Jim March
Member
This is something that's bothered me for a VERY long time. Thoughts welcome. The idea here is go "straight to the top" to Jerry Brown, California AG.
===
An Open Letter To California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown.
To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.
- Magna Carta, 1215AD
Dear Sir,
I write this as an activist who has given up a fight for justice in California, based on the slight possibility that you might personally be interested in correcting a statewide pattern of injustice.
I will follow this letter with a request for public records. The purpose of the letter preceding that request is to show you why it is important and why it is necessary to expose that material to public review.
As I'm sure you're aware, permits for access to concealed weapons are issued in California on a “discretionary” basis. Police Chiefs and Sheriffs have personal control over who has access to personal self defense.
For literally generations there have been allegations of favoritism, cronyism and occasionally corruption in the process. In more recent years concerns have focused on racial and gender bias.
You are personally aware of how this can happen. In Oakland, a series of police chiefs were opposed to legalized self defense and gave out few if any permits. Yet when a person closely tied to you approached the Oakland chief for a permit, Jacques Barzaghi became the sole permitholder in the city and remained so during a period when Chief Word told other applicants that Word was unlikely to ever issue another...and during a time period when the city was paying settlement money to people who claimed to be sexual harassment victims of Barzaghi.
Now how did this happen? Did Jacques Barzaghi bribe the chief? Did you? I find that unlikely. I think it more likely the chief simply figured that he should treat “your buddy” differently than others.
Sir, even looked at in this mildest possible light, this was a violation of equal protection. Worse, it was a statement to every Oakland resident that “some are more equal than others”.
I'm writing to you in the hope that you can see this, no matter what you think of guns and self defense.
I also hope that you can see how this pattern might be repeated statewide among more than 350 police and sheriff's agencies.
The California Supreme Court recognized this possibility in 1986, in the case of CBS v. Block:
The interest of society in ensuring accountability is particularly strong where the discretion invested in a government official is unfettered, and only a select few are granted the special privilege. Moreover, the degree of subjectivity involved in exercising the discretion cries out for public scrutiny. For example, the sheriff of Orange County has issued over 400 licenses; in Los Angeles County only 35 licenses have been issued. Ostensibly, both sheriffs are applying the same statutory criteria for granting or denying these licenses. The apparent discrepancy indicates that something may be amiss. If the information on which the decision to grant can be kept from the public and the press, then there is no method by which the people can ever ascertain whether the law is being fairly and impartially applied.
The court opened the records to public scrutiny on this basis, including exact reasons why the permit was issue (the “good cause” portion of the application).
In the years since, people at the California AG's office under your predecessors have taken three actions to help conceal these records:
1)When the new statewide CCW application form was created, the chiefs and sheriffs involved in the advisory committee took the opportunity to pull a dirty trick. They rigged the form such that the “good cause for issuance” was put into the form in an area marked “police investigator's notes” and supposedly written in by a sworn peace officer taking dictation from the applicant. Why use a working cop as a low level clerk? Because that way, the section could be marked “police investigator's notes” and excluded from public review under that exception to the public records act.
2)In 2002 I realized that procedures at the AG's office caused all of these documents to be archived at the state DOJ. I went after them in public records. The AG's office pursued and obtained legislation allowing the DOJ to throw out these records as a “waste of space” before I could finalize litigation to obtain them – the biggest loss was the denial data and the detailed “good cause” records on file at DOJ. This was AB1044 in 2003.
3)The other major attempt by the AG's office under Lockyer to keep these records from public review involved the DOJ's interpretation of Penal Codes 11105 and 11106. In short, 11105 sets up a system for the transmission of data from Cal-DOJ to law enforcement; in it's initial form it distributes confidential criminal data and marks that data as “not public”. As 11105 is amended more and more “stuff” gets added to the electronic distribution channel. In 11106, more records are added to that channel of communication, some of which are clearly public record including the CCW permit data (“copies of licenses to carry firearms issued pursuant to Section 12050”) and other data that isn't (and shouldn't be) public such as gun ownership records. (If it's not clear yet, the difference is that gun carry permits are handled on a discretionary, subjective process subject to abuse if kept hidden – see also CBS v. Block.)
The idea that Penal Code 11106 magically transmutes public records to private simply due to one possible transmission method is simple madness. There are several nasty results:
Local agencies that don't cough up records or give incomplete records (deleting obvious cronies) won't be caught out because the DOJ won't release their copies.
Any activist trying to total up the corruption, campaign contributor links, racial disparity (esp. by Latino/Asian/etc. surname) and gender bias has to chase 350+ agencies who use a variety of tricks to hinder observation. These tricks (personally applied to me) include intimidation (investigating me for “investigating them”), stalling, or the ever popular “bury them in paper at a buck a page” stunt. Los Gatos PD once responded to a records request on this topic with about 300+ pages – everything in the office with the word “gun” on it – all the more remarkable because they had never issued a single permit.
