RIOC Changes 3 Year Old Policy On Release Of Daily Public Safety Report Information To Roosevelt Island Community- Senior Staff Needs To Review First, Why?
Image of Redacted Report From Ann Arbor Chronicle For Illustrative Purposes Only
The Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) Public Safety Department has been including me on an email distribution list of it's Daily Public Safety Reports since January 2008 when I asked former RIOC President Steve Shane to do so and he agreed. Since that time I have been periodically posting these reports on this blog's main page and including the reports for the previous 7 days on the blog's sidebar.
Last week the Roosevelt Island Daily Public Safety Reports stopped arriving in my email folder. I sent an email to Public Safety Director Keith Guerra about this but received no response. Last Friday, I ran into RIOC's Press Spokesperson at Starbucks, told her that I was not receiving the Public Safety Reports and asked her if she could look into the matter, which she agreed to do. Earlier today, I received this message from the RIOC Press Spokesperson:
I check{ed} on the email alerts you asked about. It appears you got on an internal RIOC distribution list that was meant for senior RIOC employee only. Your name has now been removed from that list. You can still get information here : http://www.rioc.com/incidentreport.htm
Hope that helps,
I responded and copied RIOC President Leslie Torres, VP Of Operations Fernando Martinez as well as the RIOC Directors:
Why has my name been taken off the Daily Public Safety Report list? I have been receiving these daily public safety reports and posting on blog for over a year with the knowledge and permission of Senior RIOC staff since Steve Shane was RIOC President. It was not a mistake that I was on that list.
What has changed in RIOC policy between last week when I received the information and now?
RIOC's Press Spokesperson replied:
I replied:Your name was taken off the Daily Public Safety Report email list because this is an internal RIOC email for senior staff. You can still get access to this information on RIOC's website at http://www.rioc.com/incidentreport.htm, so you can still post the information on the blog.
That this is an internal RIOC email list does not answer the question as to why I was taken off the list since I was on the list since January 2008 with the knowledge and permission of RIOC senior staff. What has changed from the prior three years, including last week, to this week that requires my removal from this list.RIOC's Press Spokesperson answered:
The RIOC Incident Report web page that you link to is not a sufficient method of informing the Roosevelt Island public because it only lists the report for a single day and then is removed. If I happen to miss that particular day there is no way for me to access the information. Also, there are days when the Public Safety Incident Information is not put up on the site.
By including me in the emails, as has been the practice for over a year, I am able to provide the Roosevelt Island public with important Public Safety information on a timely, effective and efficient basis.
What, if anything, is now different with the content on the email list? I don't understand the rationale for removing me from a source of information that has served the Roosevelt Island public well for over three years.
Why would RIOC want that stopped?
I understand that you are unhappy about being taken of the list, but the Daily Public Safety Report email presents the first time senior staff at RIOC have to opportunity to see and discuss this information. They need an opportunity to review this information before it goes public.This makes no sense at all and contributes to the perception that RIOC is hiding/filtering Public Safety information from the Roosevelt Island community. Why does the Senior Staff now need to review and discuss the daily Public Safety Reports prior to it's release when they had not been doing it for the last three years?
RIOC is willing to create an archive of incident reports, if that helps you.
What is going on?
I was just about to press the publish button on this post when RIOC VP Of Operations Fernando Martinez spotted me at Starbucks and sat down for a conversation on this subject. Mr. Martinez emphasized that the purpose of having Senior RIOC staff review the Daily Public Safety Reports prior to releasing it to the community was so that he would know what is going on and be able to respond if questioned about a particular incident. Mr. Martinez promised that the Daily Public Safety Reports would not be censored and still be made available that same day - only a little later in the day on RIOC's web site where I can take the reports and publish on this blog.
After speaking with Mr. Martinez I understand his position better but still think there is no reason to add another layer of RIOC review prior to releasing the information to the public. If a resident asks him a question that he does not know the answer to, all he has to say is that I will get back to you on that when I have the answer as has been done for the last three years.
UPDATE 3/1 - I spoke with RIOC President Leslie Torres earlier today who promised to send me a separate email with the daily Public Safety Report after she or other RIOC senior staff members review it.
