Hi Paul,
We covered an incident at the emergency homeless shelter here in Ithaca in which a shelter client was put in a chokehold by an employee. The non-profit the county has contracted to operate the shelter, St. John’s Community Services, submitted two reports on the incident: one to the county and one to the state. St. John’s will not release the reports to me directly, so I am working to request them.
The state OTDA has a specific form for such reports: https://otda.ny.gov/programs/housing/forms.asp
Since it’s very likely that they’ll reject or at least redact this records request, I was wondering if you had any previous cases I could cite to improve my chances of getting more complete responsive documents.
I am in contact with and working to get written permission from the shelter client who was involved in the incident, but don’t have that just yet.
St. John’s as a non-profit organization is most likely not subject to the Freedom of Information Law. If the report was submitted to the County or State, then any records they have are subject to FOIL.
Below is an opinion from the NY Committee on Open Government, which may be helpful if your request is denied.
https://docsopengovernment.dos.ny.gov/coog/ftext/13376.htm
Permission by the shelter client will certainly help.
