The Mississippi Department of Public Safety is claiming it did not violate the Mississippi Public Records Act when it provided The Dispatch with a redacted vehicular pursuit policy for Mississippi Highway Patrol officers.
The Dispatch received the response written by MDPS General Counsel Jordan McMichael Thursday in an email from Mississippi Ethics Commission Executive Director Tom Hood. The response is dated as being received by the Ethics Commission June 6.
On April 15, The Dispatch filed an open records request for Mississippi Highway Patrol policies related to vehicular pursuits. This request included policies on “officers engaging in vehicular pursuits, including limits on when and where pursuits can be initiated, limits on the speed at which officers can travel, limits based on road conditions, and conditions and instructions for ending those pursuits.”
On April 17, Public Records Administrator Robert Wentworth responded with pages of the MDPS General Order Manual, sections of which had been redacted. Information redacted included pursuit procedures, pursuit trooper responsibilities, supervisor responsibilities, pursuit tactics, termination of pursuit procedures and inter-jurisdictional pursuit procedures.
The Dispatch initially filed a public records complaint May 9 against MDPS, asserting that policies used by Mississippi Highway Patrol pertaining to law enforcement officers engaging in vehicular pursuits do not constitute investigatory techniques and should be available to the public. The paper also argued that these policies are a matter of public harm risk negation and excessively redacting these policies is not acceptable.
“For instance, innocent bystanders exposed to chases are not under investigation,” the complaint reads. “However, they can still be affected, even harmed, as a result of them. We believe the public, therefore, has a right to inspect chase policies and whether they are being followed.”
In the June 6 response, McMichael wrote that DPS is not required to produce investigative-report information under the Mississippi Public Records Act. Instead, a law enforcement agency may choose to make public all or part of any investigative report, but it is only required by law to produce incident reports.
McMichael also said the Mississippi Ethics Commission previously reviewed and ruled in favor of MDPS in a 2019 case between the department and Donald Brewer involving this exact vehicular pursuit policy, General Order 11.01, with the same redactions.
The previous Ethics Commission opinion is quoted in McMichael’s response, reading, “a law enforcement agency’s policies and procedures contain some information the agency can protect from disclosure as an investigative report but other information which is not protected, Section 25-61-5(2) requires the law enforcement agency to redact the protected information and produce redacted copies of the policies and procedures.”
McMichael said MDPS’s argument remains the same as it did during that case, contending that the redacted portions of General Order 11.01 are exempt from disclosure, and MDPS has fulfilled its obligations under the Public Records Act.
“The purpose of MPRA is to reasonably provide any person with access to public records and to adequately inform the public about the statutory exemptions that affect this overall purpose,” she said. “DPS did just that. DPS provided responsive, statutorily sufficient records and also cited the applicable exemptions for the redacted portions of the policy.”
McMichael then requested the Ethics Commission dismiss the complaint, providing both redacted and unredacted versions of documents involved in both cases to the commission. The Dispatch had not yet received a ruling on the case from the Ethics Commission as of press time Friday.
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 39 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
