ST. LOUIS — If you’ve ever been pulled over for speeding — and it’s happened to me more than I’d like to admit — you’ve seen the portion of a ticket, next to the officer’s name, that lists some seemingly random numbers.
On some forms it’s called a badge number. On others it’s a DSN, or department serial number. Police departments use the numbers to track their officers.
A few years back, Phillip Weeks wanted to get those numbers. He was trying to tie officers in local departments — Webster Groves, University City, the city of ºüÀêÊÓƵ and ºüÀêÊÓƵ County — to the annual state-required report on vehicle stops and racial disparities.
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Weeks hoped to do what lawmakers had failed to do: Get details that could help determine whether individual officers were to blame for skewed disparity numbers, with Black drivers being pulled over at higher rates in some jurisdictions. He filed Sunshine Law requests with the cities and the Regional Justice Information Commission for the raw data from the computer system that stores it.
Most of the cities denied his requests, suggesting the DSN figures are “personnel†records. Weeks sued. He lost in ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Circuit Court.
On Tuesday, the Missouri Supreme Court said Circuit Court Judge Thomas Albus was wrong to grant summary judgment to ºüÀêÊÓƵ County and the city of Webster Groves. The court sent the case back to Albus, with specific instructions that DSN figures are not necessarily personnel records, and that “raw data†available in public databases generally fall under the Sunshine Law — with a possible catch.
The court was unanimous in kicking the case back to Albus for further action. But the judges were split over whether the information Weeks sought, and in the format he asked, was clearly a public record. Four of the judges, led by Judge Ginger Gooch, who , said government bodies may not have to produce the information if it causes them to create a new record.
Three judges — Chief Justice Mary Russell, Judge W. Brent Powell, and Judge Paul Wilson — wrote in a dissent that if the records exist in a public database, they must be produced unless they are specifically exempted from the Sunshine Law.
“The vehicle stop data, including the DSN, collected and retained by Webster Groves and ºüÀêÊÓƵ County ... are electronic records and subject to disclosure under the Sunshine Law,†Russell wrote.
Weeks’ attorney, Laurence Mass, said he was pleased the court sent the case back but thought the majority opinion was unclear about whether Webster Groves and ºüÀêÊÓƵ County have to produce the records.
“I thought the dissent was clear and accurate,†Mass said. “What’s confusing is that the majority seems to say that the DSN is separate and apart from the vehicle stop record.â€
The case has been closely watched by Sunshine Law advocates. Weeks and the have a similar case pending against the city of ºüÀêÊÓƵ. Public agencies across the state have come up with a variety of ways to avoid public accountability when citizens ask for electronic data, even when it clearly exists. And all it takes is for an agency to run a simple database query to produce the request, says David Roland, executive director of the .
Roland, who filed a legal brief supporting Weeks’ case, said the Missouri Supreme Court ruling was “cautious†but mostly good, as it relates to the Sunshine Law.
“It is in no way a bad result,†Roland said, noting that cities were sent a clear message that they can’t use the personnel exemption in the Sunshine Law without clear evidence.
Roland hopes that when the case returns to Albus, the judge sees Russell’s dissent as a “shining guidepost†and helps provide clarity on records in public databases.
Here’s how Russell explained the issue: “If Weeks were seeking information Webster Groves maintained in physical documents in a file cabinet, then such information would indisputably be subject to disclosure,†Russell wrote.
“Extracting existing data into a useable electronic format is not the creation of a new record. Holding otherwise essentially prohibits access to public records maintained in a public governmental body’s database.â€