In short, chasing data on this subject among all of the local agencies constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” for somebody guilty of no crime at all other than the “thought crime” of viewing self defense as a basic civil right.
The records request that follows is brief. It asks for data that is easy for your staff to prepare (less than 1 hour of tech time and a blank CD) and is still on file in your office after the 2003 purge via AB1044. The data that's left can still be used to examine local corruption/cronyism issues and do statistical analysis on gender/racial discrimination.
I expect you'll have DOJ staff prepare a response. I do urge you to either review that response yourself or have someone whose ethics you trust do so. Ask if whatever the response is makes sense – does it fall within both the meaning and spirit of the California Supreme Court in CBS v. Block? Or is it yet more stonewalling?
The years of fighting this mess took it's toll. I'm now mainly chasing bigger fish regarding electronic voting issues and election integrity, and have moved out of the state and into one that respects my civil rights. But...I've heard enough about you to suspect you might take an interest in seeing justice done even for people commonly dismissed from California's spectrum of political thought.
Thank you for reading this far. A one-page Public Records Request follows.
Jim March
---
Public Records Request – responding agency: Office of the California Attorney General.
This request is for a subset of the California DOJ's database, exported into a common data transfer format such as CSV (Comma Separated Values) or an Excel spreadsheet.
The records in question concern the issuance of Carry Concealed Weapons (CCW) permits pursuant to Penal Code 12050-54. The records are electronic copies of the data found on the front face of each CCW permit. I am reliably informed that such an “export” into a file readable in Microsoft Excel or equivalent (OpenOffice?) is completely practical. There are somewhere between 35,000 and 45,000 permits or a bit more issued, well within the data handling capabilities of a spreadsheet. The redactions on a column-by-column basis are easiest in a spreadsheet.
You will need to redact some fields which are sensitive in nature. The records I do want:
Name of applicant
Date of application of permit
Date of issuance of permit
Date of expiration of permit
Issuing agency
Occupation
City of residence
What I DO NOT WANT:
Any records of permits issued under Penal Code 12027, which is basically a separate permit process for those involved in law enforcement. Again: I would be most displeased to find this data mixed up in what I'm asking for and it would indicate poor data management on your part if it is.
Any home or work addresses of permit applicants or permitholders.
Any phone numbers of permit applicants or permitholders.
Any driver's license or social security numbers of permit applicants or permitholders.
Please respond to this request by Email, at: [email protected] – it is likely the redacted spreadsheet will be small enough for Email transmission convenient to both of us.
Jim March
===
An Open Letter To California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown.
To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.
- Magna Carta, 1215AD
Dear Sir,
I write this as an activist who has given up a fight for justice in California, based on the slight possibility that you might personally be interested in correcting a statewide pattern of injustice.
I will follow this letter with a request for public records. The purpose of the letter preceding that request is to show you why it is important and why it is necessary to expose that material to public review.
As I'm sure you're aware, permits for access to concealed weapons are issued in California on a “discretionary” basis. Police Chiefs and Sheriffs have personal control over who has access to personal self defense.
For literally generations there have been allegations of favoritism, cronyism and occasionally corruption in the process. In more recent years concerns have focused on racial and gender bias.
You are personally aware of how this can happen. In Oakland, a series of police chiefs were opposed to legalized self defense and gave out few if any permits. Yet when a person closely tied to you approached the Oakland chief for a permit, Jacques Barzaghi became the sole permitholder in the city and remained so during a period when Chief Word told other applicants that Word was unlikely to ever issue another...and during a time period when the city was paying settlement money to people who claimed to be sexual harassment victims of Barzaghi.
Now how did this happen? Did Jacques Barzaghi bribe the chief? Did you? I find that unlikely. I think it more likely the chief simply figured that he should treat “your buddy” differently than others.
Sir, even looked at in this mildest possible light, this was a violation of equal protection. Worse, it was a statement to every Oakland resident that “some are more equal than others”.
I'm writing to you in the hope that you can see this, no matter what you think of guns and self defense.
I also hope that you can see how this pattern might be repeated statewide among more than 350 police and sheriff's agencies.
The California Supreme Court recognized this possibility in 1986, in the case of CBS v. Block:
The interest of society in ensuring accountability is particularly strong where the discretion invested in a government official is unfettered, and only a select few are granted the special privilege. Moreover, the degree of subjectivity involved in exercising the discretion cries out for public scrutiny. For example, the sheriff of Orange County has issued over 400 licenses; in Los Angeles County only 35 licenses have been issued. Ostensibly, both sheriffs are applying the same statutory criteria for granting or denying these licenses. The apparent discrepancy indicates that something may be amiss. If the information on which the decision to grant can be kept from the public and the press, then there is no method by which the people can ever ascertain whether the law is being fairly and impartially applied.
The court opened the records to public scrutiny on this basis, including exact reasons why the permit was issue (the “good cause” portion of the application).