UPDATE 3/2 - Received today's Public Safety Report in separate email from RIOC and posted on sidebar, If this procedure is continued, should work out fine. It included same information as went to RIOC senior staff.
12 comments :
I am very sure it is not hard to understand what happened here. You got on their internal list by accident (or maybe luck) and nobody had bothered to audit e-mail lists. Then somebody put in a complaint and PSD is forced to look into it and realized that you got access to information that you shouldn't have gotten in the first place. Once something happens that draws the attention to it the PSD cannot keep looking away.
That said, it's sad that this kind of information needs to go through another filter before it can be made public. It is understandable, though.
Who is RIOC's press spokesperson? First I heard of one!!!
I have been reading the daily reports and hope they are in for a review.Present PSD rarely mention much about parking violations,but cover items "lost and found" in detail.
To 8:41 - As I wrote in the post, I was not on the email list by mistake. Former RIOC President Steve Shane agreed to send me the daily Public Safety Reports and RIOC Senior Staff including Mr. Martinez and Chief Guerra were fully aware of it.
To 8:55, RIOC's Press Spokesperson is only there temporarily until RIOC's Community Relations Specialist Erica Wilder returns from Maternity Leave.
I think Rick is right - he should not be removed from the email distribution list. Also - we do not have the Blotter reports on the Wire like we used to. It is most convenient for us to scan the side-bar of RI police actions as we access Rick's blog - we can read stories and simultaneously check the side-bar. Nobody is going to bother accessing layers of websites to find out about crime on RI - in Roosevelt Islander blog it's presented where it should be, immediately, with the same click that gets people into the blog. I like this 1-click access to RI crime reporting or, access to police reports. I want to know the crime trends and I may not have the patience or time to go through various websites to find out. Mr. Guerra and his superior Ms. Torres should see to it that Rick is included in the email distribution list for daily police reports so that they can be immediately posted to to Rick's website.
Thank you,
Island House Resident
Some of you people are clueless and Rick is being a baby on this one. He is not part of the RIOC Senior Staff and if they are still publishing it on their website, as they have done for years, he can get the information he wants to put on the blog from there.
Apparently, he had the "ins" with Mr. Shane and was given certain privledges that he shouldn't have been given. Don't cry now because the new President has more efficient management practices.
I kind of have to agree with poster above (9:37am). It's not like they are going to withhold information. They are just changing the way things are being done. As long as there is no censorship going in I don't think there is anything left to complain about.
What's that sound? "baaaa, baaa..."
The fact remains that changes like this should be discussed before implementation. ROIC should have set up a method of creating an archive prior to being prompted. It is easy to see how this action would be perceived as giving time to edit the report before release. Given the recent dust up around the open meeting policy with RIRA someone should have thought this through a little further.
I wonder if what RIOC is doing - controlling the flow of incident reports - mirrors the practice in other communities. Also, if the problem is having non-RIOC personnel on a RIOC email distribution list, RIOC could set up an additional email distribution list for non-RIOC recipients of the report and send the same info out twice, once to RIOC personnel once to non-RIOC personnel. In addition to Roosevelt Islander, RIOC could add to the list of non-RIOC recipients the security desks at each building so that security at all these locations could be apprised of crime trends in a timely fashion. Why would RIOC not want information regarding incidents made available to the public as quickly and easily as possible.
You people have no clue what you're talking about. Do any of you actually look at the RIOC website? Try clicking under the Public Safety Banner. Everything regarding crime statistics from a daily basis to a monthly basis is right there.
Then go to the NYPD website. Try looking for the same information.... Oh, that's right, it's nowhere to be found. RIOC posts makes this information available to the public on a daily basis.
Rick just seems like he wants the convenience of getting the info sent right to him, so he doesn't have to go looking for it. Well, it's not that big a deal for RIOC to make sure the information they are obviously sharing with the community is accurate before nicely posting in on their website for everyone to view.
Living on Roosevelt Island is like living in a bubble. Totally agree with above post (8:49). The nypd never releases any incidents! At least PSD does!
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