London man: 911 officials tampered with package containing records tied to police shooting
A London man who filed an open records request seeking information related to a fatal police shooting in Laurel County says officials from the county 911 center interfered with his package containing public records related to the incident.
Elijah Jarvis, of London, said he filed an open records request last week for information related to the shooting of Douglas Harless, who died after being shot by a London police officer shot him at his home on Vanzant Road Dec. 23.
But Jarvis said in an interview Friday night that when he went to Federal Express to pick up the package containing the records, he discovered that two officials who work for the London-Laurel County 911 Center had arrived there before him, opened the package and were in the process of removing information from it.
The London-Laurel County 911 Communications Center posted a statement on Facebook Friday, explaining that they had inadvertently left phone numbers and addresses of private citizens in the documents that needed to be redacted.
The situation — intercepting a fulfilled records request to redact information — is “unprecedented in my experience,” said Amye Bensenhaver, co-director of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition and a former assistant attorney general.
“Some mistake was made somewhere along the line,” Bensenhaver said.
Jarvis said the incident began when he received a notification from Federal Express Thursday afternoon that his package required a signature for pickup.
“When I arrived at FedEx, the lady went to the back to retrieve my package,” Jarvis wrote in a Facebook post. “She returned and informed me that the two men standing a few feet away from me had my package.”
The men were Larry Walls, director of the London-Laurel County 911 Communications Center, and Tyler Pearce, assistant director.
Jarvis asked Walls and Pearce what they were doing, and they said, “The city had sent them down there to redact and remove information from my open records request,” Jarvis said in the interview.
A statement signed by Walls and Pearce and posted on Facebook by the 911 center said the center shipped Jarvis a response to his open records request on Wednesday, but one day later they “realized that we left some personal, private information unredacted pertaining to private citizens.”
They said the chairman of the 911 center board, David Williams, told them to go to FedEx to try to get the package back if it hadn’t been delivered, so the documents could be redacted.
“When we arrived at FedEx, we were told the package had not been delivered and FedEx returned the package to us at our request,” the statement says. “We then redacted the telephone numbers and addresses of private citizens. We then realized that Elijah Jarvis also arrived at FedEx after we did. When FedEx told us that Elijah Jarvis was there to get the package, we showed him the redactions we had made, and gave him all the documents he requested.
“At no time did we take possession back of any documents. We gave Elijah Jarvis everything that had been shipped in the package. We only redacted the private information with a black marker.”
Jarvis said he had asked in his open records request for records related to a call between Laurel County Judge-Executive David Westerfield and an officer with the London Police Department that was handled by the 911 dispatch center the day after the shooting. Jarvis said the audio from the call was posted on YouTube Jan. 8, and he was interested in learning how that happened.
In the call, Westerfield and the officer discussed the investigation into items stolen from property owned by Westerfield. Law enforcement officers were trying to serve a warrant to recover the stolen items when they went to Harless’ home late at night, apparently because of an incongruity between house numbers, and shot him when he pointed a gun at them.
“I wanted to know who had access to this audio ... who received it and the timeline,” Jarvis said.
Officials eventually handed over the redacted documents, but they left “even more questions,” Jarvis said.
Bensenhaver, who leads the Kentucky Open Government Coalition, said if someone inadvertently fulfills a records request without redacting information, the key legal issue would be just how sensitive that information is.
She said it could be argued that the agency waived its right to keep the information private under exemptions to the open records law when it mailed the documents.
But she said a court has previously ruled that it’s better not to “exacerbate the harm caused by the agency” in releasing protected information, such as the name of a confidential informant.
“You don’t want someone to be harmed because of the ... incompetence of the public agency,” she said. “Primarily, I think that a court would want — and I think the attorney general would want — the proper outcome.”
Ultimately, she noted, Jarvis got the records.
But she also noted that if information is redacted, the law requires agencies to explain what was removed and their justification for removing it.
At the least, Bensenhaver said, “It’s a teachable moment for public agencies to not be so ... reckless about what their duties are.”
“It just is another example of agencies not putting forth their best effort to get things right in the first place,” she said. “The circumstances are certainly an embarrassment.”
London Mayor Randall Weddle said in an interview Friday night that he was not involved in the handling of the open records request or the decision to go retrieve the package, but he said he thinks the officials “just caught an error and must’ve gone to try to fix it.”
“These are good boys,” he said.
Jarvis said he has spoken with the FBI and a lawyer about the incident. He said he’s also planning to attend a London City Council meeting Monday to raise questions about the situation.
“In my opinion, it’s very unethical,” he said. “It’s a violation of my 4th Amendment rights. I’m not just going to let this go.”
