I recently sent Sheriff Mahoney two open records requests . . . which ended up being a little more work than I anticipated.
I just wanted to some information. David Blaska seems to have a direct line to find out who is “illegal”. But when I made a similar inquiry, I was directed to booking.
It got me thinking . . . so I made two open records request on Friday morning. My requests were met with this response from the Sheriff, who obviously didn’t want to answer my question:
There is a formal process to request open records, please contact the Sheriff’s Office records division at 284-6827 or visit our website for updated information on the process. Thank you.
Ok, so, I had lost my voice and on Friday it was really bad, so calling was kind of out of the question, and besides, I wanted a record of my request, so I went to the website. And tried, multiple times to submit a request using this form. But I kept getting an error message, so I emailed the IT staff, because it was included in the error message and the site clearly says:
Please do not e-mail requests. Electronic request of records should be submitted by using the online submission option.
Finally, after being frustrated, I also emailed them, even tho they don’t want that. I think my original request can’t be ignored, neither can me second emailed request. And eventually, after making my request shorter and shorter, I was able to get the on-line form to work but the request wasn’t really complete.
Yesterday, I heard back from IT, which resulted in first this response:
I’m sorry you experienced an error when trying to file a records request via the website. Please contact our Records staff by phone at (608) 284-6827 to file your request.
And eventually this response:
If you have information or suggestions you would like to provide to the Sheriff, I would recommend sending them via US Mail. We don’t have an online form for this purpose.
You can send a letter to:
Sheriff Dave Mahoney
115 West Doty St.
Madison, WI 53703
The IT guy suggests I write a letter? Seriously?
I have yet to get a human response from the Sheriff’s Department, just a automated response that said:
Your record request has been received by the Dane County Sheriff’s Office. Your request will be fulfilled as soon as practicable and without delay based on the order in which it was received.
Please do not send a second request. If you have a question regarding the status of your request, please call (608) 284-6827.
When completed, your request will be sent to you via US Mail at the address you provided on the submission form.
I’ll give them a call if I haven’t heard from them by the end of the week . . . which I’m guessing I won’t, because this doesn’t seem like the right procedure. And it also doesn’t seem like I’m getting equal treatment, they certainly didn’t make Blaska go through all this to find out information about if people are “illegal”. I’m not sure if this is a purposeful run around, or incompetence, but either way, its not really acceptable.
