A judge last week scolded the Pennsylvania State Police for the agency’s poor response to a reporter seeking trooper emails, text messages, and voicemails — some of which may no longer exist.
HARRISBURG —
Verizon told Spotlight PA that providing the voicemails and texts from years ago is now impossible — they no longer exist. Schwartz filed his request for emails, text messages, and voicemails in March 2021. The State Police initially provided emails, many of which were heavily blacked out. They said no text messages or voicemails existed but failed to provide an affidavit, a legally required document explaining that.
“Ultimately the records were not in the possession or control of the Pennsylvania State Police and that was the bottom line,” she said. “I appreciate the state of the law hasn’t caught up with the technology and they don’t like it, but that’s where we are.” Rodriguez said that there was no legal way to file a subpoena under the Right-to-Know Law and that the State Police could not file one for the phone records. She also said the Verizon contract was held by another state agency.“You could have included all this [in responses to the request], which would have put us all in the position of not being blindsided by this,” she said to Rodriguez.
Taking a public records case to court can be expensive, and even if a petitioner wins, there’s no guarantee the state will have to pay their attorneys fees. That means most cases are taken by lawyers from places like the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which took Schwartz’s case, or never make it in front of a judge.
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