Police commissioner: Media request for 2.6M files was ‘fishing expedition’

Presenter: The Eugene Police Commission asks why two public records requests cost $2.6 million. Oct. 8, Vice Chair John Bradley:

John Bradley (Eugene Police Commission): I received an email message related to an article in The Intercept about a request for information that I think Chief will also address tonight, and specific charges related to an information request about some alleged police misconduct. Some of the details are a little confusing to me. So, Chief, I appreciate any insight that you can give us on that.

Presenter: Commissioner Alan Lieman:

Alan Leiman (Eugene Police Commission): I guess my thing is the public records request because the math, if the numbers are—I’m not saying it’s accurate reporting or anything—but it’s like at $300 an hour or something like 3,000 hours of review, and something’s not computing. And I’ll be happy to hear what you have to say about it.

Presenter: During the chief’s report, Eugene Police Chief Chris Skinner:

Chris Skinner (Eugene, police chief): So, let me talk a little bit about the public information request.

You can help me validate this, but we receive and handle specific to police, is it easy to say thousands of these?

Dr. Klaree Boose: I think the last figure that I had dug up was like 9,900 a year.

Chris Skinner (Eugene, police chief): Public records requests—everything from just a single, very simple, copy of a police report, quick redaction and out it goes, all the way to a very, very complex public records request.

What I will say is the public records request in question is as complex as we’ve seen in our time here. And that’s mostly due to the scope of the request. So the request came in and asked for—and I’m going to keep it fairly high level—but it asked for eight years’ worth of information.

So the look back was all the way to 2018, number one. Number two, it had a variety of keywords, searches that wanted to be done to grab a public record that may have a keyword in it to include a variety of different names. And other types of things. And all communication—whether that’s email, communication—it’s all kind of communication.

We work really closely with our IT department. the keeper of so much of this, especially in email. They have all these emails are archived and they have that. And so they’re able to run a very robust search for us using the individual keywords that are being requested.

Because the vulnerability is if we don’t do that, then there’s penalties on the back end for not doing a good job of capturing a record that should have been released that we didn’t release.

And so we have an internal process here that finds records that we feel like are responsive. And what that spits out is a number of files, not necessarily emails, but a number of files where that piece of information, if as requested, shows up somewhere.

Number over the course of eight years with the broadness of the request yielded 2.6 million files to be able to look at. Now, the next thing that happens is each one of those files needs to be looked at to determine whether or not it’s releasable. 

First of all, because much of the request or some of the requests centered around, the alleged misconduct and discipline files, which much of which could be exempted under Oregon public records law as specific to public safety.

But we have to look at the file to be able to determine whether it meets the needs or not, or meets the releasable criteria or not, and if there’s anything that needs to be redacted.

And so what we have done, and we do this every time we get a request. So, this recent request was vetted the exact same way we vet all of our requests.

So we have 2.6 million files that need to be looked at. We assigned one minute per file to that, which some could make an argument that’s a little bit of a low estimate on how long it would take to determine if that file met the needs. So you have one minute times 2.6 (million), that came up to 44,000 hours worth of analysis to do.

You multiply that times $55 and some change per hour that we’re doing, and that, interestingly enough, came up with that big dollar figure that people were struggling with.

We recognize the massive number that the system was spitting out at us. And we reached out to the requester, gave them a heads up that it was going to be a big number, and asked them if they’d like to collaborate with us on how they could narrow their scope, change their scope, get them to yes on something to release that.

And they chose not to do that. They said, just give us the big number. And so we did give them the big number. And then the next thing we saw was the article being written as a result of that.

So, one of the options, if you don’t like the number that’s out there, and I’ll use the term ‘appeal,’ but the district attorney’s office basically determines whether or not it’s reasonable. And the district attorney’s office just came back this week and said, we’re upholding based on what we see and what you’ve given us as far as how we look, we’re upholding the decision around the number.

So, we continue to be open to fielding and entertaining public records requests that can be more narrowly focused. So we can get to yes on something. That doesn’t mean that the records are actually releasable because there is some Oregon statute that exempts many of these records from being releasable.

But we are remain open to collaborate with anybody that submits a public records request to be able to give them the information that we want. So that, in a nutshell, is the mechanics and the math that went into this.

You know, thousands of these things are happening a year. Many of them may only take a few minutes, to be able to do others, maybe take a little bit more. And some people choose to step away from their public records requests because it’s cost prohibitive. And that’s clearly the case. This would be cost prohibitive to do that.

To put it in context, 44,000 hours worth of work would mean I’d hire 21 FTE that would work on this for an entire year just to meet this public records request, which is not going to be feasible, as you can imagine. 

