KQED Wins Legal Victory Against California Department of Corrections Over Public Records

Sacramento Superior Court Judge James Arguelles has granted (PDF) KQED’s petition to compel the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to disclose peace officer personnel records in a timely fashion.

The petition was the latest action in KQED’s ongoing lawsuit against the prison agency over peace officer disciplinary and use-of-force records that were made public six years ago by the Right to Know Act. The landmark transparency law unsealed internal affairs files for the first time in 40 years. This is the fifth case in which KQED has sued or intervened to secure public access to law enforcement disciplinary records in the wake of the 2019 law.

“KQED is impressed and gratified with the Superior Court’s ruling that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was moving too slowly,” said Ethan Toven-Lindsey, vice president of news at KQED. “We continue to believe that agencies that refuse or unreasonably delay their compliance with state law must be held accountable.”

In early 2019, as part of a coalition of news organizations, KQED filed requests with more than 700 law enforcement agencies including CDCR, which employs about 30,000 peace officers, making it the largest in the state. In 2021, after the Legislature expanded access to police disciplinary records to include cases of discrimination and excessive force, KQED asked for those records as well.

KQED sued the prison agency in 2022, after it became apparent that at the rate it was going, it would take more than 25 years for CDCR to turn over disclosable peace officer records. In the past year and a half, the agency has sped things up. However, in its most recent motion, the prison agency estimated that it still needs more than nine years to produce an additional 925 incidents that are responsive to KQED’s requests. The agency also stated that it is  constrained by an agreement with the California Correctional Peace Officers Association to notify officers before any records are released.

In his ruling Friday, Arguelles said that CDCR must release all responsive records by 2027 and 40 of KQED’s top priority cases by August.

“CDCR appreciates the court’s acknowledgment of the Department’s efforts to work with KQED to prioritize cases and increase staffing to meet its obligations,” the agency’s press secretary Terri Hardy wrote in an email. “CDCR receives a large number of Public Records Act requests each year and remains committed to transparency and refining its process.”

So far, the prison agency has released complete records for around 300 use-of-force and misconduct cases that span 2014 through 2021, and partial records for about 80 cases involving officer discrimination.

Out of those records, KQED had produced a second season of its award-winning podcast On Our Watch. The first season was based on internal police records obtained under the Right to Know Act. The second season focuses on use of force at the state’s most violent prison, California State Prison-Sacramento, also known as New Folsom.

KQED found that this prison had three times the rate of serious use-of-force incidents — in which officers seriously injure or shoot at incarcerated people — of any other state prison. The final episode of the series, which traces the footsteps of two whistleblowers who died after reporting misconduct in the prison publishes today.