Key Points:
• Appen Media sued the Sandy Springs Police Department in 2023 after the city refused to release police reports containing officers’ narratives that it requested under open records laws.
• After Sandy Springs won an initial judgment, Appen Media appealed to a higher court, which said a county judge was wrong and sent the case back, asking for more facts.
• A Fulton County Superior Court judge ordered Sandy Springs on Jan. 22 to release all requested records, so the court can rule on whether they should have been disclosed under Georgia’s Open Records Act.
A Fulton County Superior Court judge sided with Appen Media in its police records lawsuit against Sandy Springs, requiring the city to hand over records it previously withheld from the newspaper.
In a Jan. 22 order, Fulton County Judge Melynee Leftridge required the Sandy Springs Police Department to hand over all previously withheld documents to the court after hearing arguments from both sides two weeks earlier.
The order prevents the city from withholding records in discovery based solely on how they’re labeled and allows Appen to seek reimbursement of any legal fees incurred in obtaining the order.
Lawsuit continues
The judge’s decision to grant Appen’s motion to compel discovery means the city has 60 days to produce the documents. Once reviewed, the court will be better positioned to rule on whether the full reports should have been disclosed under Georgia’s Open Records Act.
“Because [Sandy Springs] did not produce the requested documents in response to [Appen’s] attempt to confer in good faith regarding [the city’s] failure to fully respond to [Appen’s] discovery requests, [Appen] is entitled to an order compelling complete responses,” Leftridge wrote.
Sandy Springs officials have claimed the city is protecting the integrity of police officers’ investigative process, denying any violation of the law.
Appen has requested that the Sandy Springs Police Department share incident reports, containing officers’ accounts of property crimes, violent felonies, traffic accidents, and other emergencies.
The city said no, claiming detailed descriptions of events are “supplemental reports” that don’t have to be disclosed, and at other times citing ongoing investigations.
Publicly available Sandy Springs police reports typically contain one sentence, omitting notes and investigative information, which is in a “supplemental report” often made at the same time. Other metro Atlanta police departments provide a more detailed narrative or other documentation when requested.
Appen claimed in its lawsuit that police incident reports were purposefully incomplete and that supplemental reports were subject to disclosure under state law.
A multi-year battle
The Alpharetta-based newspaper publisher sent out the first edition of the Sandy Springs Crier in October 2022, and started requesting records from the department. After months of correspondence with the city’s legal counsel regarding the police records, Appen filed suit in Fulton County Superior Court in May 2023.
The trial court ruled in favor of the city and said the narratives were not part of an initial incident report and did not have to be disclosed. Appen then appealed.
Last March, the state Court of Appeals struck down that judgment. A judge wrote in his opinion that the city did not meet its burden to show why the requested records should not be disclosed as a matter of law.
Judge Christopher J. McFadden said putting a full narrative in a separate report went against the intent of the Open Records Act.
“I would hold that this practice is an improper circumvention of the act and that the responding officer’s full narrative about his or her initial response to the incident also constitutes an ‘initial incident report’ subject to disclosure under the act,” he wrote.
Appen sued the City of Roswell in 2018 over similar concerns over withholding police reports in violation of the Georgia Open Records Act. After initial pushback from Roswell’s legal counsel, the city settled and paid Appen’s legal fees.
Rough Draft has requested a comment from Appen Media representatives and will update this story as more information is gathered.