By Alethia Kasben
Gognwer News Service
The city of Sault Ste. Marie must release an unredacted use of force policy under the Freedom of Information Act, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled last week.
In the published case Hjerstedt v. City of Sault Ste. Marie (COA Docket No. 358803) a unanimous Court of Appeals panel ruled the staff manual exemption does not apply to a city's use of force policy.
A previous Court of Appeals panel already ruled that an unredacted policy must be disclosed under FOIA, but the Supreme Court considered the case and remanded it for further consideration.
Specifically, first the trial court and then the Court of Appeals, considered if a staff manual exemption applied to a police agency's use of force policy.
The trial court ruled the staff manual exemption applied, and the Court of Appeals reversed that decision last Thursday.
State law does allow public records of a law enforcement agency to be withheld if the documents would "reveal the contents of staff manuals provided for law enforcement officers or agents."
The Court of Appeals, however, ruled the term "'staff manual' was intended to be used synonymously with terms such as 'employee handbook' and be limited to tools provided to employees to outline terms of employment, internal employment-related procedures, and, at times, workplace policies."
In this case, the use of force policy was a general order, the court ruled.
"The city's use-of-force policy is contained in a stand-alone general order that does not fit within this definition and thus was not exempt from disclosure under subparagraph (s)(vi)," the ruling said.
The court did not rule on this issue. In a footnote, the ruling said it was unlikely the city would have been able to establish that "the public's interest in nondisclosure outweighed the public's interest in disclosure of the unredacted portions of the use of force policy."
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