State Law Does Not Support Trial Court Order Approving Agency's Redaction Of Records In Response To CPRA Request

The First Appellate District granted a petition for writ of mandate. The court held that the trial court erred in approving several of the Oakland Police Department's redactions of records pertaining to misconduct by several of its officers.

Journalists Darwin BondGraham and Ali Winston filed California Public Records Act requests for information with the Oakland Police Department, seeking information regarding the "Celeste Guap" scandal, which involved several Oakland police officers who had sex with an underage girl. When the records were not forthcoming, the trial court granted a writ of mandate ordering the department to produce documents responsive to petitioners' requests. The department ultimately produced a redacted version of the report of its internal affairs division's investigation into the scandal.

Petitioners challenged certain of Oakland's redactions to the report. The trial court issued an order upholding several of the challenged redactions and allowing the department to withhold certain documents. Petitioners filed a petition for writ of mandate challenging the trial court order, contending that the order failed to comply with 2018 legislation requiring public access to certain records of police misconduct.

The court of appeal granted the writ petition, holding that the trial court erred in approving several of the department's redactions. Penal Code §832.7, as amended in 2018 by Senate Bill No 1421, provides that certain police officer personnel are exempt from confidentiality. Those exempt records include records relating to any incident in which a law enforcement or oversight agency made a sustained finding that an officer "engaged in sexual assault involving a member of the public."

Under §832.7(b), an agency may nonetheless withhold, under subdivision (4), records from a separate and prior investigation or assessment of a separate incident "unless it is independently subject to disclosure"; under subdivision (5), a record regarding any individual officer, where an investigation or incident involves multiple officers, unless it relates to a sustained finding regarding that individual officer that is itself subject to disclosure or contains only factual information about that officer's actions during an incident or that officer's statements regarding the incident; and, under subdivision (6), an officer's personal data or information; information regarding the identity of victims, witnesses, and others; confidential medical, financial, or other information specifically protected under federal law; and any record which, if disclosed, could pose a significant danger to the physical safety of the officer or another).

Here, the department relied on each of these provisions in redacting the records provided to petitioners. However, in allowing the department's redactions, the trial court failed to consider several of the criteria set forth in the three subdivisions, with the result that it approved several redactions that should have been deemed impermissible. The trial court further erred in relying on former Gov. Code §6254(f) as the basis for redactions, where §832.7(b)(1) expressly overrides "any other law" with regard to certain types of redactions.

BondGraham v.City of Oakland,