FARMINGTON, Mo. — I like the way Benjamin Bradley writes Sunshine Law requests.
He sometimes includes a detail that sends a message to the official from whom he is seeking records. The message? I know this record exists.
So it was on April 5, when Bradley sent a records request to St. Francois County:
“On 7/11/2009 there was an incident report that was created by deputy, D. Slinkard, with an invent number of 261977, with a name ID of 39053,†Bradley wrote in an email to the county clerk’s office. “This event was logged as an incident involving an inmate in the St. Francois County Jail.â€
Bradley is a Republican political consultant who lives in Farmington. The record he is seeking might be relevant in the political race of the year in this rural county south of ºüÀêÊÓƵ: the four-way Republican primary for sheriff. Incumbent Sheriff Dan Bullock and one of his deputies, Tim Harris, are vying for the position, along with Farmington police Lt. Jeff Crites and St. Genevieve police Chief Jasen Crump.
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Bradley supports Crump in the election. A portion of the record he is seeking — he showed me a screenshot of its existence — suggests Harris, the deputy sheriff, modified the record at some point. It also suggests that the report about the jail incident is now in the possession of Bullock, the current sheriff. The sheriff’s department runs the county jail.
The day Bradley filed the request, a deputy clerk told him that the person who could fulfill the request was out but that they could hopefully search for the record the following Monday.
That Monday came and went. A few days later, on April 15, the clerk wrote Bradley to tell him the sheriff’s computer system was down and had been for several days. This was not just a glitch in the records system, but a crash of the computer system that runs the entire sheriff’s department, as well as the backup system. Everything was down, and the timing was suspicious.
“This is 30 years of data. It’s all gone. That’s a big deal,†Bradley told me. “I might have found one thing they don’t want out. What else is there?â€
He was hardly the only person concerned.
County Clerk Kevin Engler, a former state representative and state senator, raised a few alarm bells himself.
“I’m trying to be positive. Hopefully there’s no problem at all,†Engler told me on Tuesday. “Is it coincidental that it happened right after a Sunshine Law request?â€
On Wednesday, the St. Francois County Commission held an emergency meeting to approve about $25,000 for a contract with a Texas company that says it can retrieve the data and get the system running again.
Bullock, the sheriff, says he hopes everything is back to normal next week. But in the meantime, he’s had to teach some of his younger employees how to fingerprint suspects the old-fashioned way, with an ink pad and paper. The computer used to do that, too.
Bullock takes umbrage at the suggestion the computer crash had something to do with Bradley’s request for an old incident report.
“I would not crash the computer system for a Sunshine Law request,†said the sheriff, who’s been in office for more than three decades.
Bullock declined to tell me what is in the report that Bradley is seeking.
Engler said the sheriff’s race in St. Francois County will be hotly contested. Bullock doesn’t disagree. He says he told the younger candidates to be prepared for anything.
“If you did something, it is going to come out,†he says, “and if not, they’ll make it up.â€
Whether coincidence or not, Bradley’s Sunshine Law request, the one that couldn’t be fulfilled because the system crashed, may tell a story about one or more of the candidates for sheriff. But first, there’s a more pressing matter.
Do sheriff’s department records going back to 1995 still exist?
That’s the $25,000 question.