Confidential Not Public Record: Fill & Download for Free

As a citizen, you are entitled to attend public meetings. Most internal meetings at law enforcement agencies are not public meetings. Some are just administrative processes like how many patrol cars the department will buy this year or the design of a new report form. Others discuss ongoing criminal investigations and sensitive personnel matters, which are confidential for obvious reasons.Most of what a police agency does eventually becomes public information, or should be. Matters presented in court are public record, and court sessions are usually open to the public. Most of them tend to be pretty boring, which is why courtroom galleries are usually empty. That's actually a shame. If more people sat in on everyday court sessions, they would get considerable insight into how their local justice system really works.Most law enforcement agencies hold "town hall" or "community policing" meetings periodically. Some, though not all, are directed at a particular faction or neighborhood, but usually anyone may attend. There's nothing wrong with attending these meetings, getting a better perspective on what's happening, and asking questions.P.S. This is my 2,000th answer on Quora.

How about publishing the name, address, age, and marital status of every woman who has had an abortion—which, after all, is a completely legal medical procedure and nothing to be ashamed of? Would you like that?How about posting, online, the personal home address, and unlisted home phone and personal cell phone number of every Democrat Senator and Congressman, along with the names of his/her children, their ages, and the schools they attend and when?(All of which has already, recently, be done—a Federal Felony, since that personal information about a sitting Member of Congress is, and should be, Confidential—by a young Democrat “activist” who has “worked for” Dianne Feinstein, Sheila Jackson Lee, and the Hillary Campaign, against Congressional Republicans.)Would the publication of that information about any Democrat bother you?(BTW, I don’t care, one way or the other, about Abortion, FYI; so don’t waste your time arguing at least that issue against me.)What, exactly, do you, “Questioner,” expect to accomplish by publishing the names and addresses of law-abiding gun owners?Let me guess: You’d like to see us “targeted,” right?Maybe you’d like our homes to be surrounded by slogan-shouting mobs with bull horns around the clock, daring us to come out the door—preferably (you hope) with a gun in our hands in front of the cameras; you’d like our children followed, insulted, and shouted at as they attempt to board a school bus; our cars’ tires slashed “by persons unknown”; our employers ridiculed, boycotted, and threatened if they don’t fire us; our banks threatened with pickets and boycotts if they don’t close our accounts?These have all been the strategy and tactics of the Hard Left as recommended in their playbook, Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” and they continue to be—to the squalid disgrace and shame of today’s Democratic Party, which would be unrecognizable by, and denounced by, the once-noble Party’s late leaders, like Harry Truman, Jack Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey—all of them tough, loyal, but honorable Democrats in their day.Some information and documents are, indeed, public records, and are usually available for inspection in the court house or archives, or available as copies upon payment of a nominal fee for “search” and photocopying.These include, for example, birth certificates, death certificates, wills that have been filed after the death of the decedent, and in most cases divorce documents that haven’t been sealed by court order.Court records of trials, and the convictions, are certainly also matters of public record and are on file, and easily obtainable for, at most, a nominal duplicating fee. That includes, of course, any drunk driving offenses or arrests (convicted, plea-bargained, or dismissed) for domestic violence misdemeanors.So if you want the records of every law-abiding, licensed gun owner who’s never committed or even been charged with anything published, you go first: abortions (remember: I don’t care if you had one or a dozen); not just how you’re registered to vote but how you actually did vote in every election (after all, what are you worried about?); and the names of your children and the schools they attend?After all—to take your side in the Argument—what do you have to worry about if all of this were published, since, of course, you’ve done nothing wrong?

That is pretty frowned upon nowadays. But back in my day (the 1990s) it was pretty standard: at the end of the year, all the exam grades were put up on a list in the main hall, next to people’s names. Lots of friends who went home early telephoned me to ask me to go and check what class of degree they had gotten.Different times.I do find it odd these days that we treat educational qualifications as confidential information. If it is a qualification that someone relies upon, it doesn’t strike me as being obvious that this shouldn’t be a matter of public record. But clearly most of the world does not agree with me.