The Culver City Council voted 4-1 on Monday to authorize the destruction of certain records retained by the police department.

In the maintaining thousands of records, storage space has become limited in recent years. According to a city staff report, many of the documents that are kept become “obsolete and useless” after five years.

The request to destroy is part of an ongoing records management program facilitated by the department. Only those records which have gone beyond their statutory period — ranging from two to ten years, depending on the item — will be purged.

Among the records to be destroyed: arrest and booking logs; bail receipts,; bicycle license applications and related reports; call cards; computer data; concealed weapon applications and related documents; copies of receipts; complaints made by citizens and internal sources; crime reports; field interview cards; logs; jail register; miscellaneous office correspondence; marijuana citations; money transmittals; monthly statistical reports; non-criminal miscellaneous reports such as dog bites and injuries; non-injury traffic collision reports; officers’ daily logs; recovered vehicle reports; repossession and private impounded vehicle reports; retired personnel records; sex and narcotics registrant records; supervisor logs; traffic citations; and index cards, photos and data entered into the department’s computer.

Excluded from the process are crime reports which include homicide, sex assault, arson, theft of public funds and other crimes on which the statutory retention period exceeds five years. Also to be maintained are all items related to pending criminal or civil litigation, investigation or disciplinary processes.
Most records, said Lt. Edward Baughan, records manager with the Culver City Police Department, “are not relevant after five years and are inadmissible — so there would be no reason to keep them beyond the statutory period.”

Complaints, he added, are protected and require court orders before they can be used legally, therefore “I cannot think of a time when you would need to go back or be allowed to go back over five years in violation of the statute without a court order.”

Some, however, felt the records may be needed in the future, especially as they relate to traffic and bicycle controls.

“I just think that police records are important unless they are already in a database where there are demographics, where there are numbers,” said one resident who spoke to the council. “There is information here that would help us know if we are successful with traffic, with bicycles. …There is all types of information that historically people would be interested in, and I hate to see them get shredded.”

Councilman Gary Silbiger was most concerned about the destruction of complaints from citizens and city employees, as well as concealed weapons applications and other related documents.

“Complaints involving any city employee could be important to us, especially as long as the employee works for the city,” he said. “But it’s a good management tool to know individuals who have been complained about and to see if there’s any need for any type of training or other types of actions. … Once they are destroyed we have no knowledge of that. I don’t see why we can’t put them in some sort of small CD or record keeping process, so in case it’s needed in the future, if there are any problems in the future with an employee, at least we have a history of what happened.”

Silbiger, who cast the lone dissenting vote, could not convince his colleagues to remove some of the records from the destruction list and place them in alternative storage.

“I’m not interested in cherry picking this,” said Councilman Micheal O’Leary. “If it comes to our attention that some items have been destroyed in the past that we would have needed for our benefit … I would like to look at this again. But I cannot think of any and staff cannot. I am very comfortable with it.”

At an estimated cost of $2,000, the process will be handled by an outside contractor who will come into the department and shred the materials once they have been gathered. A certificate of secure destruction will then be issued to the city attorney and filed in the city clerk’s office.