Regina police fielded 150 freedom of information requests in 2018

Regina police spent 800 hours dealing with 150 freedom of information requests in 2018.

More than 100 of those requests were from private individuals, according to a report that will be presented Wednesday morning at the Board of Police Commissioners meeting.

The requests included everythingfrom people looking for insurance-related information regardingtheft of their vehicles to domestic issues.

Only fiverequests came from the media.

On Jan. 1, 2018, Regina police came under the province's Local Authority Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, or LAFOIP.

The act gives people and organizations the right to request information from a local authority.

The 150 freedom of information requests is a far lower number thanSaskatoon police dealt with in 2018. That police service had to field 275 requests under the act.

In Regina, "the average request was 40 pages and required four hours to complete the redaction and administrative work," the report says.

The biggest requesttook eight months to complete, since it involved redacting parts of 13,000 pages of documents.

While the act allows for access to records, it also protects the privacy of individuals and contains exceptions to the release of records, the Regina Police Service's website says.

All of the 150 freedom of information requests required work by the service's access and privacy officer, the report says.

It saystwo privacy breaches were investigated and reported to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner because of the possible effect on third parties.

In both cases, the privacy commissioneraccepted and filed the reports and there was no formal investigation from the office.

Under the freedom of informationact's regulations, organizations must respond to requests within 30 days of receiving them. They do have the option to extend requests by an additional 30 days in some cases.

When an applicant is unhappy with the response to their information request, they can ask for the information and privacy commissioner to review the file.