Why We’re Suing Ponca City
Patrick Hansen was arrested on July 27, 2022 by Ponca City police. About six weeks later he was dead in his cell at the Kay County jail. He was 39.
Oklahoma Watch would like to know what happened, and whether Hansen’s death could have been avoided. The circumstances of his arrest could help answer those questions, but Ponca City police won’t provide the information, even though state law says it must be made available for public inspection.
“Openness in government is essential to the functioning of a democracy,” the Oklahoma Supreme Court wrote in 2011. “In order to verify accountability, the public must have access to government files. Such access permits checks against the arbitrary exercise of official power and secrecy in the political process. It gives private citizens the ability to monitor the manner in which public officers discharge their public duties and ensures that such actions are carried on in an honest, efficient, faithful, and competent manner.”
The Open Records Act requires law enforcement agencies to make available for public inspection and copying, among other things, an arrestee description, including the name, date of birth, address, race, sex, physical description, and occupation of the arrestee; facts concerning the arrest, including the cause of arrest and the name of the arresting officer; a chronological list of all incidents, including initial offense report information showing the offense, date, time, general location, officer, and a brief summary of what occurred.
The brief summary of what occurred tells the public what happened. It provides information about the nature of the call and how police responded. It’s the part of the incident report that reveals whether an arrestee was intoxicated, combative, experiencing an apparent mental health crisis, and other circumstances, and it tells the public how the officers responded to the situation.
That information is critical for law enforcement as well as the public and it’s why the law specifically mentions that police body cam footage is a public record. The narrative, like the video, let the public see that their police department is serving and protecting the public in an appropriate fashion. If they’re doing their jobs the right way, police can answer allegations of misbehavior with the click of a play button. If an officer is misbehaving, that can be demonstrated too.
Either way, the public knows what happened.
When reporter Whitney Bryen requested the record of Hansen’s arrest, the city refused to provide what’s commonly known as the narrative. The city contends that the narrative is not brief and therefore not subject to the Open Records Act because it is not, as specified in the statute, “a brief summary of what occurred.”
Read her story on the Oklahoma Watch website.
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“If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects.”
— U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis
Ciao for now,
Ted Streuli
Executive Director, Oklahoma Watch
