A six-month fight for a police report (Column)

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Claire Rood poses with a copy of the police report of her own sexual assault case, which took her six months to receive from the Portland Police Bureau. (Courtesy of Claire Rood)

On the one-year anniversary of her sexual assault, Claire Rood needed a "me day." She took the day off work, went to a tanning salon and binge-watched "Girls."

She also needed closure, so she decided to request a copy of her now-completed police report.

It would take six months, an ombudsman and the order of the district attorney's office before Rood would ever see it.

On July 23, 2014, Rood reported a sexual assault to Portland Police. Two months later she decided not to press the case, writing to the detective that she stood by her claims but didn't feel supported or believed.

No charges were filed.

By reading the police report, Rood hoped to understand "what it was that made my allegations so preposterous to police," she wrote on her blog. "I wanted to lay the whole investigation out in front of me, highlighting certain questions and phrases that defined my re-victimization, so I could work past them in therapy."

She printed an online public records request form and mailed it, along with a $10 check, to the Portland Police Bureau. Three weeks later, her check had been cashed but she had no report. She called the records division, which told her public records requests had at least a three-month backlog due to staffing shortages and the integration of a new records management system.

She checked back in October and November. Still nothing.

Then, on Dec. 15, her request was denied. The city cited Oregon Revised Statute 192.502.4, which allows agencies to exempt records from disclosure if "information contained in the record has been submitted to the public body in confidence."

The reason, the detective told her, was that a witness in the case didn't want their statement released. She asked if that witness's statement could be redacted. The detective said no.

Rood wasn't finished. She contacted the ombudsman's office, which assists the public with complaints about city agencies. Deputy Ombudsman Tony Green agreed Rood had a valid argument.

"First off, the exemption that was being asserted, it didn't seem likely to me that it could be sustained," Green said. "It seemed difficult to conduct an investigation while promising people confidentiality, particularly if they were ever going to be witnesses in a trial."

And secondly, it was Rood's own report.

"A person who has reported being the victim of a sexual assault shouldn't have to go through all this just to get a record of the investigation," Green said.

Green contacted the police bureau and Rood drafted a letter of appeal to the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office.

At the district attorney's urging, on Jan. 26, the city finally released her police report along with audio recordings made by the detective.

"I understood the thought process a little," Rood said after reading the report. "It helped me understand the structure of investigations and how information was perceived by the detective in the case."

That was the end of Rood's ordeal, but it had me wondering: Has anything changed at the Police Bureau?

Though Rood shared a copy of her report with me, I requested it myself.

And I, too, was denied with the same exemption the city tried -- and failed -- to claim with Rood.

Portland Police Spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson acknowledged that my denial "shouldn't have happened." He also is aware that the wait for records is too long and said the bureau is hiring more staff to process requests faster.

The bigger issue may be with the bureau's culture of disclosure and understanding of public records law.

Officers have an understandable desire to protect victims and witnesses from unwanted exposure, but they can't do that by refusing to release entire police reports.

The district attorney's office has determined that some things - such as medical information, graphic details of rape and, sometimes, the name of a sexual assault victim - may be redacted from police reports. But I found no district attorney orders in which entire police reports of closed cases were allowed to be exempt from disclosure.

Particularly not from the victim.

Attorney Jacqueline Swanson, who specializes in advocating for survivors of sexual abuse, said victims are routinely denied access to their own police reports from law enforcement agencies across the state.

"Just in the past year alone, I can't even count the number of women who have gone through the exactly the same thing (Rood) went through," Swanson said. "They are denied it or they are told no or they don't get any response at all, and the vast majority of the time they don't fight it."

California requires law enforcement agencies to provide a free copy of the incident report to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, stalking, human trafficking or elder abuse upon request. Swanson has reached out to at least one state legislator seeking to get a similar law passed in Oregon.

I had hoped to clear up the confusion of Oregon's notoriously vague records laws and get a definitive answer on what can be released from these reports. The short answer, though, seems to be "it depends."

When it comes to media access, sometimes you can argue privacy rights outweigh the public's right to know. Other times, a high-profile case deserves more public scrutiny.

But I can say with some authority that all victims are entitled to a copy of their full police report. So few sexual assault cases are ever prosecuted, and no one has more of a right to understand how each case was investigated than the victim.

-- Samantha Swindler

@editorswindler / 503-294-4031

sswindler@oregonian.com

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