The NYPD doesn't answer document requests

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The New York Police Department's records office is notorious among reporters for being about as transparent as a bank vault. It's storied history of non-disclosure includes an overeager rejection stamp and a convenient tendency to “not receive” letters in time.

Having submitted my share of records requests to cops and military across the country, I have few illusions of chipper customer service from police clerks. But the NYPD takes it to a whole new level.

Reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, who shared a Pulitzer last year as part of the Associated Press team covering the NYPD’s surveillance activity, have summed it up perfectly: The NYPD doesn't answer document requests.

“For the most part, they don’t respond,” Apuzzo told the Huffington Post. "Even the NSA responds.”

It's not just reporters who've noticed. New York City Public Advocate and mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio gave the police department a failing grade in an April report based on its dismal response rate to Freedom of Information requests. By de Blasio’s analysis, nearly a third of requests submitted to NYPD go unanswered.