BoingBoing has done a very good job of documenting the Ferguson kerfuffle, but if nothing else, their PAST behavior, of which there is plenty, and at this point I don’t think I really need to go into details – these details have already been gone over, quite a bit, and it should be up to you to read the information already presented. I would go into detail but don’t think you’re actually being very sincere. If you are, let me know, and I can share with you a few blogs/sites that have done good work in explaining the details.
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I didn’t ask you to believe anything. I just meant to imply I haven’t seen an awful lot of evidence in this particular case. It certainly fits a pattern I’m well aware of - but I’m also aware of confirmation bias. There are plenty, plenty of thoroughly documented cases of perversion of justice out there, there’s no shortage of reasons to be angry. I just don’t think it’s necessary to add to the pile an event that is still so new and poorly documented it could easily be a misunderstanding. I’m not the type to shoot first and ask questions after.
I also didn’t mean to imply that righteous anger is unladylike, especially when it moves people to action.
Yeah, you kind of do, especially when you blame other people as follows:
Show me past behavior by the Highway Patrol—which, again, is not the same as the local Ferguson PD—which obviously and blatantly shows a pattern of corruption and covering up. This isn’t the same as the Ferguson PD failing to create an incident report on the shooting until well after it actually occurred and failing to include any description of what actually happened, nor is it the same as the Ferguson PD charging people they beat for bleeding on police officers, nor is it the same as the Ferguson PD’s horribly disproportionate stats on what races they arrest, fine, and ticket. Again, I’m not aware that the Highway Patrol has a particularly bad record, and your statements to the contrary come across like some sort of “Thanks, Obama!” style commentary.
If we couldn’t ever change our opinions when presented with new facts, we’d really have to hold back our judgement about things like this, but seriously, no arrest records for journalists?
I don’t really care if it’s because they haven’t make it into the file drawer or because the request was not cautiously worded. Either there are no records - which is pretty insane - or there are people who know what the requester wants, who know they have it, and who are willing to tell the requester they don’t have it because of a technicality. I don’t see how any of this is making me question my existing belief that the Ferguson cops are awful - both generally and in this case. If some extraordinary evidence explaining this comes to light then I can go about my day knowing that this is not an instance of them being awful.
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At least with a lot of federal agencies, the default response to FOIA requests is to try and say that no responsive records were found. For places like the FBI and CIA you have a lot better chances of success if you specifically designate the databases and categories of information you want searched. This makes some sense when you have multiple, huge databases that can return way more responses than the requester is actually interested in and which can be time-consuming and costly to sift through (and the requester has to bear the costs unless it is a matter of public interest in which case the costs may be waived), though it makes less sense in the immediate case. But the information request here is incredibly sloppy: a similar ACLU request is much better crafted.
While that doesn’t surprise me at all, it’s pretty terrible of them. I recall the NSA refusing a request by claiming they couldn’t search their emails (they can search any email sent by anyone else in the world, just not theirs, I guess). Like most transparency measures, governments pass freedom of information legislation and then immediately start trying to figure out how to circumvent it.
But this isn’t the only way things can be done. I’ve worked responding to freedom of information requests elsewhere and my experience was that we tried to get the requester the information that they wanted. If something was unclear we attempted to contact the requester to figure out what they wanted so we could help. When politicians tried to interfere in requests and ask that records not be released we would point them to the legislation and tell them that there was no exemption for embarrassment.
All of this is just to say that I understand how obtuse government entities can be, but it’s sad that people basically need lawyers to craft information requests when those requests are supposed to be tools of the public to access information about their government (which supposedly works for them). The request definitely seemed sloppy, but if the police department was not covering up, they should have given the people what they knew they wanted (or asked them what they wanted if they didn’t know).
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