City denies request for public records related to unintended discharge of officer's firearm

The City of Batavia has denied The Batavian's request for the incident reports and possible video related to an unintended discharge of a weapon by a Batavia police officer last month.

From City Clerk Heidi Parker, the city's Freedom of Information Law Officer:

Your request for the incident report, witness statements and video, if any, has been denied after discussion with Bob Freeman from the Committee on Open Government based on NYS Civil Rights Law section 50-a since the incident in question is part of the officer’s training and evaluation process to continue employment with the City. The incident report specifically is denied based on unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

The Batavian has taken the next step in the process for demanding disclosure of public documents and filed an appeal with City Manager Jason Molino.

To say that routine incident reports are used in officer evaluation would essentially make all police documents related to incidents confidential. Even routine arrests would be hidden from the public. That's clearly not the intent of the legislature.

Numerous sources have provided information to The Batavian indicating that there is more to this incident than Chief Shawn Heubusch is disclosing. 

UPDATE Friday, 4:50 p.m.: We received a letter from Jason Molino informing The Batavian that he is partially granting our appeal.  The incident report will be released after personal information has been redacted. Up to five business days. He's denying the request for "Special Reports" and "Police Training Reports" (we didn't specifically request those documents, because we didn't know the names of the documents, but they could be generally construed as covered by our request).  Molino said those documents are expect from disclosure under Civil Service Law 50-a.  He provided copies of the complete redacted reports, with only the memo heads remaining.  Since these reports appear to have been generated in conjunction with an internal investigation, it's likely these documents would be considered "used to evaluate performance toward continued employment or promotion." 

Previously: Accidental weapon discharge leads to internal police investigation