Local News

Mass. State Police up for award for hardly telling anybody a damn thing

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By Adam Vaccaro

June 4, 2015

3 minutes to read

Massachusetts State Police are up for a national award. The honor? Making it particularly difficult for the public to access information.

Investigative Reporters and Editors—or IRE, an acronym intended as a pun, according to the trade group’s website—will present the “Golden Padlock’’ award for the third consecutive year this weekend, “recognizing the most secretive publicly-funded agency or person in the United States.’’

The department is one of four agencies in the running. The other three are: The Colorado Judicial Branch, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Robert Cribb, who chairs the committee that gives out the award, said there are different elements of secrecy that can generate a nominee, but that the Massachusetts example stands out for the hefty fees it applies to public record requests to prevent access to documents.

“The Massachusetts nomination really highlights that particular secrecy technique with startling clarity,’’ Cribb said.

As an example, Cribb said, the department asked the government transparency-focused independent news site Bay State Examiner to pay a $710 non-refundable fee—in order for the agency to come up with an estimate for the actual fee to fulfill the records request. (Examiner co-founder Andrew Quemere shared documents with Boston.com showing that the state’s supervisor of public records later ruled the fee invalid, though State Police asked for more than $9,000 to process the originally requested records.)

Boston Globe reporter Todd Wallack, who deals often with public records, nominated State Police for the Golden Padlock award. Both Boston.com and The Boston Globe are owned by Boston Globe Media Partners.

Wallack said that while fees are an issue, State Police have foiled public records requests in other ways too—such as by redacting entire pages of documents, delaying their release, or plainly refusing to release them.

He nominated the agency out of “a combination of both my own experience and talking to other people: attorneys, bloggers, and other journalists,’’ he said. “Everyone I know who has filed a public records request with State Police has a horror story about State Police.’’

Wallack said the agency is “taking advantage of the state with one of the weakest public record laws in the country.’’

Last month, Massachusetts legislators heard testimony about the difficulties of obtaining public records in the state. That came after The Globe, The Boston Herald, The Patriot Ledger, and other newspapers coordinated editorials in March calling for stronger public records laws.

A Golden Padlock winner will be selected Saturday. Becoming a finalist is no easy feat, Cribb said. A committee of “six or seven’’ people field nominations from journalists across the country. That group is whittled down to a shortlist of 10 that stand out, before the finalists are selected.

“It’s tough to win this,’’ he said. “You’ve got to be rather extraordinary in your efforts to circumvent the public’s right to know.’’

A spokesperson for Gov. Charlie Baker said of the nomination: “Governor Baker believes all agencies should comply with the current public records laws and looks forward to reviewing the details of any future initiatives to appropriately update the laws.’’

Massachusetts State Police did not respond to a request for comment before this article was published.

Here’s how IRE wrote up the local nominee:

The Massachusetts State Police for habitually going to extraordinary lengths to thwart public records requests, protect law enforcement officers and public officials who violate the law and block efforts to scrutinize how the department performs its duties. It normally takes months or longer to respond to news media [Freedom of Information] requests. Requests for basic documents routinely produce refusals, large portions of blacked out documents or demands for tens of thousands of dollars in unjustified fees. Among them, a $42,750 fee for the log of its public records requests and a $62,220 fee for records of crashes involving police cruisers sought by the Boston Globe. A Bay State Examiner reporter was told to pay a $710.50 “non-refundable research fee’’ to get an estimate of the fee he would have to pay to obtain copies of internal affairs reports. The Worcester Telegram & Gazette concluded: “The Massachusetts State Police is a habitual offender – verging on a career criminal – when it comes to breaking a state law intended to ensure government is accountable to the people it serves.’’