The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office needs an additional 30 days before responding to PGN’s request for a key document in the Nizah Morris case.
In a July 3 letter, the agency said the additional time is necessary due to staff limitations and “the nature of the request.”
The paper is seeking a computer-assisted dispatch record relating to the Morris case.
Morris was a transgender woman who became a homicide victim shortly after she entered a police vehicle for a courtesy ride in 2002. The case remains unsolved, and her advocates want a state probe.
The record sought by PGN could help explain why Morris — who was severely inebriated — wasn’t taken to a hospital for about an hour after the first 911 call. The record could also explain why officers didn’t document the ride nor that Morris was found shortly after the ride, unconscious and bleeding from the head.
Computerized-dispatch records are in the public domain, and the city’s policy is to provide them upon request.
If the D.A.’s Office doesn’t have the record, PGN is asking the agency to verify that fact under penalty of perjury.
In May, the D.A.’s Office verified under penalty of perjury that it doesn’t have an incomplete dispatch record in the case, other than one provided by PGN.
In 2007, PGN received that incomplete record from the city’s Police Advisory Commission, which was investigating the Morris incident at the time.
The PAC was unable to trace the source of the record’s alteration.
Six years later, the PAC issued a report that recommends state and federal reviews of the Morris case.
During the course of its Morris probe, the PAC received numerous documents from the D.A.’s Office. But the PAC didn’t seek verification under penalty of perjury that the D.A.’s Office provided all Morris documents in its possession, other than internal staff memos.
Thus, it remains possible the D.A.’s Office has additional Morris records that weren’t accessible to the PAC — including the dispatch record requested by PGN.
This week, Babette Josephs, a former state legislator, renewed her called for prompt transparency in the Morris case.
“Why does the D.A. need 30 more days to respond?” she posed. “The PAC requested this information years and years ago. In my opinion, it’s just another delaying tactic.”
Josephs also questioned why the PAC received partial and/or altered evidence.
“How can a civilian-oversight committee do its job if it’s getting doctored evidence?” she continued. “We need to get to the bottom of all this questionable evidence. If we don’t, what hope is there for preventing similar chicanery in the future? It’s past time to let the sunshine in.”
In recent court filings, the D.A.’s Office stated that PGN seeks a dispatch “report,” rather than a dispatch “record.” But the paper never described the requested record as a “report.”
In doing so, the agency may be distancing itself from a 2013 determination by the state Office of Open Records that it doesn’t have dispatch “records” requested by PGN.