March 04, 2005
Long Wait For FOIA Response On JTTF Begins
Also, A Note On Non-Responsiveness From City Attorney's Office
Early last month, we submitted a FOIA request to the FBI, seeking information regarding the activities of Portland Police Bureau officers assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Under the law, the FBI has twenty business days to send out an initial response.
Of course, that initial response only needs to acknowledge receipt of the request, not actually provide the material requests. Nonetheless, in a letter to us dated March 1, the FBI has acknowledged receipt of our request, and assigned it a FOIA number. The letter does not, however, indicate whether or not our request for a fee waiver will be granted.
It has been indicated to us by others that FOIA requests to the FBI have been taking an extraordinarily long time, so it's more or less a given that we will not receive any material related to our request before City Council gets around to taking up the matter of the JTTF.
Speaking of which, we should also mention that thus far we have had no luck in getting the City Attorney's office to respond to our inquiries about the training it provides to Portland officers assigned to the JTTF regarding certain provisions of Oregon law. While we would of course deeply love to be able to continue to report aspects of the JTTF story that are previously unreported, we take the moment specificly to urge other media outlets in town to ask the City Attorney's office for information about that training.
We'd like to get a response ourselves, and report on it ourselves, but if they're going to keep dodging our messages about it, perhaps it's time some other outlet (one which might actually get them to respond) took up this part of the story.