Tag: City of Chico

Lawsuit alleges violations of public records laws

Writer sues City of Chico for access to documents on police killings
by Leslie Layton | Posted February 23, 2022

photo by Karen Waddell
Writer Dave Waddell shows blacked-out pages that were sent him as part of an autopsy report. His attorney alleges “excessive” redacting.

The City of Chico may have lost or destroyed public records related to police killings, and has stonewalled for more than a year in response to record requests, says a lawsuit filed Feb. 18 against the City.

A lawsuit filed by ChicoSol contributing writer Dave Waddell in Butte County Superior Court says the City is in violation of the California Public Records Act because of its continual “withholding of records” as well as its “excessive redactions” in those records that have been released.

“The City has made it clear, by missing its own self-imposed deadlines, again and again, that it will not comply with the law …,” states the lawsuit filed on behalf of Waddell by his San Francisco attorney, Aaron Field. read more

Sheriff’s office responsive, Chico PD obstructive

Two agencies, two different responses to our public records request
by Dave Waddell | Posted December 30, 2019

photo by Karen Laslo

Chico Police Chief Mike O’Brien

Last March, I spoke at a League of Women Voters of Butte County forum having to do with public access to law enforcement records.

That Sunshine Week forum, which included Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea and police reformers Emily Alma and Margaret Swick, gave me an opportunity to vent a bit about the most secretive public agency I’ve dealt with as a journalist: the city of Chico.

At the forum I said something that, if anything, is even truer today: Chico city government has no respect for the people’s right to know.

That’s been the case when liberals have controlled the City Council; it’s been true when conservatives had the majority. It was true before the city quit having an on-staff city attorney in 2014. But the secrecy has been taken to new dimensions since Chico began renting legal services from a law firm based near Los Angeles. The firm, Alvarez-Glasman & Colvin, is practiced at keeping what should be public information hidden from Chico’s citizens. One example I cited at the forum was the contrived City Hall secrecy around Chico police officers’ gun-buying — at public expense but for the private ownership of the officers — at a gun shop owned by two Chico cops. read more

County releases Micalizio documents

ChicoSol requests officers' records under SB 1421
by Leslie Layton | Posted October 1, 2019
Myra Micalizio (left) with her daughter, Hali McKelvie.

In July 2018, a Sacramento civil rights attorney noted just how much information had been withheld in the shooting by Butte County sheriff’s deputies three months earlier that had killed a Palermo woman.

Myra Micalizio, 56, died in April of that year during an encounter with a pair of deputies who together fired 13 rounds. Attorney Mark Merin, representing Micalizio’s family, issued a press release noting that Butte County had “refused to produce any interviews, investigation reports… statements of the officers, coroner’s report…”

Journalists and the public in general have been forced to rely on reports issued by Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey, who often, after a law-enforcement killing, acts swiftly to give an initial media statement and to issue preliminary findings that justify the actions of officers. And in the case of Micalizio, it wasn’t until Feb. 11 of this year – almost 10 months after she had been killed – that Ramsey ruled there had been no criminal wrongdoing by deputies Charles Lair and Mary Barker and provided the results in detail of his investigation. read more