Santa Rosa abandons prior position, agrees to release police records

Santa Rosa officials announced Tuesday they plan to release police records from 2018 and earlier, abandoning their prior position that they needed clarity from California courts before releasing them.

Officials said in a statement they will begin releasing records within a week, but did not identify what the records will contain.

A new police transparency law in the state provides for release of certain types of police disciplinary files and investigations into uses of force by officers. Police unions around the state have challenged the law that took effect Jan. 1, claiming it does not apply to records created before 2019, an argument that district and appeal courts in California have so far rejected.

Santa Rosa officials previously stated they were monitoring the state Supreme Court for a decision on whether the law applies to older records.

The Santa Rosa City Council’s unanimous decision to release the records followed its closed-door session Tuesday with the city’s top lawyers and Police Chief Hank Schreeder, where they discussed ramifications of the new law, known as Senate Bill 1421. The meeting came on the heels of a pledge by Sonoma County’s former law enforcement watchdog to file a lawsuit to force disclosure if city leaders continued to rebuff records requests.

Jerry Threet, a former San Francisco deputy city attorney who until February served as director of Sonoma County’s Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach, addressed the Santa Rosa City Council before Tuesday’s closed session with his client, Robert Edmonds, a local interior designer who regularly requests law enforcement records. The two promised to file the lawsuit if Santa Rosa continued to refuse to provide the records they sought under SB 1421.

“I don’t do this for money or personal gain, but because this information is clearly in the public interest and would never otherwise be made available,” said Edmonds, who also served as vice chairman of a task force formed after Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputy Erick Gelhaus shot and killed 13-year-old Andy Lopez in 2013.

The records relating to the investigation of Lopez’s shooting are among those the city is expected to release. The sheriff’s office already released 74 pages of records pertaining to the Lopez shooting, as well as other records from before Jan. 1.

Two weeks ago, city officials told a local activist group called Sonoma Citizens for Transparency in Government that they would turn over 800 pages of records on the Lopez case after the group threatened a lawsuit, but until Tuesday had maintained that other SB 1421 records were still off-limits.

Threet said the law on the matter was clear following a recent appeals court decision, and the California Supreme Court case the city was monitoring was not relevant to the issue of pre-2019 records. He said he and his client are no longer planning to file a lawsuit now that the city has agreed to turn over the records.

“I am very grateful that the council listened carefully today and decided to follow the law, rather than wait for a court order to turn over the records,” he said. “The decision is a victory for public transparency and good government.”

Mayor Tom Schwedhelm said he advocated for the release of the records during the closed session, and that his position had nothing to do with Threet’s public comments, but was based on the fact that the police department has nearly finished review and redaction of the first batch of records.

“The timing, it had a lot to do with that,” he said. “It wasn’t like the things were going to be released two weeks ago.”

City Attorney Sue Gallagher agreed the threat of a lawsuit at the meeting didn’t play a role in the decision to release the records.

“Those threats have been there since we first started talking about it, so that was not a significant change,” she said. “The change was we’re ready to produce some documents, so let’s look at the legal landscape.”

The Press Democrat is part of a coalition of California news organizations working to gather police records around the state and has requested records related to SB 1421 from Santa Rosa and every other major law enforcement agency in Sonoma County. Before Tuesday’s decision, Santa Rosa was alone in refusing to turn over the records in Sonoma County after an appellate court ruling last month ordered the release of records. Editor’s Note: Jerry Threet is a former San Francisco deputy city attorney who now lives in Sonoma County. A previous version of this article misidentified his residence.