In the letter below, Johns takes Wagstaffe and Chief Investigator John Warren to the woodshed and for good measure.
This e-mail is a quite entertaining read:
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Dear Mr. Warren
I am in receipt of your refusal to produce a copy of your investigative report pertaining to my criminal complaint on the part of certain elected and appointed officials in Atherton.
You have cited California Government Code Section 6254(f) and Williams v. Superior Court (1993) 5 Cal.4th 337 California Supreme Court as the authority for doing so.
I have read the citations you have provided me with. If I am not mistaken the exemptions you cite do not provide your office with absolute or all encompassing exemption from disclosure. Instead said exemption is limited to information such as the analysis in support of conclusions rendered by the investigating officer.
The following text from the Supreme Court's opinion you cited would appear to be on point:
From Page 17 of accessible via the following link: Web Link
Agencies must make additional disclosures to interested persons, who include "the victims of an incident, or an authorized representative thereof, an insurance carrier against which a claim has been or might be made, and any person suffering bodily injury or property damage or loss, as the result of the incident ...." (§ 6254, subd. (f), 1st par.)
These additional required disclosures include "the names and addresses of persons involved in, or witnesses other than confidential informants to, the incident, the description of any property involved, the date, time, and location of the incident, all diagrams, statements of the parties involved in the incident, [and] the statements of all witnesses, other than confidential informants ...."And
And from Page 20 (FN 12) of the same link cited above:
We do not interpret the CPRA as giving the custodian of law enforcement records unreviewable power to decide whether subdivision (f) requires the disclosure of particular items of information from such records. While section 6259 expressly mentions only the court's power to "order the public official to make the record public" (§ 6254, subd. (b), italics added), that greater power necessarily includes the lesser. Otherwise, the statutory right of access to information from law enforcement records would be meaningless.
I will therefore rephrase my public records request as follows:
As an interested party, to the criminal complaint I followed, including but not limited to economic damages I have sustained as a result of the illegal actions of certain elected and appointed officials and their efforts to conceal said actions, I request that you provide all information that is subject to disclosure pursuant as it pertains to the investigation purportedly conducted by your office
Mr. Warren, let me be blunt. I do not believe Mr. Grosshauser has been honest when he stated in his letter, that he "thoroughly" investigated my allegations.
Mr. Warren, let me be even more blunt. I believe that Mr. Grosshauser telling a great big fat lie.
Mr. Warren, let me be even more blunt, if Mr. Grosshauser reported in the form of hours worked on his timesheet that he was as "thorough" as he says he was in his letter to me, then I would respectfully submit that there is a very real possibility that a crime has occurred right under your nose, that being a violation of California PC 424 (theft of public resources).
Call it suspicion or professional skepticism on the part of a veteran auditor. For all I know Mr. Grosshauser was sleeping under a tree somewhere on a pleasant autumn afternoon when he told you he was tracking down leads on my case.
For all I know, it is entirely possible that Mr. Grosshauser falsified his timesheet when and if he reported spending time investigating my criminal complaint.
For all I know it is possible that Mr. Grosshauser may very well be doing what I was accused of doing, that being running a consulting business on the side and working on his outside business on County time and with County property.
I am not accusing Mr. Grosshauser of being a criminal mind you. However I would like to learn more about how Mr. Grosshauser spends his time. The list of those involved is long and distinguished and the allegations much more serious than the theft of an iPhone (even the latest and greatest iPhone Apple Computer has to offer). Hence I would have expected Mr. Grosshauser to have devoted considerable time to this case if this case was taken seriously by your office.
For the reasons stated above, please consider this to be an amended form of my earlier public records request, or an entirely new one, whichever you prefer.
Pursuant to the California Public Records act, please provide me with copies of the following documentation regarding my criminal complaint to your office:
The names and addresses of persons involved in, or witnesses other than confidential informants to, the incident,
The description of any property involved, the date, time, and location of the incident,
All diagrams, statements of the parties involved in the incident, [and] the statements of all witnesses, other than confidential informants.
I would also ask that you provide me with copies of any timesheets submitted by Mr. Ivan Grosshauser or management reports which indicate the dates, times and hours worked while conducting his criminal investigation in response to my complaint.
I would also ask that for those dates and times which Mr. Grosshauser worked on my criminal complaint, that copies of his cell phone bill for the months in question be provided as well.
Please respond to this request within 10 days.
Thank you very much.
John P. Johns, CPA
