EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is an account of how the Charleston Gazette-Mail obtained the information that led to its two-part series examining misconduct within the West Virginia State Police, and how the department responds.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The West Virginia State Police declined a Freedom of Information Act request in 2010 from The Charleston Gazette to provide its EIS and IRB records. The newspaper filed a lawsuit, challenging this denial. In 2013, the state Supreme Court ruled that both the internal investigations, as well as EIS and IRB data, are public record and must be turned over.
After requests from this newspaper starting in July 2019, State Police produced EIS reports for the first time for calendar years 2018 and 2019, and claimed the department could not locate any earlier data.
By the end of September, State Police Maj. Joe White, who runs the agency’s Professional Standards section that oversees officers’ conduct, said he located the EIS reports for 2015 and 2016, which he provided, but not the 2017 reports.
The department’s records retention policy requires it store disciplinary records dating back four years.
White said the department changed its EIS reporting technology to a “real-time” system that tracks uses of force or complaints in any 90-day period, not a rigidly bookended calendar quarter. The new system, launched in 2018, is a more accurate and proactive measurement, but is not in compliance with state law. He attributed the year of missing data to the technological change.
State Police rejected requests from this newspaper during the summer of 2018 to provide copies of internal investigations into Trooper Nathan Stepp’s conduct, citing an ongoing criminal proceeding regarding one of the subjects. When those concluded in July 2019, the department declined, this time claiming the request was “too broad.”
The department eventually turned over the internal investigations, charging $20 a piece under a fee schedule used for citizens to obtain vehicle crash reports.
In this same period, State Police fought requests to produce its officers’ disciplinary histories in both civil and criminal court, often only agreeing to do so under the privacy of a protective order shielding the records from the public.
Even when State Police ultimately released its records, they contain a proviso on the bottom declaring them to be “internal affairs memorandum that is exempt from disclosure under the West Virginia Freedom of Information Act.”