In the years since, people at the California AG's office under your predecessors have taken three actions to help conceal these records:
1)When the new statewide CCW application form was created, the chiefs and sheriffs involved in the advisory committee took the opportunity to pull a dirty trick. They rigged the form such that the “good cause for issuance” was put into the form in an area marked “police investigator's notes” and supposedly written in by a sworn peace officer taking dictation from the applicant. Why use a working cop as a low level clerk? Because that way, the section could be marked “police investigator's notes” and excluded from public review under that exception to the public records act.
2)In 2002 I realized that procedures at the AG's office caused all of these documents to be archived at the state DOJ. I went after them in public records. The AG's office pursued and obtained legislation allowing the DOJ to throw out these records as a “waste of space” before I could finalize litigation to obtain them – the biggest loss was the denial data and the detailed “good cause” records on file at DOJ. This was AB1044 in 2003.
3)The other major attempt by the AG's office under Lockyer to keep these records from public review involved the DOJ's interpretation of Penal Codes 11105 and 11106. In short, 11105 sets up a system for the transmission of data from Cal-DOJ to law enforcement; in it's initial form it distributes confidential criminal data and marks that data as “not public”. As 11105 is amended more and more “stuff” gets added to the electronic distribution channel. In 11106, more records are added to that channel of communication, some of which are clearly public record including the CCW permit data (“copies of licenses to carry firearms issued pursuant to Section 12050”) and other data that isn't (and shouldn't be) public such as gun ownership records. (If it's not clear yet, the difference is that gun carry permits are handled on a discretionary, subjective process subject to abuse if kept hidden – see also CBS v. Block.)
The idea that Penal Code 11106 magically transmutes public records to private simply due to one possible transmission method is simple madness. There are several nasty results:
Local agencies that don't cough up records or give incomplete records (deleting obvious cronies) won't be caught out because the DOJ won't release their copies.
Any activist trying to total up the corruption, campaign contributor links, racial disparity (esp. by Latino/Asian/etc. surname) and gender bias has to chase 350+ agencies who use a variety of tricks to hinder observation. These tricks (personally applied to me) include intimidation (investigating me for “investigating them”), stalling, or the ever popular “bury them in paper at a buck a page” stunt. Los Gatos PD once responded to a records request on this topic with about 300+ pages – everything in the office with the word “gun” on it – all the more remarkable because they had never issued a single permit.
In short, chasing data on this subject among all of the local agencies constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” for somebody guilty of no crime at all other than the “thought crime” of viewing self defense as a basic civil right.
The records request that follows is brief. It asks for data that is easy for your staff to prepare (less than 1 hour of tech time and a blank CD) and is still on file in your office after the 2003 purge via AB1044. The data that's left can still be used to examine local corruption/cronyism issues and do statistical analysis on gender/racial discrimination.
I expect you'll have DOJ staff prepare a response. I do urge you to either review that response yourself or have someone whose ethics you trust do so. Ask if whatever the response is makes sense – does it fall within both the meaning and spirit of the California Supreme Court in CBS v. Block? Or is it yet more stonewalling?
The years of fighting this mess took it's toll. I'm now mainly chasing bigger fish regarding electronic voting issues and election integrity, and have moved out of the state and into one that respects my civil rights. But...I've heard enough about you to suspect you might take an interest in seeing justice done even for people commonly dismissed from California's spectrum of political thought.
Thank you for reading this far. A one-page Public Records Request follows.
Jim March
---
Public Records Request – responding agency: Office of the California Attorney General.
This request is for a subset of the California DOJ's database, exported into a common data transfer format such as CSV (Comma Separated Values) or an Excel spreadsheet.
The records in question concern the issuance of Carry Concealed Weapons (CCW) permits pursuant to Penal Code 12050-54. The records are electronic copies of the data found on the front face of each CCW permit. I am reliably informed that such an “export” into a file readable in Microsoft Excel or equivalent (OpenOffice?) is completely practical. There are somewhere between 35,000 and 45,000 permits or a bit more issued, well within the data handling capabilities of a spreadsheet. The redactions on a column-by-column basis are easiest in a spreadsheet.
You will need to redact some fields which are sensitive in nature. The records I do want:
Name of applicant
Date of application of permit
Date of issuance of permit
Date of expiration of permit
Issuing agency
Occupation
City of residence
What I DO NOT WANT:
Any records of permits issued under Penal Code 12027, which is basically a separate permit process for those involved in law enforcement. Again: I would be most displeased to find this data mixed up in what I'm asking for and it would indicate poor data management on your part if it is.
Any home or work addresses of permit applicants or permitholders.
Any phone numbers of permit applicants or permitholders.
Any driver's license or social security numbers of permit applicants or permitholders.
Please respond to this request by Email, at: [email protected] – it is likely the redacted spreadsheet will be small enough for Email transmission convenient to both of us.
Jim March