Jason deBruyn
Specifically,
Madan wrote, the law “would forbid the North Carolina Department of Public Safety” from revealing information from the collected forms.
U.S. DOJ cited that same statute
in its denial last week of a federal Freedom of Information Act request from the Watchdog Reporting Network for the same data.
And in an email this week, the Governor’s Crime Commission, the North Carolina agency responsible for collecting data under the federal law, again said it was prohibited from releasing its own version of the information – regardless of format.
“Information regarding deaths in custody of local law enforcement is not collected or maintained by GCC independently of the DCR-1A or BJA spreadsheets,” commission spokesperson Margaret Ekam said in an email. “Therefore, we do not have any public documents responsive to your request.”