Timely access to public records at the Fayetteville Police Department seems to have hit a snag. Since December, requests that in the past have taken two weeks to fulfill are now given a deadline of six weeks.
When asked Tuesday why the record releases were seemingly delayed, Officer Alexandria Pecia, a member of the Police Department’s Public Information Office, said via email that it was due to time constraints.
“It is because the documents that are requested can take a significant amount of time to provide,” Pecia said.
On Wednesday, however, another member of the Public Information Office, Rickelle Harrell, said that the handling of public records within the department had been transferred to the department’s Central Records Unit. As a result, “our process is going through an (sic) transitional period,” Harrell said in an email.
While North Carolina’s public record statute does not give a time frame in which public records must be produced, it does note that the records should be provided “as promptly as possible.”