The Shady Reason Baltimore PD Says It Can't Release Records on Aircraft Used to Spy on Protesters

By Kevin Rector, The Baltimore Sun

31 December 16

altimore officials said they cannot provide the emails of a top police commander who oversaw a controversial aerial surveillance program this year because his email account was not configured properly and the records were not retained as required by state law and city policy.

The lapse is now under review, the officials said.

Marcos Zarragoitia, former chief of the Police Department's Homeland Security Division, resigned this fall after the city's agreement with contractor Persistent Surveillance Systems became public. Zarragoitia oversaw the program.

Under the agreement, PSS — a private Ohio-based company — flew a small Cessna airplane high above the city over several months, collecting more than 300 hours of surveillance of more than 32 square miles of the city at a time.

The pilot program was not initially disclosed to the public, then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the City Council, other elected officials, prosecutors or public defenders — many of whom criticized the department for its lack of transparency.

Police are now reviewing the program, and considering whether to make it permanent.

Zarragoitia was hired on Sept. 10, 2015, and resigned Sept. 28 of this year. Officials have declined to discuss the circumstances surrounding his resignation. He could not be reached for comment.

After the surveillance program was revealed at the end of August, The Baltimore Sun filed a Public Information Act request for any emails mentioning it that were sent to or from several top police officials, including Zarragoitia.

Brent D. Schubert, assistant solicitor in the Police Department's legal affairs division, provided about 16 pages of emails. They revealed little about the program.

He withheld emails from Legal Affairs Chief Glenn Marrow and "substantive documents and communications" relating to several incidents in the city: a Feb. 23 nonfatal shooting, a June 25 nonfatal shooting, a July 11 nonfatal shooting, a July 11 homicide, and a July 19 homicide.

Schubert said the response did not include any emails from Zarragoitia because Andrew Jaffee, the department's IT director, "could not access" those emails.

Asked for clarification, Schubert said there was "a technical problem" that the Mayor's Office of Information Technology was "working with the vendor to resolve."

The Sun then put a series of additional questions to the Police Department and the office of Mayor Catherine E. Pugh regarding the nature and scope of the problem.

A spokesman for Pugh said the problem was limited to Zarragoitia.

"Upon accessing the system and searching the archive, it was determined that archiving for the specific individual requested [was] not configured in the archive manager," spokesman Anthony McCarthy said.

Because they were not archived, he said, they are "unable to be retrieved."

McCarthy and police spokesman T.J. Smith said the city and the Police Department will be revisiting why Zarragoitia's email account was not configured to retain emails in accordance with the requirements.

"We are very interested in drilling down to figure out exactly where this process went wrong," McCarthy said. "We will rely on our Law Department to assess the situation and advise the mayor on where we can close any loops in this regard."