Mar 24, 2017 3 min read

California Borough failed to persuade a Washington County judge it should be allowed to withhold a video said to show a 2013 attack on a shackled suspect by a police officer.

President Judge Katherine B. Emery said in a nine-page opinion and order filed Wednesday that California officials must comply with a previous order by the state Office of Open Records and turn over surveillance footage of a holding cell taken at the time of the attack.

The borough claimed in its appeal of the office’s decision the video should remain secret because it met criteria for exemption from the state open-records law. Among its contentions was that the release of the footage could threaten public safety – a position Emery called “mere conjecture.” For the video to meet that exception, officials must show its release of a record “would be ‘reasonably likely’ to jeopardize public safety, not that it could,” Emery said.

“The borough’s position is further undermined by the fact that the borough allowed television news reporters to have access to and film inside of the holding cell, which later aired on live TV,” Emery added.

In a request under the Right-To-Know Law, attorney Andrew Rothey had requested video “of all interaction between Adam Logan,” a former client who’d been arrested in a purse-snatching incident, and then-officer Todd Shultz in the cell Nov. 9, 2013, “particularly the physical altercation between Mr. Logan and Officer Shultz.”

Borough police said Shultz grabbed Logan, who was handcuffed and shackled to a bench, and “slammed him to the bench and the floor.” Shultz was later fired and pleaded guilty to a charge of simple assault.

The borough also contended in its appeal that the video should be exempt from disclosure because it related to a criminal investigation, but Emery disagreed.

“The video does not chronicle the collection of evidence, witness interviews or any type of investigative information that took place as part of a criminal investigation as required for the exception to apply,” she wrote.

She similarly found the video didn’t meet provisions of the Right-To-Know Law that shroud records whose release would harm an individual’s personal security and the physical security of a building and records related to non-criminal investigations.

She also disagreed with the borough on a jurisdictional issue it raised and an attempt to withhold the video under the state law governing the handling of information on individuals’ criminal history.

Rothey said last year Logan did not intend to file a civil action against the borough in connection with the assault.