Dear Public Records Officer:
Pursuant to the Pennsylvania Right to Know Law, we request raw data — in a machinereadable database or spreadsheet format such as SQL, CSV, XML, JSON, Excel, or
Access files — on Pittsburgh Police Bureau (“PPB”) officer rank, squad, assignment dates,
demographics and salary.
The time period of the data should cover the earliest date available in the City of
Pittsburgh (“The City”)/ PPB’s databases through the date on which this request is
fulfilled.
The data should include all uniformed and civilian employees of PPB.
The data should include all disclosable fields, including but not limited to fields
containing the following types of information:
⁃
⁃
⁃
⁃
⁃
⁃
⁃
⁃
⁃
⁃
⁃

Officer First, Middle and Last Name
Officer Shield Number / Employee ID / Unique System ID
Officer Rank
Officer Branch/ Squad/ Division
Officer Start Date/ Appointment Date
Rank/ Squad Assignment Date (See Note)
Status (i.e. Active, Retired, etc.)
Officer Gender
Officer Race/ Ethnicity
Officer Salary, Overtime and Other Compensation
We are also requesting any data dictionaries, code tables, or other types of manuals
that define, in plain English, the meaning of the column headers in the data, and any
codes, acronyms, abbreviations or other shorthand terms used for entries in the
data.

Note: The data should include all rank and squad assignments for the officer during the
time period covered by the data. For example, if John Doe was a patrol officer in 2005, then
became a detective in Major Crimes in March 2010, then became a detective in Narcotics/
Vice in April 2016, the data should reflect each assignment and the time period of the
assignment.
We are asking for an export of raw data, to the extent maintained in the City’s databases.
We do not expect the City to manually input or alter any information into the data for the
purposes of fulfilling this request.
Location of the Data:

 We are not familiar with The City/ PPB’s databases that contain staffing information.
However, PPB’s annual reports generally contain a table with aggregate breakdowns of
“Distribution of Personnel by Rank and Unit of Assignment.” The reports cite the following
as the data sources for the tables: “Police seniority roster, transfer lists and list of recent
retirements and [Year] Operating Budget Acting positions counted against their original unit
of assignment.”
Redactions:
Section 706 of the RTKL stipulates that if a record contains both exempt and non-exempt
information, the non-exempt information must still be provided:
If an agency determines that a public record, legislative record or financial record
contains information which is subject to access as well as information which is not
subject to access ... [t]he agency may not deny access to the record if the
information which is not subject to access is able to be redacted.
Because we are requesting data, each distinct type of information is separated into its own
field (i.e. column), making it easy to redact exempt information en masse.
Entitlement to Records as Data:
We are entitled to data exports under Section 102 of RTK: “Information, regardless of
physical form or characteristics, that documents a transaction or activity of an agency and
that is created, received or retained pursuant to law” and “includes... information stored or
maintained electronically.”
Further, the courts have consistently ruled that providing information from an agency
database does not constitute the creation of a record. In Commonwealth v. Cole (Pa.
Commw. Ct. 2012), the court ruled: “D]rawing information from a database does not
constitute creating a record under the Right-to-Know Law ... To hold otherwise would
encourage an agency to avoid disclosing public records by putting information into
electronic databases.” The information “must simply be provided to requestors in the same
format that it would be available to agency personnel.”
We request these records in a machine-readable database or spreadsheet format —
such as SQL, CSV, XML, JSON, Excel, or Access files — and not printed out, or converted
to PDF files, or otherwise processed in a manner that would decrease the quality, quantity,
or accessibility of the original information the records represent.
We realize the information may be contained in multiple tables. We are not asking The City/

 PPB to join tables together for us, or to conduct any type of analysis on the data. We are
merely asking for the department to export the raw data, as it exists in the department's
database, which should minimize the amount of programming necessary to fulfill our
request.

We can do the joining on our own, so long as each table contains the unique identifiers
and primary keys necessary to join the tables together, and so long as we are provided the
necessary documentation to ensure that we are accurately joining and analyzing the data.

We are comfortable working with very large databases in many standard data formats.
Upon request, we would be happy to provide a USB thumbdrive or external hard drive to
facilitate the release of these records.

Other Fro

 

ns:

Since this information is being sought for journalistic purposes, we request that any fees be
waived because disclosure of the responsive records is squarely in the public interest, and
will make a significant contribution to the public's understanding of critical issues related to
gun violence. However, if you do assess a fee, in general, RTKL permits fees to cover the

costs of duplication and postage costs,

The Flight to Know Act requires a response within five days. If you expect it to take longer
than five business days to fill our request, please explain the reason in writing,

If you deny any portion of this request, please cite the specific statute that you feel justifies
each exemption,

We request that communication regarding this request be conducted via email, and that the
request be filled via email if possible, as we are entitled to under the law,

Thank you for considering our request, Sincerely,

Sarah Ryley
Investigative Reporter The Trace

Jeremy Singer-Vine
Data Editor BuzzFeed News