But we choose to use the same formula we use every time we’re evaluating these public records requests so it’s very consistent, regardless of who the requester is.

Presenter: He was asked if AI can help process the request at less cost. Chief Skinner:

Chris Skinner (Eugene, police chief): The city has a fairly stringent process by which AI is utilized, and it has to go through a software review process so, in the event that we find an AI product that can help us specifically with our public records, cases, because I’d love to take these 9,000 requests.

But the city still requires a human being to be involved in the process as quality control because AI isn’t perfect, and in this particular case, there’s some risk associated with either not putting something out or putting something out that shouldn’t be. And there’s some risk. 

And so there’s always going to be a human checks and balances. But I appreciate the sentiment around how we can streamline this.

Presenter: Commissioner Jack Radey:

Jack Radey (Eugene Police Commission): The Intercept is a national publication and I got mail from friends from other parts of the country and what’s going on in Eugene. And I answered them as well as I could. 

A couple of points, I think. One is I would recommend that the department make some response to The Intercept, just laying out the facts of the situation as you did.

The Intercept has put out some good stuff at times. At other times, I don’t know how well they check their authors, but I would suggest responding to it just because it’s gotten wide publicity.

The second thing is, I just want to express my own feelings that the article and similar things I have seen seem to equate someone with a telephone, a cell phone, and perhaps some editing software at home with a journalist and who are to have the same consideration they expect as the New York Times, the National Network.

Anything else—and who not being actual journalists because they don’t know much about journalism, just are, you know, covering, you know, getting a story, seeing something and reporting it—can issue a request for years of records with no idea of what it is they’re asking, although I think it is possible that it was intentionally asked to get a response that we know would not be acceptable, and then they could complain about that.

But it just bothers me that the department is being hit by what’s really, to me, a sleight of word trick where you’re denying the Fourth Estate their right to see what’s going on, whereas in fact, the journalist has themselves and a few friends who look at their posts and that’s the journalism.

And they don’t see why the department shouldn’t turn itself upside down for a year to find them everything it can on what is essentially, I mean, when you’re asking for eight years of all records as they did, that’s not a request for information. That’s a fishing expedition: ‘Give us everything and then let’s see if we can find some dirt in it.’

And that’s just, I guess that’s what you got to put up with, but it’s annoying.

Presenter: Chris Skinner:

Chris Skinner (Eugene, police chief): That’s part of our mission is to make sure that we respond to these.

One thing I will say is that, from a communications perspective, we try to take a posture to not constantly respond or post anything that’s just out there. But if there’s a request for comment from us that we would then respond.

And we’ve had one request for comment and our public information director, our new public information director, Chelsea Deffenbacher, who is a local Eugene person and worked in journalism for a number of years to include R-G (Register-Guard) and then in TV media provided a very comprehensive response to them.

So there is a little bit out there that we’ve responded to. And then of course, Council has been made aware of that response in the event that they get those questions from community members.

If The Intercept is happy to, if they would reach out to us and say, ‘Hey, do you have a response to our article?’ Then we would absolutely respond.

But many of these publications put this out and then don’t ask us for a response or don’t ask us any clarifying questions. And so we’re trying not to just chase down what we believe to be inaccurate stories. Every time we see it, we wait for them to ask us for response.

Presenter: Police Commissioner John Bradley:

John Bradley (Eugene Police Commission): So, Chief, it sounds like The Intercept or individuals at The Intercept did not reach out to the EPD for comment prior to publication.

Chris Skinner (Eugene, police chief): Well, to my knowledge, I mean, the original publication was by Double Sided Media. They put theirs out. But I’m guessing that The Intercept just took what Double Sided Media put out—who was the original requester of the public information. 

And they’re the ones we tried to engage with to try and narrow their scope. And that was not done. And then they issued their media release on this. And then I think The Intercept is the one that took it from that.

Presenter: Commissioner Jack Radey:

Jack Radey (Eugene Police Commission): First off, I would like to commend the new publicity director (or whatever the official title is for the department) who’s doing just some marvelous work, and having the Chief online singing.

I believe public singing should be encouraged. And I think that was a wonderful step. However. When it comes to posting a picture of the chief online with a curly mullet, I think we’ve reached kind of the limit.

The Commission is responsible for improving communications between the public and the department, and I think we really have to look into this (laughter).

Presenter: KEPW News looked into it, and sure enough, here are City Manager Jenny Haruyama and Police Chief Chris Skinner:

(Singing)

That video, and a podcast introducing EPD personnel, as the city considers whether to renew the community safety payroll tax. Chief Chris Skinner:

Chris Skinner (Eugene, police chief): We have a fairly significant work session on Oct. 14 coming up, where Council is going to hear a very robust reporting out from myself, Chief (Mike) Caven, who is the fire chief of Eugene Springfield Fire, as well as Judge (Greg) Gill, our municipal court judge, on some of the things that we’ve been funding with this community safety payroll tax dollars and some of the successes that we’ve seen.

