A police officer stands in front of protesters in Baltimore. (photo: Michigan Chronicle)
The
Shady Reason Baltimore PD Says It Can't Release Records on Aircraft Used to Spy
on Protesters
By Kevin Rector, The
Baltimore Sun
31 December 16
Baltimore
officials said they cannot provide the emails of a top police commander who
oversaw a controversial aerial surveillance program this year because his email
account was not configured properly and the records were not retained as
required by state law and city policy.
The
lapse is now under review, the officials said.
Marcos
Zarragoitia, former chief of the Police Department's Homeland Security
Division, resigned this fall after the city's agreement with contractor
Persistent Surveillance Systems became public. Zarragoitia oversaw the program.
Under
the agreement, PSS — a private Ohio-based company — flew a small Cessna
airplane high above the city over several months, collecting more than 300
hours of surveillance of more than 32 square miles of the city at a time.
The
pilot program was not initially disclosed to the public, then-Mayor Stephanie
Rawlings-Blake, the City Council, other elected officials, prosecutors or
public defenders — many of whom criticized the department for its lack of
transparency.
Police
are now reviewing the program, and considering whether to make it permanent.
Zarragoitia
was hired on Sept. 10, 2015, and resigned Sept. 28 of this year. Officials have
declined to discuss the circumstances surrounding his resignation. He could not
be reached for comment.
After
the surveillance program was revealed at the end of August, The Baltimore Sun
filed a Public Information Act request for any emails mentioning it that were
sent to or from several top police officials, including Zarragoitia.
Brent
D. Schubert, assistant solicitor in the Police Department's legal affairs
division, provided about 16 pages of emails. They revealed little about the
program.
He
withheld emails from Legal Affairs Chief Glenn Marrow and "substantive
documents and communications" relating to several incidents in the city: a
Feb. 23 nonfatal shooting, a June 25 nonfatal shooting, a July 11 nonfatal
shooting, a July 11 homicide, and a July 19 homicide.
Schubert
said the response did not include any emails from Zarragoitia because Andrew
Jaffee, the department's IT director, "could not access" those
emails.
Asked
for clarification, Schubert said there was "a technical problem" that
the Mayor's Office of Information Technology was "working with the vendor
to resolve."
The
Sun then put a series of additional questions to the Police Department and the
office of Mayor Catherine E. Pugh regarding the nature and scope of the
problem.
A
spokesman for Pugh said the problem was limited to Zarragoitia.
"Upon
accessing the system and searching the archive, it was determined that
archiving for the specific individual requested [was] not configured in the
archive manager," spokesman Anthony McCarthy said.
Because
they were not archived, he said, they are "unable to be retrieved."
McCarthy
and police spokesman T.J. Smith said the city and the Police Department will be
revisiting why Zarragoitia's email account was not configured to retain emails
in accordance with the requirements.
"We
are very interested in drilling down to figure out exactly where this process
went wrong," McCarthy said. "We will rely on our Law Department to
assess the situation and advise the mayor on where we can close any loops in
this regard."
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
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