News: Government's hefty charges block access to public records

"Bureaucrats and politicians are increasingly using excessive fees to block public access to records, as state agencies in Delaware and nationwide embrace policies allowing hefty fees for answering Freedom of Information Act queries.

Government is using the charges, critics say, to underwrite its failure or refusal to manage records in ways that assure easy taxpayer access to details of the public's business.

Gov. Jack Markell's administration is developing a policy that would standardize charges state agencies can levy for access to public records. Some legislators say the law may need to be changed to better define 'reasonable' fees for public records."

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Location Oakland, Ca | San Francisco, Ca | California - Private Investigator

Private Investigator Research Links - July 2011

• Mexico Court Records

• California State Genealogical Alliance

• Ohio Birth Index

• California Courts case law - natural language search

• California Birth Index 1905-1995

• SearchTeam - real-time collaborative search engine

• LinkedIn’s Undocumented Search Operator

• Obituaries Database

• Ways to use LinkedIn to find people, track changes at companies

• InfoUSA Employer Database

• California - Current Notaries Public

• DISCOVERING FACEBOOK: SOCIAL NETWORK SUBPOENAS AND THE STORED COMMUNICATIONS ACT

• Chat Acronyms & Text Message Shorthand

The rest of my favorite links are here.