Ryan Patterson
ryan.patterson@journaltimes.com
A former Raymond School parent has filed a lawsuit requesting that the Racine County Sheriff’s Office release documents and video footage related to an RCSO investigation of a December 2022 Raymond School Board retreat.
The lawsuit, filed Nov. 7 in Racine County Circuit Court by Mitchell Berman, alleges that RCSO withheld important documents and illegally delayed releasing videos.
On Nov. 11, Judge David Paulson issued an order commanding RCSO to release the records or appear at a Dec. 23 hearing explain ing why it has not made the records public.
In an email, Lt. Michael Luell, RCSO’s public information officer, said the sheriff’s office plans to comply with the records request and not go to court in December.
The video footage was recently made public, and RCSO is working to release the documents soon, according to Luell.
Background
Berman is a former Raymond School parent who sent his children to a different district this school year because of numerous issues with the Raymond School Board, staff departures and financial challenges.
Berman sued the Raymond School Board in April, claiming that the School Board violated state open meetings laws by not properly providing notice about the December 2022 retreat, not holding it in open session and not properly providing notice about the subject matter of the meeting.
The allegations in the open meeting lawsuit, which remains open, are similar to an open meeting law complaint Berman filed in September 2023 against the Raymond School Board.
In October 2023, RCSO closed its investigation and did not recommend charges regarding that complaint.
As part of the ongoing open meeting lawsuit, Berman’s attorney Tom Kamenick, president and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Project, made a request to RCSO on behalf of Berman on June 24 for records related to its 2023 investigation, “including written documents and video recordings of witness interviews,” according to a news release.
Berman made a similar records request to RCSO on Oct. 31, 2023.
The open records lawsuit was filed earlier this month because RCSO had not released the records more than four months after Kamenick requested them.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Justice public records law compliance guide, “10 working days is a reasonable time for an authority to respond to a simple request for a limited number of easily identifiable records.”
Kamenick argued that Berman’s request for “recordings of all interviews with witnesses” was a simple request for a limited number of easily identifiable records.
Email exchanges
On July 2, Ryan Geary, RCSO support services coordinator, emailed Kamenick saying the sheriff’s office had received his request and hoped to have it “completed as early as next week.”
After a July email asking when the records would be released, Kamenick emailed RCSO on Aug. 12 calling the delay “unacceptable” and asking for the records “immediately.”
Geary emailed Kamenick on Aug. 15 with an update “to ensure we are doing what we can to process and complete it in as timely of a manner as we are able.”
Geary said RCSO was reviewing 129 minutes of body camera footage in seven videos and 122 pages of documents.
RCSO released the documents Sept. 25 in an email to Kamenick, and an RCSO records clerk wrote that “the body camera footage is being processed with an expected completion by the end of next week.”
Kamenick emailed RCSO twice in October asking for the footage.
According to Luell, the RCSO records department attempted to email Kamenick on Oct. 24 with a link to the requested video footage, but there was a typo in the email address so the message was not sent.
Kamenick said RCSO sent him a link to the videos Monday.
In an email to The Journal Times, Berman said typing “the wrong email address doesn’t excuse a nearly one-year delay for me and months-long delay for (Kamenick’s) request.”
Missing records
According to a news release, when Berman reviewed the documents released Sept. 25, he “realized that important records were missing, including communications between the sheriff’s office and lawyers for the Raymond School District.”
Luell said the RCSO records department initially did not interpret Berman’s request to include all emails.
RCSO is now searching for 12 key phrases in all emails, mainly the names of the people involved in the RCSO investigation of the Raymond School Board.
According to Luell, RCSO will release emails with those phrases once they have been redacted.
If the emails are made public before the Dec. 23 hearing, that hearing will be canceled or “converted into a routine status conference,” according to Kamenick.
If there is a hearing next month and if RCSO is found to have unlawfully withheld records, it has to produce the requested records. It could also have to pay for Berman’s attorney fees; damages of at least $100; punitive damages; and other relief a judge deems appropriate.
If RCSO is found to have unlawfully delayed the release of records, Berman could receive punitive dam- ages.