And then a couple of cases, maybe some adjustments that we’ve made over the last several years where we thought we were going to make a meaningful difference, found out that that was not necessarily the right approach.

And we’re able to be nimble and adjust that. And that’s one of the values of the CSPT is that it’s kind of an evolving and ever-changing landscape in public safety in general: Homeless services. Prevention services. Our municipal court and to have the nimbleness to be able to readjust investments to meet changing needs and community needs is important.

One example I will give you just from my world is whether you’ve tracked this or not, is in the long sessions in ‘21 and ‘23, the Oregon Legislature passed 23 police reform measures that just changed the way we do business. And so we had to adjust to those things.

And Oregon can be proud because I think they lead the nation in a number of legislative measures that we’re trying to adjust policing in a positive direction.

But with that comes different case law, comes different practices, comes with policy adjustments. We’ve worked on some of that over the last several years.

So Oct. 14 is a big day. The council decision-making, my guess is, is in early 2027 around the CSPT and the stabilization of that fund. If nothing is done, then it’s scheduled to go to a vote in Nov. 2027. And so we’re pulling together communications and really good information for this community to understand the importance of that.

Presenter: Chair of the Police Commission, Emeilia Foulkes, praised the public awareness campaign. 

Emeilia Foulkes (Eugene Police Commission, chair): I have a question for you. (Okay.) ‘Copy Up.’ For those that aren’t aware, it is a podcast. It’s actually very entertaining on my long drives. I’ve gotten caught up. Are you going to be doing more Copy Up?

Chris Skinner (Eugene, police chief): Yeah. It’s funny, I’ve had several requests lately, to continue that. So by popular demand, maybe I will do that a little bit.

Emeilia Foulkes (Eugene Police Commission, chair): I want to just, yes, I support that. If nobody has listened to it or if you have, he talks with different officers or different individuals within the organization.

So not only do you get some insights from officers specifically or other PD staff, you get to kind of hear about them on a personal level and you get to just know more about the organization and some of the folks that work here. So it’s pretty fascinating. And then, I support that.

Chris Skinner (Eugene, police chief): Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Chelsea (Deffenbacher) and Michael (Rea) are doing a great job. You may have seen we did a coffee thing at Vero just recently, a ‘Spill The Beans’ with me.

We’re doing some real—I don’t know what it’s called, but they set up shop in my—close to my office—and they’re interviewing officers on a personal basis.

And so we’re doing these vignettes of officers in their lives and what got them into police work and those types of things. So they’re doing a great job of trying to continue to pull back the curtain and show not only our personality, but also the human side of the men and women—that we’re human.

Presenter: Eugene’s police chief responds to questions about a multimillion-dollar public records request, as the City Council prepares to discuss the future of the Community Safety Payroll Tax.

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Michael Rea, senior public information coordinator for the Eugene Police Department, offered this response to the Double Sided Media article Oct. 9, 2026:

Double Sided Media’s public records request was extremely vague and nonspecific in nature. While these estimates are astronomical, they have requested an astronomical amount of documents from us. They were made aware of this –first with a courtesy call, and then with a written response. But they insisted on moving forward, regardless of expense. 

They requested “All completed, internal affairs complaints, intake logs, investigative summaries, witness interviews, audio / video evidence logs, and disciplinary notices issued to or involving Justin Peckels where findings of misconduct were ‘sustained,’ covering the period from June 18, 2018, through July 30, 2026. This includes all independent summaries, case reviews, and closed investigation audits maintained by the Eugene Independent Police Auditor.”

They wanted every document that contained keywords including but not limited to “case,” “number,” “auditor,” and five different spellings of Peckels’ name. That also means that any time Peckels was included on an email distribution list, that it could potentially generate hundreds of emails for each individual on that list. 

That is an eight-year time period to search through the emails, folders, etc. for ALL employees, past and present. That’s more than 2.6 million files we would have had to locate, review and potentially redact for private or sensitive information. If you spent one minute per page, that’s 44,816 hours. The city’s standard research fee is $55.44 per hour.

And that’s just one of their requests. They also requested similar files related to Eric Klinko over a six-month window. 

Double Sided Media can always narrow their request to lower the expense. Our team tried to help them narrow their search to something more reasonable and bring down the cost. We also prepared them for a very large estimate if they moved forward with their vague wording. But even after receiving the totals over the phone for the millions of responsive documents, they remained certain that they wanted to move forward regardless of expense.