Former Tacoma officer alleges city improperly withheld records from him, again
A former Tacoma police officer has sued the city, alleging that officials improperly withheld public records from him.
This isn’t the first time David O’Dea has filed a Public Records Act lawsuit against Tacoma. A judge previously entered a $2,607,940 judgment against the city in a similar case.
His new lawsuit, filed Dec. 1 in Pierce County Superior Court, seeks unspecified damages and an order that the records he requested be provided.
A claim for damages filed as a precursor to the lawsuit sought “not less than $1 million.”
A Tacoma spokeswoman said the city does not comment on pending litigation.
O’Dea was a lieutenant when he was put on leave in 2016 following an officer-involved shooting and, after a 10-month investigation, was fired, The News Tribune previously reported.
He sued the city in 2018 for wrongful termination, arguing he was fired for not shooting to kill a suspect. Court records said O’Dea responded to a road-rage incident where three officers were surrounding the suspect’s vehicle. O’Dea fired at the vehicle when the suspect accelerated at him, his wrongful termination lawsuit said.
The city argued he should not have fired at all and that he did not follow department policy about the use of deadly force. A judge dismissed the wrongful termination case, and O’Dea has appealed.
He first filed a separate public records lawsuit against the city in 2017, alleging the city improperly withheld records he requested to put together his legal defense. The lawsuit said he asked for various records related to the investigation and to his employment. The seven-figure judgment against the city in that case remains on appeal.
The new public records lawsuit alleges in part that: “On or about September 30, 2019, in a supplemental discovery response from the City of Tacoma in the wrongful termination case, the City of Tacoma produced documents that, although previously requested in the Public Records Act case, were never produced in that case.
It goes on to say that many of those documents “were identified by the City of Tacoma in the Public Records Act case as having been destroyed after the Public Records Act case was filed, yet the documents still existed.”
The lawsuit asks for a penalty of $100 for each day the records have been withheld, per state law, and “an award to Mr. O’Dea for the City of Tacoma’s fraud on the court.”
