Lawsuits allege records of Michael Reinoehl’s death were improperly withheld
A public records activist’s lawsuits allege records about the death of a man fatally shot by a U.S. Marshals task force earlier this year in Lacey were improperly withheld.
Arthur West has sued Lakewood, Thurston County and the state Department of Corrections for records about the death of Michael Reinoehl.
Reinoehl was the suspect in a shooting that killed a right-wing activist at a Portland rally Aug. 29. The task force killed him Sept. 3 outside an apartment complex near Lacey, in the Tanglewilde neighborhood.
The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the shooting. Officers from the state Department of Corrections, Pierce County Sheriff’s Department and Lakewood Police Department fired their weapons.
West, representing himself, filed the lawsuit against Lakewood last week in Pierce County Superior Court.
“This is an action for disclosure of records, declaratory relief and penalties concerning the City of Lakewood’s violation of the Public Records Act in regard to records concerning the recent arrest and killing of Michael Forest Reinoehl by an interjurisdictional Task Force,” it said. “Plaintiff alleges that the City has failed to reasonably disclose responsive records, failed to conduct an adequate search, and has asserted an improper ‘blanket’ exemption in the absence of a privilege log, and plaintiff is entitled to the relief sought.”
City spokesperson Shannon Kelley-Fong said Monday that the city didn’t have any comment and that the city doesn’t generally comment on active litigation.
The lawsuit West filed against Lakewood said West requested: “All records and communications concerning the investigation, apprehension and killing of Michael Reinoehl,” including police reports and other records.
The city responded that “after a diligent search we did not locate responsive records.”
It went on to say: “The records requested are associated with a case that is under active investigation and non-disclosure is essential to effective law enforcement,” and that records should be requested from the Thurston County Sheriff’s Department.
West argued in the lawsuit that: “A present case and controversy exists between genuinely adverse parties concerning the ‘blanket’ exemption as applied to internal police investigations and the actions of public officers that is subject to adjudication Under the Uniform Declaratory Judgments Act.”
He filed a similar lawsuit against the state Department of Corrections last week in Thurston County Superior Court, and in October against Thurston County in Mason County Superior Court. Pierce County, West said, produced more than 6,000 pages of records following his request.
A DOC spokesperson said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.
Elizabeth Petrich, Thurston County’s Chief Civil Deputy Prosecuting Attorney, said a recent court order in the Mason County case “denied Mr. West access to any records involved in the investigation, until the investigation is complete.”
She went on to say that: “The court agreed with the county that the records requested pertain to an active and on-going investigation, and are therefore categorically exempt from production pursuant to RCW 42.56.240(1), until the investigation is complete. To the extent Mr. West is seeking the same records, he requested from Thurston County, from other jurisdictions involved in the same on-going investigation, the same statute would likely apply.”
West said he was in the process of asking for reconsideration.
His lawsuits aren’t the only ones concerning records related to Reinoehl’s death. A Thurston County Superior Court Judge granted a motion by the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office for a temporary restraining order earlier this month to keep use-of-force reports and body camera footage from being released by DOC until Jan. 8, when the next hearing is scheduled.
“The Sheriff’s Office has a well-grounded fear that release of DOC’s records would undermine the integrity of its independent, open, and active criminal investigation,” one of Thurston County’s court filings said. “And an eventual ‘permanent’ injunction will not result in a everlasting denial to the Requester of DOC’s records — just until such time as the investigation is closed.”
The lawsuit said a reporter from Reason Foundation requested the records, and that DOC was going to release them, redacted, Dec. 23. If a motion for a preliminary injunction is granted at the Jan. 8 hearing, the documents would be sealed until the end of the investigation, which Thurston County’s lawsuit said would take two months.
West’s suit against DOC alleges that the agency “silently withheld records, failed to reasonably disclose responsive records, failed to conduct an adequate search, and has, in an ex parte collateral proceeding where West was not named, despite his having requested the same records, improperly consented to an overbroad ‘blanket’ exemption concerning the records silently withheld from West … .”
Part of the relief West seeks, the lawsuit says, is a ruling that the state isn’t “subject to and may not employ an express or implied ‘Blanket’ exemption to broadly conceal police records under the circumstances of this case.”
