San Jose Police Apologize For Hiding Drone Program, Halts Until Further Review

v3rgEz (125380) writes As part of MuckRock's Drone Census, the San Jose Police twice denied having a drone in public records requests — until the same investigation turned up not only a signed bid for a drone but also a federal grant giving them money for it. Now, almost a full year after first denying they had a drone, the department has come clean and apologized for hiding the program, promising more transparency and to pursue federal approval for the program, which the police department had, internally, claimed immunity from previously.

Comments

Not good enough

[Anonymous Coward]

People should be going to prison for such deceit. We don't hold our officials accountable.

Re:Not good enough

[ShanghaiBill]

People should be going to prison for such deceit. We don't hold our officials accountable.

This is not the first time that SJPD has been caught doing things like this. They were caught using Stingrays to monitor cellphones. As with the drones, the Stingrays were paid for with federal money, bypassing local control and oversight.

Just saying "sorry" should not be enough, especially after repeated occurrences of the same deceitful behavior.

 

Re:Not good enough

[Frobnicator]

People should be going to prison for such deceit. We don't hold our officials accountable.

The people who broke the law are not elected officials, they are employees. It is very difficult to hold those people accountable.

Lying in an FOIA request is potentially a federal crime. But 5 USC 552 provides a very long list of exemptions from the law, and it is federal prosecutors that need to decide to prosecute.

So the first thing you'd need to do is convince the federal prosecutors to go after the problem, which is very unlikely since they're part of the same Good-Ol'-Boys Network. Then you need to break through the qualified immunity enjoyed by all government workers and government agencies. Once the federal prosecutors fight through the process of appeals to gain permission to sue, the next step is to prove intent since that's what the law requires. The police can easily slip out of it through the gigantic loopholes like saying it might have an impact on current or future police investigations, or claiming it was one of the various legal oversights.

So in summary, they'd need to:
1. Anger a federal prosecutor enough to interest them
2. Convince their boss who controls the money (usually an elected person) to sue another branch of government (breaching the Good Ole' Boy's Club)
3. Fight through the courts, usually all the way to the state's supreme court, that qualified immunity doesn't apply
4. Convince the court that the individual should be personally liable, otherwise it is just a budgetary transfer from department to department
5. Prove it was either malicious or that the negligence was at criminal levels, otherwise it doesn't trigger any penalties
6. Reasonably counter all the objections that the person broke the law, knew or should have known they broke the law, and didn't fit the long list of exemptions
7. Get a conviction from a jury, since this is criminal law. Or just pressure the person into submission with a plea deal, which is the typical response once you hit #5 above.

Yeah, that will happen. </sarcasm>

These are not people you can vote out of office. You might be able to find a way to vote out a city mayor; in some places people like the police chief are elected rather than hired, but otherwise they're just regular government employees who enjoy things like tenure, golden handcuffs, and all kinds of legal immunities.

Not an apology

[jcrb]

They make no mention of having been clearly non-responsive to the FOI request. The FOI asked for "Acquisition documents" that they hadn't got one yet doesn't get them out from having been trying to get one. And the excuse of "well we didn't know what the other department was doing" fails, the whole point of a FOI request is for them to find out of someone has the documents in any of their departments. The real problem is that these FOI laws lack meaningful penalties for failure to properly respond so no one ever does.

Yep

[Tyrannicsupremacy]

So if a police department "doesnt have a drone" and someone finds a way to interrupt the signal of said nonexistent drone, leading to it's destruction, there wouldnt be any repercussions, right?