Recent mass shootings have called attention to the work done by the Gun Violence Archive, which was formed “to provide free online public access to accurate information about gun-related violence in the United States.”  The organization maintains an up-to-date database of gun violence and gun crimes of all types, compiled from over 6,500 sources daily, including local and state police, media and government reports.  Our new blog highlights the important work done by the Gun Violence Archive.

Our blog this week discusses how the recent increase of ransomware attacks on municipal governments can impact public records researchers.

On rare occasions researchers can be called on to be “ghost” detectors - but you are not looking for traditional poltergeists or specters. Instead you are searching for “ghost” plaintiffs. In this blog, we discuss why a “ghost” plaintiff might be used and methods for detecting placeholder plaintiffs.

Our latest blog covers a unique and potentially useful Department of Education report, known as the Foreign Gift and Contract Report, which documents gifts and contracts to US universities from foreign sources.  Under the Higher Education Act of 1965, most US colleges are required to disclose contracts or gifts with foreign sources if these contracts or gifts exceed $250,000.

Liens are usually considered adverse, but can be filed for many different reasons, not all of which are adverse. In this blog, we go over the various types of liens that can be filed against research subjects, including tax liens, mechanic’s liens and homeowner’s association liens and special tax or assessment liens, which are not considered adverse.

Expanding on our May post outlining the process of civil grand juries in California, our latest blog details a recent report issued by a Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury. The Grand Jury initially launched an investigation of contracting procedures related to the football stadium built in Santa Clara, however after the city failed to respond to numerous public records requests, the Grand Jury shifted its focus to the city’s noncompliance with California Public Records Act (CPRA) law. The Grand Jury’s report includes helpful background on the CPRA and an agency’s duty to respond to requests, as well as a detailed account of all the records requested by the Grand Jury and how each request was handled. In this instance, the Grand Jury also exercised its right under California law to request that the City of Santa Clara respond to the report’s findings and recommendations.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón has become the first DA in California to post prosecution statistics on a publicly available website.  The DA Stat site hosts three dashboards - arrests presented, incoming caseload and trials - containing statistical information on both felony and misdemeanor matters presented to and acted on by Gascón’s office. Data on the DA Stat site goes back to 2011 and is updated monthly. 

The key to any analysis of public records is understanding the proper context of the records, which speak the language and impart the meaning contemporaneous with the time in which they were created. If the context under which the records were created is misunderstood, then the analysis can be misconfigured and lead to erroneous conclusions. In this blog, we discuss how the controversy surrounding major errors discovered in author Naomi Wolf latest book, “Outrages” Sex, Censorship and the Criminalization of Love,” provides a cautionary tale of misunderstood language leading to a misconfigured context. The lesson for researchers:  be very careful about your understanding of terms and always remember that the understanding is contemporary to the usage, not to the present time.

The Arsolen Archives, International Center on Nazi Persecution recently uploaded more than 13 million documents to a new online archive.  Working with the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Yad Vashem, the archive has created a database that contains concentration camp prisoner cards and death notices among many additional types of documents.  In total, the recently uploaded documents feature information on over 2.2 million people persecuted by the Nazis.