POLICE PERSONNEL RECORDS CAN BE REDACTED TO REMOVE PERSONAL IDENTIFYING INFORMATION (THIRD DEPT).

The Third Department, reversing Supreme Court, determined that the police personnel records sought in the FOIL request could be redacted to remove personal identifying information:

When this case was previously before this Court, we remitted the matter to Supreme Court for an in camera inspection of records related to the hiring of certain individuals for high-ranking positions within the police departments of the four respondent institutions that are operated by respondent State University of New York … . The matter was remitted with the directive that the court determine the extent to which the requested documents contain information exempt from disclosure and whether such information can be redacted while still protecting the personal privacy of those individuals … . On remittal, Supreme Court reviewed 1,344 pages of resumes, applications and related correspondence sent by applicants for the subject police department positions and, in May 2017, it maintained that redaction was not possible. * * *

While respondents argue that such extreme redaction renders the remaining information useless in determining whether the four respondent institutions complied with Retirement and Social Security Law § 211 in issuing waivers to the incumbents of the subject police department positions, petitioner need not demonstrate the information’s potential efficacy to obtain disclosure …  Further, as the identifying information falls squarely within a personal privacy Freedom of Information Law exemption, the court need not engage in a “balancing [of] the privacy interests at stake against the public interest in disclosure of the information” … , which would have required a review of the purpose of the request and the relevancy of the records. As such, we reject respondents’ notion that all substantive information is identifying, and, while we acknowledge that the task is arduous, the four respondent institutions must review the data once again, delete identifying information while leaving nonidentifying metrics intact and disclose the same. By way of guidance, much of the information concerning particular states, schools and police departments can be easily redacted, leaving the raw data, including positions held, education level, rank and other relevant experience. Matter of Police Benevolent Assn. of N.Y. State, Inc. v State of New York, 2018 NY Slip Op 07019, Third Dept 10-18-18

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LAW (FOIL) (POLICE PERSONNEL RECORDS CAN BE REDACTED TO REMOVE PERSONAL IDENTIFYING INFORMATION (THIRD DEPT))/RETIREMENT AND SOCIAL SECURITY LAW (FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LAW, POLICE PERSONNEL RECORDS CAN BE REDACTED TO REMOVE PERSONAL IDENTIFYING INFORMATION (THIRD DEPT))/POLICE PERSONNEL RECORDS (FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LAW, POLICE PERSONNEL RECORDS CAN BE REDACTED TO REMOVE PERSONAL IDENTIFYING INFORMATION (THIRD DEPT))/PERSONAL PRIVACY EXEMPTION (FREEDOM OF INFORMATION LAW, POLICE PERSONNEL RECORDS CAN BE REDACTED TO REMOVE PERSONAL IDENTIFYING INFORMATION (THIRD DEPT))