Man can’t fish police computers for records
Citizens have no right to peruse government computers in search of records that public agencies say don’t exist, according to a court ruling released Thursday.
The Washington Court of Appeals made the ruling in the case of a man who wanted to sit down at a Spokane Police Department computer and look for prostitution-related reports he suspects caused him to be fired.
The court cited established case law that the state Public Disclosure Act doesn’t give people the right “to indiscriminately sift through an agency’s files in search of records or information which cannot be reasonably identified or ascribed to the agency.”
A three-judge panel said a Spokane County Superior Court judge properly denied Carl J. Sperr’s request for access to police databases because the information he sought didn’t exist.
Police records manager Michael Busby told Sperr in late 1998 that there was no record of Sperr having been arrested. Then, in April 1999 after more requests from Sperr, Busby released several reports associated with Sperr.
None involved criminal investigation of Sperr, the Court of Appeals said. Most were complaints filed by Sperr, and one record involved Sperr’s request for release of his police records to Big Brothers Big Sisters of Spokane, the court said.
No one was available Friday at Big Brothers Big Sisters to say whether Sperr is – or has been – involved in the organization.
Sperr was fired from his job at US West Communications in August 1999. He had already filed, in May 1999, a lawsuit claiming police “requested I be fired because of alleged prostitution.”
Court records say Sperr believed police were harassing him because he picked up a police officer’s son in the early 1990s at a location known for prostitution. Sperr made that assertion in May 1999 in a lawsuit against US West and the city of Spokane as well as in a letter to the police records office.
Sperr claimed the unnamed officer’s son warned that his father would “make it rough” for Sperr.
“Because I was never arrested or charged with this, I feel I cannot be held accountable for this,” Sperr said in his lawsuit against the city and US West.
No money changed hands and there was no sexual contact, Sperr said in the lawsuit, which a judge summarily dismissed.
The Court of Appeals said Sperr later obtained a handwritten memo from a US West security file. The note, dated May 5, 1999, indicated someone at the company asked an unnamed Spokane police officer to check on Sperr.
“He ran Carl’s name and found he had been picked up for prostitution at the Greyhound bus station in ‘97,” the memo said of the officer’s response. “He has been handled several times for being in areas where ‘male prostitutes’ frequent.”
The note added, without explanation, “Nothing current on file in their computer.”
Sperr sued in U.S. District Court for access to police records, but the claim was thrown out in January 2002 for insufficient facts. Then he took his records case to Spokane County Superior Court, where it was again rejected last October.