A string of sexual assaults in Los Angeles shelters. A brutal murder in a motel transformed into emergency pandemic housing. Rats, roaches and garbage piling up in supposed safe havens.
What else is happening inside homeless shelters in California’s biggest city?
CalMatters filed a lawsuit last week to find out, after the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority repeatedly denied our attempts to inspect shelter incident reports under California’s Public Records Act. The law allows the public broad access to governmental records.
For eight months, CalMatters has sought to obtain the incident reports, which track major events at publicly funded shelters. Contractors hired to operate the facilities are supposed to use the reports to quickly document serious issues including deaths, contagious disease, suspected abuse and overdoses, according to the agency’s own website.
The agency has said that the reports fall under “attorney-client privilege” and are therefore exempt from the public records law. However, reports are typically created by contractors, not attorneys. CalMatters and its attorneys at Covington & Burling repeatedly asked for evidence that the reports are communicated to attorneys; the agency did not provide it.
To justify its claim, the agency cited a 1995 court ruling in City of Hemet v. Superior Court. The court ruled that police records could be kept secret to protect the privacy of police officers. LAHSA does not employ any police officers.
“Therefore, it is unclear how the authority can claim that these records are exempt to protect the privacy of police officers,” the lawsuit states. Additionally, the Hemet case “makes clear that exempting (that is, hiding) large categories of public documents which happened to become…
Read the full article here
