911 recordings from UPMC Memorial Hospital attack still under wraps (NC)

Read Full Article | View Source

The York Dispatch’s efforts to obtain audio recordings and transcripts of 911 calls made during the hostage crisis inside UPMC Memorial Hospital that left a police officer and the suspect dead have been blocked.

Many questions remain in the weeks following the Feb. 22 incident that left West York Police Officer Andrew Duarte and the suspect dead. Authorities haven’t released the names of other officers who were injured, the extent of their injuries and who fired the shots that fatally wounded Duarte. The fact that a sheriff’s deputy was also wounded wasn’t initially disclosed.

Previously, authorities had said that two other responding officers and three hospital workers were injured. A fourth UPMC staffer was injured in a fall, they said.

However, the Dispatch reported Monday that an unnamed York County Sheriff’s deputy also was among the injured. The two other wounded officers are from the Northern York County Regional and Springettsbury Township departments.

>>Please consider subscribing to support local journalism.

Pennsylvania State Police is the lead agency investigating the case that has shaken the community while also spurring an outpouring of support from around the country for Duarte and his family. Another investigation into UPMC by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is underway.

York County 911 holds the recordings of communications during the incident but is under no legal obligation to release it, based on Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law that dictates and defines what constitutes a public record.

But neither is the agency barred from releasing it.

The Dispatch has been covering the incident and its fallout as a matter of immense public interest and believes a recording of the call would give the public a greater understanding of the full scope of what officers faced in that moment. It already obtained fire and EMS calls from the incident.

In the county’s denial, county Solicitor Jonelle Eshbach cited the section of the law that states: “Records or parts of records, except time response logs, pertaining to audio recordings, telephone or radio transmissions received by emergency dispatch personnel, including 911 recordings” are exempt from access under the law.

Since time-response log information held by the 911 department have an exception, Eshbach wrote in her response that the county searched for and received the information and it was attached through a link. It was not.

The county’s paralegal, Aggie Puleo, responded to the Dispatch’s inquiry about the alleged attachment, writing that there should not have been a link to any record in the response. And since the Dispatch had not asked for the time-response logs, they were not provided, Puleo said.

The Dispatch submitted a new request for the logs and was notified that the county invoked its right to an additional 30 days to respond to it, “as the extent or nature of your request precludes a response within the required five-day time period.”

While agency records can be daunting to get from any level of government in Pennsylvania, agencies in other states release records like 911 call audio and police dash or body camera footage that appears on YouTube.

The county told the Dispatch in its initial response that further documents or information regarding the Feb. 22 incident at UPMC “may be available from the municipality where the incident occurred, and/or the responding police department.”

An official with West York Police Department, where fallen officer Andrew Duarte worked, advised the Dispatch to check with the county.

A similar effort was made with the Pennsylvania State Police through a separate process designated for law enforcement agencies’ audio and video recordings. Rather than a standard records request, the Dispatch went to the state police headquarters outside of Harrisburg and hand-delivered a request.

West Manchester Township, where the deadly incident at UPMC occurred, responded to the Dispatch by invoking the 30-day extension “to permit the police department to seek a legal review to determine whether the information sought is records subject to access under the Right to Know Law.”

Emergency response recordings, while readily available in other states, are seldom made public in Pennsylvania.

And while agencies may release them, it would likely require a court order to compel them to do so since the state’s Office of Open Records, which typically hears appeals for records requests, does not have that discretion, according to Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association.

To be thorough, the Dispatch submitted an appeal of the county’s decision to the state.

An effort by a news outlet, The Intercept, to get the 911 call recordings from the July 13 shooting of President Donald Trump in Butler County was a rare case from a Pennsylvania county that yielded records.

After the county denied the request and the open records office denied the appeal, the national outlet elevated it to Butler County Court of Common Pleas.

There, a Butler County judge ruled in October that due to the “unique, historical circumstances … which relate to the attempted assassination of a former president,” the court determined that the public interest in disclosure outweighed the interest in nondisclosure, citing a section of the RTKL seldom considered outside a courtroom when a 911 recording or its transcript is being sought.

— Reach Mark Walters at mwalters@yorkdispatch.com.