EPD’s $2.5 million estimate to fulfill public records request prompts discussion

A cost estimate of $2.5 million to sift through police misconduct records for a single officer has led to discussion about the way the Eugene Police Department responds to record requests from the public under Oregon law.

Eugene-based Double Sided Media sought records relating to sustained misconduct records for an officer, Justin Peckels, who has reportedly been accused of using unnecessary force in a 2023 traffic stop.

In dispute is whether the department reached out to the organization to “collaborate” on a request that would potentially cost less. 

During a Thursday, Oct. 8, meeting of the Eugene Police Commission, Chief Chris Skinner said: “We reached out to the requester, gave them a heads-up that it was going to be a big number, and asked them if they’d like to collaborate with us on how they can narrow their scope, change their scope, get them to yes on something to release that, and they chose not to do that.”

But James Croxton, editor-in-chief for Double Sided Media, in an email Friday to Lookout Eugene-Springfield said police never made such an offer, describing how managing editor Mary Bell called to follow up on the initial request and was told by a records supervisor that the number of potentially responsive documents was 2.6 million.

“The call lasted for 5 minutes and 11 seconds and there was no offer to help narrow the scope or anything of the sort,” Croxton said Friday.

Double Sided Media sought “[all] completed internal affairs complaints, intake logs, investigative summaries, witness interviews, audio/video evidence logs, and disciplinary notices issued to or involving Justin Peckels where findings of misconduct were ‘sustained,’” with the request covering an eight-year time period, June 18, 2018, through July 30, 2026.

The request also sought “[a]ll internal and external communications, correspondence, and logs sent, received, or maintained by EPD’s executive staff — specifically including Police Chief Chris Skinner and Deputy Chief — dated between June 18, 2018, and July 30, 2026, regarding any misconduct investigations, internal status, negotiations, discipline, stipulation, or certification of Justin Peckels.”

According to a Sept. 30 article published by Double Sided Media, police responded by requiring a deposit of $588 to begin work on the request as well as another records request. 

Days later, police said it would cost $2,484,599.04 to fulfill the request for records relating to Peckels. 

A New York-based nonprofit organization, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, in a social media post, called the cost estimate an example of “fee bullying.”

At the Thursday Police Commission meeting, Skinner said the department collaborated with the city’s Information Services department to find the number of files possibly relevant to the request.

Then, each file would have to be reviewed by a person, Skinner said. He noted that state law allows many officer discipline records to be exempt from public release.

“Our IT department, they concurrently do their work, and what that spits out is a number of files, not necessarily emails, but a number of files where that piece of information … as requested, shows up somewhere,” Skinner said in the meeting.

“That number over the course of eight years, with the broadness of the request, yielded 2.6 million files to be able to look at,” Skinner said Thursday, explaining that the department estimated the cost based on the amount of time to then review that large number of files.

Skinner said, “we have to look at the file to be able to determine whether it … meets the releasable criteria or not, and if there’s anything that needs to be redacted.”

Skinner emphasized that the process for estimating the cost to fulfill the Double Sided Media request was no different than that of any other request.

“This recent request was vetted the exact same way we vet all of our requests,” Skinner said, adding that the department estimated one minute to review each file, leading to an estimate that it would take 44,000 hours of analysis given an hourly labor cost of about $55 per hour.

“You multiply that times 55 and some change per hour that we’re doing, and that interestingly enough came up with that big-dollar figure that people were struggling with,” Skinner said.

Skinner said the number of labor hours “would be an entire 21 [full-time employees] that would work on this for an entire year, just to meet this public records request, which is not going to be feasible as you can imagine.”

Croxton, in an email Friday, said the organization’s request was limited to “EPD’s executive team.”

He said Double Sided Media “was unaware that we needed to inform EPD who held those positions over the timeframe of the request,” stating that the department “ignored the parameters” of the initial request to search “the entire city roster past and present.” 

“It would have been wonderful if the EPD had reached out to us to let us know there was a large number of documents potentially responsive and asked if we would like to ‘collaborate’ with them ‘to narrow the scope, or to change the scope,’ but that never occurred,” Croxton said.

Alan Leiman, an attorney and member of the Police Commission, said “there needs to be an offer of collaboration” from the Police Department to a person making a request large in scope.

“In the civil litigation world, this is now AI review,” Leiman said, referring to artificial intelligence, describing a civil case he’s worked on involving 6 million documents. 

“The principle of public records and managing costs and doing it the most efficiently is important to the public and for transparency in government,” Leiman said.

Skinner said he agreed that technology could help in the record review process, but noted that the city requires “a software review process” before any AI technology is implemented “or used at all.”

“The city still requires a human being to be involved in the process as quality control because AI isn’t perfect, and in this particular case, there’s some risk associated with either not putting something out or putting something out that shouldn’t be,” Skinner said.

The Lane County District Attorney’s office denied an appeal for a fee waiver denial submitted by Double Sided Media. 

The DA’s response dated Wednesday, Oct. 7, refers to Double Sided Media as the “petitioner” and the city and Police Department as the “respondent.” The DA’s office noted that requests from Double Sided Media “yielded approximately 212,000 and 2,689,000 documents.”

“Although the estimated fees present a substantial obstacle to Petitioner’s reporting, the volume of search results and the associated review burden support Respondent’s decision to decline to absorb or substantially subsidize the cost of fulfilling the requests as written. On this record, Respondent’s denial of a fee waiver or reduction was not unreasonable,” stated the response to the petition, with District Attorney Christopher Parosa and Deputy District Attorney JoAnn Miller listed as denying the Double Sided Media petition request.

Croxton called the denial of the appeal disappointing but “unsurprising.”