Orange County Sheriff’s Department to release records six months after initial request
A first round of internal Orange County Sheriff’s Department records will be made public Wednesday, July 3, six months after the Southern California News Group and other media requested their release under a new police transparency law, SB 1421.
In a Facebook post Tuesday, Sheriff Don Barnes announced the plan to post documents on the department’s website the next day.
“Rather than only release these records to the media outlets that have requested them, I am posting the responsive records at www.ocsd.org,” he wrote. “I encourage you to view these documents absent the lens of sensationalism and innuendo.”
The announcement came two days after the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and others were identified among other large law enforcement agencies in California that hadn’t yet released any documents to a team of news organizations across the state.
The sheriff’s post Tuesday denied that follow-ups by reporters were a factor.
Barnes wrote: “Some in the media have implied that the Orange County Sheriff’s Department is ‘stalling’ and only pressure from reporters has moved the process along. This is false. We have continued to work on identifying, reviewing and redacting responsive documents.”
In the post, Barnes said gathering and releasing records is a laborious process because they contain personal information that must be redacted first.
Other law enforcement agencies around California already have released thousands of pages of records, including photos and videos, responsive to SB 1421, which requires police to release long-secret records about officer shootings, use of force, sexual misconduct and dishonesty. The law went into effect Jan. 1.
The Southern California News Group and other news organizations across the state requested the sheriff’s documents as part of the California Reporting Project, which is working to retrieve and review police records under SB 1421 in cases of dishonesty, sexual misconduct, officer-involved shootings and other uses of force.