Louisville Metro Police Department continues to subvert the intent of the open records law by postponing access to fired LMPD officer Brett Hankison's Public Integrity Unit investigative file and all internal and external complaints made against Hankison in responding to WLKY's May 21 and June 4 open records requests.

StIll worse, it's refusal to release Hankison's employee (performance) reviews *violates* the open records law.

With respect to this overt violation, Louisville cannot claim ignorance of the law mandating release of Hankison's performance reviews.

In a 2006 case that pitted the City of Louisville against The Courier Journal, the Kentucky Court of Appeals rejected "bright-line rules permitting or exempting disclosure" of public employee performance.

http://162.114.92.72/COA/2004-CA-002270.pdf#xml=http://162.114.92.72/dt…

Departing from the Kentucky Attorney General's longstanding position that performance reviews are exempt, the court determined that not all reviews are open to public inspection and not all reviews are closed to public inspection. Each case turns on its facts.

The court held that the city violated the open records law in denying The Courier Journal's request for the performance review of a parks department employee fired for theft of a large number of shoes donated by area businesses for needy children.

The court concluded that by "committing a criminal act made possible by his position at a public agency, the city employee to some extent forfeited his privacy interest, and the public interest in the details of the operation of a public agency could be advanced by the disclosure of non-personal information contained in the evaluation."

Given the gravity of the offenses that led to his firing—whether they are found to be criminal or not—Hankison's purported privacy interest in his performance evaluations is vastly outweighed by the public's interest "in the details of the operation of" LMPD.

LMPD knows that its denial is legally indefensible under this established precedent and that disclosure of Hankison's evaluations would *not* "constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

Its position borders on willful nondisclosure.

As for delays in production of the remaining PIU file and internal and external complaints, LMPD has extended the deadline for production of records that WLKY requested in May and June to October 12.

The open records law provides no legal shelter for the department's position that this nearly five month delay is justified by an "unprecedented and unmanageable volume of open records requests due to the ongoing protests in Louisville, complicated by staffing issues as a result of COVID."

Simply put, the law does not authorize public agencies to ignore statutory deadlines and establish random ones that suit their convenience.

Nor does the law permit extension of the statutory deadline for production because the "requested records are not readily available pursuant to KRS 61.872(5) as the redaction process for the PIU investigations involving Brett Hankison is still underway and has not yet been completed."

KRS 61.872(5) permits an extension of the 3 business day deadline—expanded to 10 days under SB 150 during the state of emergency—to the "earliest date" if requested records are "in active use, in storage, or not otherwise available."

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=23060

The open records law contemplates identification, location, retrieval, review, *redaction*, and productIon of nonexempt public records within the statutorily mandated timeframe unless one of these conditions is met.

The duty to redact records—or "separate the excepted and make the nonexcepted material available for examination"—is imposed by law and is not, in general, a KRS 61.872(5) condition warranting a delay in production. An exception to this rule *might* exist if, for example, responsive records we're so voluminous that redaction required additional days—not months—to complete.

https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=48230

Production of properly redacted records responsive to WLKY's narrow and unambiguous request for internal and external complaints, and a closed PIU file, from Hankison's 17 year career should have been completed within 10 days.

It's is virtually inconceivable that any court would approve a delay of this duration.

LMPD's professed commitment to transparency and accountability grows increasingly anemic.