Terminating the Employment Relationship

d. Press Requests In addition to the arrest and complaint information available to any member of the public described above, members of the press may also obtain certain information if the person declares under penalty of perjury that:

The request is made for a scholarly, journalistic, political or governmental purpose, or that the request is made for investigation purposes by a licensed private investigator; and

The information will not be used to sell or furnish to others a product or service.

A member of the press may obtain the additional following information:

Current address of every individual arrested by the agency; and

Current address of the victim of a crime.

 The address of a victim who is a minor should be withheld. The address of an adult victim shall remain confidential if the crime involved was any of the following: Penal Code sections 220, 261, 261.5, 262, 264, 264.1, 265, 266, 266a-c, 266e-f, 266j, 267, 269, 273a, 273d, 273.5, 285, 286, 288, 288a, 288.2, 288.3, 288.5, 288.7, 289, 422.6, 422.7, 422.75, 646.9, or 647.6. 357

iii. “Sealing” a Personnel File If an agency agrees to seal personnel documents, the language in the settlement or separation agreement should be broad enough to allow disclosure required by law, but specific enough that both parties know which documents will be sealed, when disclosure will occur, and how disclosure will occur. a. Specify the Documents to Be Sealed To the extent possible, a settlement or separation agreement should specifically identify the documents to be sealed. This prevents confusion and an ex-employee from later claiming that his/her former employer breached the agreement by disclosing documents s/he thought were sealed. The following is sample language of a clause regarding identifying documents to be sealed:

The City shall create a separate file (“Separate File”) for the following documents: (a) this Agreement; (b) the Final Notice of Termination and written appeal therefrom; (c) the Notice of Intent to Terminate delivered to Jones on [date]; (d) the [date] letter from Jones’ attorney containing Jones’ written response to the Notice of Intent; (e) Captain Smith’s [date] Complaint Disposition Report; (f) Internal Affairs Investigation No. 01-234. The City shall maintain the Separate File at the City’s Police Department, and seal and mark it “confidential” and “not to be opened or released unless ordered by the City of Fiction Chief of Police.”

Terminating the Employment Relationship ©2019 (s) Liebert Cassidy Whitmore 115