In Bondgraham v. Superior Court (City of Oakland), published September 25, 2023, the First District Court of Appeal, Division 2 issued a writ directing a trial court to vacate its order allowing redactions to records produced in a California Public Records Act proceeding. Under a previous trial court order, the real party city produced to requesters a redacted version of an internal affairs report of an investigation into an incident in which multiple police officers had sex with a girl while she was underage. The requestors challenged certain reductions as improper under the 2018 amendment of the Pitchess statutes, which require production of certain investigation information about police officers and permit certain redactions. The trial court permitted some of the redactions, which the requesters challenged by petitioning the appellate court for writ relief.
The appellate court ruled that the trial court erred in allowing certain redactions under the amended Pitchess statutes. The trial court erroneously allowed redaction under Penal Code section 832.7, subdivisions (b)(4) and (b)(5) of the report's training and policy recommendations, witness statements containing general information about the girl and her social-media use, screenshots of the girl's Facebook profile; and large portions of her statements to investigators. Subdivision (b)(5) permits redaction only of "information about allegations of misconduct by, or the analysis or disposition of an investigation of, an officer.” The policy and training recommendations and Facebook screenshots do not fall under this category. Under subdivision (b)(5), "“factual information about that action of an
officer during an incident, or the statements of an officer about an incident, shall be released if they are relevant to a finding against another officer that is subject to release.” The trial court failed to apply that limitation. Subdivision (b)(4) provides that “[a] record from a separate and prior investigation or assessment of a separate incident shall not be released unless it is independently subject to disclosure pursuant to this subdivision.” This provision did not apply to a report that pertained to a single investigation. Further, the provision permits withholding an entire record; it does not permit redaction of information in a record such as a report. Even if the city's argument that the report was a compilation of multiple investigation records, the statute would not allow the city to redact "assessments" of separate "incidents" described in the report. The appellate court further concluded that the trial court erred in allowing the city to redact the names of officers as "witnesses" under Penal Code section 837.2, subdivision (b)(6)(B), which provides that an agency “shall redact a record disclosed pursuant to this section” in order to “preserve the anonymity of . . .witnesses.” The appellate court concluded that the redacted entries could not be fairly described as one officer describing or witnessing another officer's misconduct. Redaction under the subdivision was therefore inappropriate. Finally, the trial court erred in allowing redactions under former Government Code section 6254, subdivision (f) (exempting records of investigations from production under the CPRA), since subdivision of (b)(1) expressly provides that the officer records listed in the statute shall not be confidential and shall be made available for public inspection notwithstanding any other law.
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