尤金警察局就一名警员档案向 Double Sided Media 收费 $2.5M

Lauren Harper is Freedom of the Press Foundation’s first Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy.

How much does it cost to get more information about a cop who punched someone in the face?

If you guessed anything lower than $2.5 million, you’d be wrong — at least according to the city of Eugene, Oregon.

In August, the local news outlet Double Sided Media filed a public records request for records about police officer Justin Peckels, which focused on potential misconduct between 2018 and 2026. Peckels has been the subject of community complaints, including for punching a resident in the face during a traffic stop, making the records vital for oversight and their release clearly in the public interest.

The city’s response is beyond belief. In its response to the request on Monday, the Eugene Police Department claimed searching for records and processing the request would take at least 44,816 hours of staff time and cost approximately $2,484,599.04. (A separate request by the outlet for similar records concerning a former police officer, Eric Klinko, was met with a comparatively modest estimate of $195,869.52, for a grand total of nearly $2.7 million for both requests.)

“Once the City receives payment of $2,484,599.04 staff will continue processing your request,” the letter from the department’s public records division read. “If the actual cost of processing your request exceeds the amount you have paid the City, you will be required to pay the difference before the City will provide the records you have requested.”

Peckels’s file is either the largest in the world, or city officials have intentionally maintained their databases in such a way as to ensure fulfilling public records requests is prohibitively expensive. The city’s response points, at a minimum, to the latter. It justified the multimillion-dollar price tag by claiming it couldn’t narrow the custodians whose records it would need to search, despite the targeted nature of the request, and maintained it must search all records of all city employees, past and present.

By that logic, if someone ever worked in Eugene’s parks and recreation department, their records could contain responsive information about police misconduct, and must be manually pulled and reviewed, one by one.

This goes far beyond incompetence. It’s an intentional effort to make a response artificially voluminous — and cost prohibitive — to intimidate the journalist into dropping it entirely. 

Normally, agencies are required to search the specific custodians most likely to possess responsive records, not every groundskeeper or clerk on the city payroll. If the city were acting in good faith, officials would have asked Double Sided Media to help them identify the most likely record-holders, not take it upon themselves to cast a citywide dragnet as its first step.

尤金市这番敛财之所以尤其令人愤怒，是因为它在技术问题上实行双重标准。它显然无法投资高效搜索软件，但警方最近签下了一份为期两年、价值 $342,000 的合同，采购近 60 台由 AI 驱动的 Flock 自动车牌识别仪。这个项目保密程度极高，以至于俄勒冈州 ACLU 不得不起诉该市，要求提供关于这些摄像头使用情况的记录；这也表明，除了其他倾向之外，该市急于利用精密软件来对付居民。 

然而，只要记者申请查阅有关该部门内部问责流程的公共记录，这种技术上的精密便消失无踪，简单的关键词搜索突然变得繁琐起来。 

令人不安的是，尤金市 $2.5 million 的账单并非个例。

2015 年，国防部告知一名《信息与自由法》申请人，此人正在申请有关用于保全扣押设备中数据的工具的记录；完成其申请将耗费 15 million 小时，并花费$660 million。

同年，缉毒署告知一名申请人，有关缉毒署在搜捕墨西哥贩毒集团头目 Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman 时所发挥作用的记录将花费$1.46 million。

2019 年，美国陆军试图收取 $300,000，才肯公布军事基地水质检测结果，以查明是否存在有毒化学物质。在遭遇强烈反对后，美军同意免除这笔过高费用。 

诸如此类的例子数不胜数。

所幸，寻求联邦文件的申请者有办法应对这些随意开出的账单。近期的FOIA 修正案旨在确保：如果机构错过答复期限，就不能收取大部分费用。 

然而到了地方层面，这些保护措施却土崩瓦解。尽管俄勒冈州赋予各机构自行决定权，在披露信息将惠及公众时可以减免费用，各机构却经常无视这些规定。

对于 Double Sided Media 这样的小型新闻编辑部而言，$2.5 million 的费用单实际上等同于一道封口令，其目的从来不是支付成本，而是威逼申请人放弃调查（与此同时，尤金警察局还启动自己的“新闻”计划，记录其执法活动）。这也开创了一个先例，即可以随意对任何记者或监督方使用这种寒蝉效应手段。 

Double Sided Media 正确地对该费用估算提出申诉，而且理应胜诉。但除非全国各地的立法者迫使各机构设定费用上限、强制实行面向记者的公共利益费用减免，并要求各机构采购能够高效、及时回应记录申请的软件，否则像尤金这样的城市会继续这类勾当。

在此之前，警察部门很可能会继续为其记录开列出数百万美元的赎金——将公众的知情权武器化为警方可以不受惩罚地开展行动的另一条途径。