The Courier & Press has spent 6 months trying to get arrest reports from EVSC police force

EVANSVILLE – More than six months after the Courier & Press requested two years of arrest reports from the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp.’s police department, the EVSC has failed to provide them.

A reporter delivered the request in person to the EVSC central office on April 11. The corporation fulfilled its legal duty to acknowledge the request within 24 hours, but the Courier & Press has heard little since.

Multiple messages seeking the status of the request weren’t returned over the summer. About a month ago, EVSC spokesman Jason Woebkenberg said he would “see what I can find out,” but a few days later he said “the person I was going to ask has been out.” That was 23 days ago as of Thursday.

Indiana law doesn’t require public entities to fulfill or deny a records request within a certain amount of time. But according to Public Access Counselor Luke Britt, they should respond within “a reasonable time.”

“What is reasonable may depend on factors such as how many records you requested, whether the records are old and stored off-site, and whether the records must be redacted to take out confidential information,” he’s written.

The Courier & Press sent Woebkenberg a message Thursday morning asking him to explain the hold up.

“The entire process of providing information pertaining to juvenile records requires thorough scrutiny by multiple departments, both internal and external, to ensure we are not violating any laws,” he said. “We understand this has been a lengthy process. Items without a definitive timeline are addressed as time allows.

“We plan to provide you with a response to your records request by next week.”

The EVSC Police Department

The EVSC Police Department is a separate law enforcement agency that oversees the security of all 39 schools in the corporation," its bare-bones website reads. As of last spring it had eight officers, not including Chief Tim Alford, Woebkenberg said.

The department was established in 2013.

"They are police officers just as much as anyone is a police officer, they just happen to work for the EVSC just like you may work for the state police, or Evansville Police Department or the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office," Woebkenberg told the Courier & Press in 2018.

EPD and the Vanderburgh County Sheriff's Office still respond to reports of crimes at schools, including a recent incident involving 18-year-olds who were arrested after reportedly bringing handguns onto the Academy of Innovative Studies campus on Oct. 3.

The teenagers were not students, EPD spokeswoman Sgt. Anna Gray said, and they never attempted to enter the school.

Receiving those kinds of details about any matter handled by the EVSC Police Department is difficult, if not impossible.

Except in limited circumstances, police arrest affidavits and incident reports are considered public record in Indiana. Any media outlet or member of the public can easily obtain affidavits written by EPD or the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office. All you have to do is go to the county clerk’s office with a case number in tow.

But EVSC Police Department records aren’t available there, and the corporation hasn’t set up a comparable system.

On March 6, the Courier & Press initially requested “all incident reports and arrest reports” written by the EVSC Police Department over the last two years, but a month later the school corporation denied the request without stipulating its legal reason for doing so. When asked for that information, they cited portions of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which protects the privacy of students’ education records.

The Courier & Press relayed that decision to Indiana Public Access Counselor Luke Britt, who took issue.

“My take is that EVSC would be the same as any other law enforcement agency when dealing with criminal concerns,” he said. “If it is a student disciplinary matter, that could stay in-house. But any arrest MUST be logged and disclosed, no exceptions.

“… Incident reports can be a little trickier; I’d be ok with some investigatory redactions. But a blanket ‘NO’ is a non-starter.”

The request was then tweaked to ask only for arrest reports.

The EVSC and transparency

All this comes as the EVSC finds itself in a different disagreement with Britt’s office over its decision to close Harwood Career Preparatory High School last spring without public discussion or a school board vote.

At the time, officials called it “staffing decision” − something Superintendent David Smith and other administrators could do unilaterally.

The EVSC initially argued it wasn’t closing the school, since students would have the chance to be sent to “Harwood Centers” within the traditional high schools. But they closed Harwood’s doors, removed the students, and changed its designation with the state from “school” to “program.”

The issue with Britt began on May 30, when the school board had a vote on the matter almost three months after the decision was announced. It came as one of 13 consent items that were voted on all at once, with no public discussion and without mentioning Harwood’s name.

“Consideration to Approve the Resolution Regarding the IDOE State School Number Change,” the meeting’s agenda read.

The whole thing took about three-and-a-half minutes. It would have been even shorter if trustee Melissa Moore’s technical difficulties while calling in remotely hadn’t slowed the board down.

That, as well as a subsequent mass consent item vote without discussion, led former school board member Ann Ennis to file a complaint with Britt’s office, which eventually ruled that EVSC violated the state's Open Door law.

The public access counselor notified school board president Chris Kiefer of the complaint via email, but never heard back.

“It was made out to, ‘Dear sir and madam,’ and, you know, I get thousands of emails,” Kiefer told the Courier & Press earlier this week.

Britt countered that he gets "hundreds of emails" as well, but that his office sends out 200-300 invitations to respond annually. They get answers on roughly 99% of those.

Pat Shoulders, an attorney for the EVSC, has denied the school corporation did anything wrong. He’s said the votes took place in a public meeting, and that board members were asked if they had any comments or questions.

The motion passed unanimously.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: EVSC still hasn't provided arrest reports by its school police force