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Fort Worth Weekly
By Edward Brown
iStock
This past summer, as protests against police violence erupted across the country, local grassroots groups took a multifaceted approach to creating transparency within city politics and the Fort Worth police department. Petitions were signed that demanded participatory budgeting from Fort Worth leaders, police budgets were dissected like never before, and, in August, members of No Sleep Until Justice DFW, a police reform-minded group, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
The request, said the grassroots group’s leader, Thomas Moore, sought incident reports and documented infractions committed by active Fort Worth police officers. The Fort Worth Secretary’s Office responded with a bill for $1,731 to cover the labor of compiling the information, which prompted a successful fundraising effort. Blue Lives Matter supporters soon heard of the request and made their opinions known via the Facebook group The Blue Wave