Oregon Police Are Charging a Local News Outlet $2.5M for Records About One Cop

本文为原文前 6,000 字符的节选翻译，完整内容请查看原文。

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

劳伦·哈珀（Lauren Harper）是新闻自由基金会首位丹尼尔·埃尔斯伯格政府机密主席。

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

想要了解一名曾殴打他人面部的警察的更多信息，需要付出多少代价？

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

如果你猜的金额低于250万美元，那你就错了——至少俄勒冈州尤金市是这么认为的。

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.

今年8月，当地新闻媒体“双面媒体”（Double Sided Media）提交了一份公共记录请求，要求获取有关警官贾斯汀·佩克尔斯（Justin Peckels）的记录，重点关注其2018年至2026年间可能存在的违规行为。佩克尔斯曾多次遭到社区投诉，包括在交通拦截期间殴打居民面部，因此这些记录对于监督至关重要，公开这些信息显然符合公共利益。

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.)

该市的回应令人难以置信。尤金警察局在周一回复该请求时声称，搜索记录和处理请求将至少需要44,816小时的工作时间，费用约为2,484,599.04美元。（该媒体针对前警官埃里克·克林科（Eric Klinko）的类似记录提出了另一项请求，收到的估价相对“温和”，为195,869.52美元，两项请求的总费用接近270万美元。）

“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.”

该部门公共记录部门的信中写道：“一旦市政府收到2,484,599.04美元的付款，工作人员将继续处理您的请求。如果处理您请求的实际成本超过了您已支付给市政府的金额，您将需要在市政府提供您所请求的记录之前补足差额。”

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.

佩克尔斯的档案要么是世界上最大的，要么是市政府官员故意以某种方式维护其数据库，以确保履行公共记录请求的成本高得令人望而却步。市政府的回应至少指向了后者。尽管该请求具有针对性，但市政府仍辩称无法缩小需要搜索记录的保管人范围，并坚持必须搜索所有过去和现在的城市雇员的所有记录，以此为数百万美元的标价辩护。

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.

按照这种逻辑，如果有人曾在尤金的公园和娱乐部门工作过，他们的记录中就可能包含有关警察不当行为的响应信息，因此必须逐一手动提取和审查。

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.

这远非无能所能解释。这是一种蓄意的努力，旨在人为地增加回复的篇幅并提高成本，从而恐吓记者彻底放弃请求。

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.

通常情况下，机构被要求搜索最有可能拥有相关记录的特定保管人，而不是搜索城市工资单上的每一位园丁或职员。如果市政府是出于善意，官员们本应请求“双面媒体”帮助他们确定最可能的记录持有者，而不是自作主张地将全市范围的搜查作为第一步。

What makes Eugene’s money-grab particularly galling is its technology double standard. While it apparently can’t invest in efficient search software, the police department recently signed a two-year $342,000 contract for nearly 60 AI-powered Flock automated license plate readers. This project was so secretive that the ACLU of Oregon had to sue the city for records about how the cameras were being used and demonstrates, among other inclinations, the city’s eagerness to employ sophisticated software to deploy against residents.

尤金市这种敛财行为之所以特别令人愤怒，是因为其在技术上采取了双重标准。虽然该市显然无法投资于高效的搜索软件，但警察局最近却签署了一份为期两年、价值34.2万美元的合同，购买了近60台人工智能驱动的Flock自动车牌识别器。该项目极其保密，以至于俄勒冈州美国公民自由联盟（ACLU）不得不就摄像头的用途起诉该市，这表明了该市热衷于利用尖端软件来针对居民。

Yet that technological sophistication disappears as soon as a journalist requests public records about the department’s internal accountability process, and simple keyword searches are suddenly cumbersome.

然而，一旦有记者要求获取有关该部门内部问责程序的公共记录，这种技术上的先进性就消失了，简单的关键词搜索也突然变得繁琐起来。

For small newsrooms, a $2.5 million invoice is effectively a gag order that was never actually about covering costs, but bullying the requester to drop their inquiry.

对于小型新闻编辑室来说，250万美元的账单实际上是一道禁言令，其目的根本不是为了支付成本，而是为了欺凌请求者，迫使其放弃调查。

Troublingly, Eugene’s $2.5 million bill is not an anomaly.

令人不安的是，尤金市的250万美元账单并非个例。

In 2015, the Department of Defense told a Freedom of Information Act requester, who was asking for records on tools used to preserve data on seized devices, that fulfilling their request would take 15 million hours and cost $660 million.

2015年，美国国防部曾告诉一名《信息自由法》请求者（该请求者要求获取有关用于保存被扣押设备数据的工具的记录），处理其请求将需要1500万小时，耗资6.6亿美元。

The same year, the Drug Enforcement Administration told a requester it would cost $1.46 million for records about the DEA’s role in the search and capture of the Mexican cartel boss Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

同年，美国缉毒局（DEA）告诉一名请求者，获取有关DEA在搜捕墨西哥贩毒集团头目华金·“矮子”·古兹曼（Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman）中所扮演角色的记录，需要花费146万美元。

In 2019, the Army tried to charge $300,000 to release military base water test results for the presence of toxic chemicals. The Army agreed to waive the exorbitant fee after facing intense backlash.

2019年，陆军曾试图收取30万美元的费用，才肯公布军事基地水质检测中是否存在有毒化学物质的结果。在面临强烈抵制后，陆军同意免除这笔高昂的费用。

The list goes on and on.

这样的例子不胜枚举。

Luckily, records requesters seeking federal documents have a defense against these capricious invoices. Recent FOIA amendments aim to ensure if an agency misses its response deadlines, it can’t charge most fees.

幸运的是，寻求联邦文件的记录请求者有办法抵御这些反复无常的账单。《信息自由法》近期的修正案旨在确保如果机构错过了回复期限，就不能收取大部分费用。

At the local level, however, these protections disintegrate. While Oregon grants agencies the discretion to reduce fees when the disclosure would benefit the public, agencies routinely ignore these provisions.

然而，在地方层面，这些保护措施却土崩瓦解。虽然俄勒冈州允许机构在披露信息有利于公众时酌情减免费用，但各机构通常会无视这些规定。

For small newsrooms like Double Sided Media, a $2.5 million invoice is effectively a gag order that was never actually about covering costs, but bullying the requester to drop their inquiry (all while Eugene Police Department launches its own “press” initiative to document its policing). It also sets the precedent for using this chilling tactic on any journalist or watchdog as it sees fit.

对于像“双面媒体”这样的小型新闻编辑室来说，250万美元的账单实际上是一道禁言令，其目的根本不是为了支付成本，而是为了欺凌请求者，迫使其放弃调查（与此同时，尤金警察局却发起了自己的“新闻”倡议来记录其警务工作）。这也为该市随意对任何记者或监督者使用这种寒蝉效应策略开了先例。

Double Sided Media is rightly appealing the fee estimate, and it should prevail. But cities like Eugene will continue these efforts unless lawmakers across the country force agencies to adopt fee caps, mandate public-interest fee waivers for journalists, and require agencies to procure software that allows them to respond to records requests in an efficient.

“双面媒体”正在对这一费用估算提出上诉，这是正确的，他们理应胜诉。但除非全国各地的立法者强制要求各机构设定费用上限、强制为记者提供公共利益费用减免，并要求各机构采购能够高效响应记录请求的软件，否则像尤金这样的城市将继续采取此类手段。