A state agency has fined the New Haven Police Department $1,250 for having shown “a clear disregard” for the public’s open-records rights — by taking nearly three years to provide body-camera footage in response to a FOIA request. The Elicker administration plans to appeal that ruling th is week, stating that it does not intend to change how it processes future records requests. The Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) handed down that decision and fine on Feb. 25. The FOIC enforces the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which grants citizen access to the records and meetings of public agencies in Connecticut. The decision stems from a FOIA request filed in July 2023 by Deserie Brown. Brown, a New Havener, regularly submits FOIA requests on behalf of people who have had run-ins with the police. In this case, she had asked the NHPD’s records division — which is headed by Lt. David Portela — for 911 calls, Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) reports, and body-camera footage for three different incidents, including for a woman who was in a custody fight with her children’s father. Brown subsequently filed a complaint with the FOIC in December 2023 when she hadn’t received the requested body-camera footage. “I’m fighting for people who don’t know who to contact, where to contact, or what to do, you know,” said Brown in a phone interview with the Independent. “So I feel like I’m the voice of the people.” The FOIC’s Feb. 25 ruling states that the city, the police department, and ex-Police Chief Karl Jacobson had “shown a clear disregard for the orders of this Commission and the rights afforded to the public under the FOI Act” over the course of this case. That, the commission reasoned, justified a civil penalty of a fine of $1,250. “Prompt Access To Public Records” Denied While Brown filed her initial FOIA request in July, she didn’t receive confirmation that her request had been received until September. There is typically a queue ahead of a FOIA request. At a May 2024 hearing before the FOIC, the presiding hearing officer said that the city and NHPD failed to demonstrate how factors that make body-camera footage generally hard to process — like the volume of requests and the nature of the incident — had impacted the processing time of Brown’s request. The hearing officer also ordered the city and the NHPD to submit an affidavit in October 2024, detailing why the body-camera footage was delayed. No affidavit was submitted. In November 2024, the FOIC ruled that the city and NHPD had violated the “promptness provisions” of the FOIA. The commission then ordered that all body-camera footage, as requested, be released to Brown for free within seven days. The NHPD could only redact what is mandatorily exempt from disclosure under the FOIA, like the identity of minors or victims of sexual or domestic abuse, and not permissive exemptions. When Brown opened the body-camera footage that was sent to her in December 2024, she found a completely redacted blank audio file with no sound or video. “I couldn’t see or hear anything,” she said. So Brown filed another complaint with the FOIC in February 2025, with the appeal that the city and NHPD hadn’t followed the orders of the FOIC to release un-redacted body-camera footage. The respondents testified that they had misinterpreted the order as allowing for redactions based on permissive exceptions. They became aware of the misinterpretation in April 2025. In a memorandum submitted to the FOIC on Feb. 18 of this year, just before the commission handed down its final decision but after it had released a proposed decision, city Asst. Corporation Counsel Joseph Merly defended the NHPD’s redactions. “During the preparation of the videos for release, it was discovered that the incident remained an open and active domestic violence investigation involving gunfire,” Merly wrote. “Because of this, substantial redactions were applied to the videos and Ms. Brown was notified that the matter was an open and active investigation, which was the basis for the redactions.” After learning of the misinterpretation and discussing permissive versus mandatory redactions with an FOIC ombudsman, Merly said that NHPD Records Division Supervisor Lt. David Portela ordered the footage to be re-redacted with only mandatory exemptions. That footage was sent to Brown on Aug. 1, 2025. Brown confirmed that she had received the updated footage in August. The fact of the open and ongoing investigation, Merly said, “is crucial to a proper and complete understanding as to why these redactions were made and are indicative of the Respondents’ good faith efforts to comply with the Commission’s orders.” “All of Respondents’ actions were a good faith effort to comply with the orders of the Commission and were not in any way designed to ignore such orders or Respondents’responsibilities to comply with Ms. Brown’s requests,” Merly wrote at the conclusion of the memorandum. “Any of the improper behavior ascribed to Respondents in the Proposed Final Decision was inadvertent or the result of misunderstanding and/or improperly characterized. As such, the Commission should reject the Proposed Final Decision and elect not to impose a fine in this matter.” Still, in the end, the FOIC did hand down a final decision ruling that the city and NHPD failed to comply with the commission’s first order and that imposing a fine was justified. The commission found that the city’s and the police department’s “disregard” of the commission’s orders and the public’s rights “constitutes a denial of the right to prompt access to public records, without reasonable grounds.” The commission ruled that the $1,250 fine must be paid within 30 days of the final decision. The maximum fine the commission can impose is $5,000, according to FOIC Director of Education Communications Russell Blair. “It is not common,” Blair said, for the commission to issue fines. Blair said that the commission has issued “about a dozen” civil penalties over the past two years. City Attorney: Appeal En Route City Deputy Corporation Counsel Roderick Williams told the Independent that no fine has yet been paid, as the city is appealing the decision this week to the state Superior Court. The FOIC has received 19 total complaints regarding the NHPD since Jan. 1, 2025, according to Blair. Asked whether the February decision would affect how the city processes FOIA requests moving forward, Williams said it wouldn’t. “The City will continue to respond to FOI requests in accordance with the law. Ms. Brown, who regularly makes FOI requests to the City, received a confirmation from the City for receipt of her request. Under law, the City then has time to work on processing the request,” Williams wrote in an email to the Independent. “The City receives hundreds of these requests each year and processes them in due course. We disagree with the FOI Commission’s assessment as to the timeline for the City’s response and do not intend to change our process.” In Hartford, meanwhile, state legislators have proposed bills related to the FOI Act, and possible revisions to the open-records law. One of those bills includes a study of how long state agencies take to answer requests for public records, according to the New Haven Register. 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