WAAY 31 Weekend Anchor Rob Sneed is digging deeper Monday night into repeated rejections for public records from the city of Decatur.
We first told you back in December that WAAY 31 put in multiple Freedom of Information Act requests for public information about the Perkins case, and all of them have been denied.
Rejection from city officials is now typical. It's abundantly clear the city's legal team will not comply with our legal requests for public information.
The mayor avoided WAAY 31 cameras when faced with tough questions. WAAY 31 has lost count of how often Mayor Tab Bowling has done that since Steve Perkins' death.
WAAY 31 wanted to know how important transparency is to the mayor and why WAAY 31 got yet another FOIA rejection from the Decatur legal department Monday.
On Thursday, WAAY 31 put in multiple FOIA requests -- one of them requests a copy of a surveillance video of the day someone vandalized the Steve Perkins Memorial on Dec. 24, 2023. We also requested multiple emails from Decatur law enforcement employees, including Decatur Police Chief Todd Pinion from Sept. 29, 2023 through Jan. 8, 2024.
On Monday, the legal team sent WAAY 31 the following email:
"The information requests filed for video will not be filled because we will not produce anything that could compromise our security systems and capabilities.
"The information request filed for emails will not be filled as we have been unable to locate an email with all those parties included. If you can be more specific about what you are looking for, we will try to find it."
WAAY 31 has received this response multiple times, so we filed them individually this time. That didn't make a difference. All government employee emails are public records. WAAY 31 News acts on the public's behalf. We only want to know what the mayor and chief had to say through their work emails about the Perkins case and what they received. That is all public record.
WAAY 31 also texted Bowling directly, asking for an interview, and he declined.
WAAY 31 has all of Monday night's text messages with the mayor and the emails from the Decatur legal team in this article.
We will not stop putting in those public information requests.
