Richmond produced Flock contract records only after requests were reworded, The Richmonder reports

Richmond said it had no records. Then, after requests were reworded, it produced them — at least three times over nine months, according to The Richmonder, raising questions about the city’s effort to improve transparency.

One request focused on the city’s contract with license plate reader company Flock, which has faced privacy criticism across the commonwealth. Some localities have publicly supported using the cameras to help solve crimes.

The Richmonder said Chesterfield and Henrico sent copies of their contracts. Richmond Police said it found “no relevant documents,” and the city’s procurement office said the same, each directing The Richmonder to the other’s office.

“Why did the city say two departments doing two searches for the contract had turned up nothing?” The Richmonder wrote.

In a third attempt, the outlet changed its request from “Flock Safety Inc.” to the contractor’s name, “Insight Public Sector,” to search for the contract for nearly 100 cameras in the city.

The city also rejected two other requests. One involved the Richmond Flying Squirrels, which operates under the legal business name Navigators Baseball LP. Another sought a water-funding spreadsheet, but the city rejected it because the request contained a typo.

Mayor Danny Avula vowed to improve the city’s responsiveness. After multiple records requests for the Flock contract, he told The Richmonder that he believes employees made an honest effort to find it and that the procurement office’s search process wasn’t comprehensive enough.

“Our FOIA officers work really hard to identify responsive records the requester is asking for, and we definitely encourage FOIA officers to ask clarifying questions to help scope the request, but there are undoubtedly times where they just do a search for the words that were asked for,” Avula said.

The Richmonder said Avula’s administration didn’t directly answer who decided to say there was no Flock contract.

Source: Virginia Mercury

Richmond is an independent city in the Richmond region.