# Custodian Response on Appeal The Conway Police Department's six-page legal response to Joshua Dunlap's 2026-05-22 Arkansas FOIA appeal of the items-D/G/H/I withholdings in `PD-2026-477`. Dated **2026-05-27** on the letter and transmitted **2026-05-28** by FOIA officer Drake Vickers (Gmail thread `19e50c97d4482910`, message `19e6ee41be8b3616`, PDF attachment `Dunlap Response 5 27.pdf`). The Department denies the appeal on substance — **maintains all four withholdings in full** — and concurrently announces that the City is requesting an opinion from the Arkansas Attorney General on the same questions. ## What's inside One PDF — image-only, OCR'd at 300 DPI via `_phase0_workdir/ocr_pdf_fitz.py` to `extracted/conway-pd/PD-2026-477/Dunlap Response 5 27.txt` (6 pages, ~14,450 chars). The letter is signed in the title "Custodian of Records, Conway Police Department"; the transmittal email is from Drake Vickers (CPD FOIA officer). The 5-27-26 date appears at the top of page 1. ## Key takeaways - **The appeal is denied on substance.** The Department maintains its prior withholding decision for **Items D (SharedNetworks / network-sharing snapshots), G (full-deployment-life Federal Searches export), H (currently-enabled custom hot lists), and I (pre-April-2025 audit logs)** — withheld in full ([[Custodian Response on Appeal]], pp. 1–5; conclusion, p. 5: *"After reconsideration, the Department maintains its prior withholding decision for Items D, G, H, and I."*). - **The Department's legal theory crystallizes around a substance-versus-incidental distinction.** Rather than restating the boilerplate of the original 5/22 letter, the appeal response builds an affirmative case that the protected information is "the substance of the requested records," not "incidental information commingled with otherwise public information" (p. 5). This is the segregability rebuttal: § 25-19-105(f) requires production of *reasonably segregable non-exempt portions*, but the Department argues that *for these record types*, the non-exempt residue would not constitute a reasonably segregable public record. - **The Department rebuts Joshua's prior-production-establishes-segregability argument.** The letter states (p. 1): *"Prior production does not waive a statutory restriction or FOIA exemption, nor does it establish that all similar records or later-requested records are reasonably segregable for purposes of Ark. Code Ann. § 25-19-105(f). Segregability must be evaluated based on the specific records requested, the content and function of those records, the statutory restrictions that apply, and whether any remaining information can be released without disclosing or permitting reconstruction of exempt information."* And, separately on Item G (p. 3): *"The prior production of a shorter Federal Searches export does not control the Department's current legal review of a full-deployment-life export. A longer export covering the life of deployment would disclose substantially broader system use, network-search behavior, agency activity, and investigative search history."* - **The Department draws a sharp § 12-12-1805 line.** Statutory practice-and-usage data — "compiled statistical data made available for public review under statute" (p. 1) — is the only ALPR-Act record category the Department concedes is public. Everything else — *"network-sharing exports, search exports, audit logs, hat-list configuration records, access logs, and system-permission records"* (p. 2; "hat-list" is an OCR artifact of "hot-list") — is treated as internal Flock platform records and withheld. On Item H specifically, the letter acknowledges that § 12-12-1805(b)(2) requires *list names* in the practice-and-usage report but treats that as different from the underlying internal hot-list configuration records (pp. 3–4). - **The Department rejects Joshua's § 12-12-1804 / 150-day retention argument.** Joshua's appeal had argued that if pre-April-2025 audit logs contain "captured plate data," then Ark. Code § 12-12-1804(a)'s 150-day retention limit is implicated because the logs are well over 150 days old. The Department's response (p. 4): *"The Department does not interpret that retention provision to create a public right of access to audit logs or to override disclosure restrictions in Ark. Code Ann. § 12-12-1808 or exemptions under Ark. Code Ann. § 25-19-105."* That is: even if § 12-12-1804 retention is breached, breach does not create disclosure rights. - **The Department layers the same statutory cluster across every item.** Each of D, G, H, and I cites: § 25-19-105(b)(11) (computer-system access controls, network permissions, system configuration, security-related information) as the lead exemption; §§ 12-12-1802 + 12-12-1808 (ALPR Act captured-plate-data restrictions) *to the extent applicable*; § 25-19-105(b)(6) (undisclosed law-enforcement investigations) *where applicable*. The layered structure is intentional: if a court were to find one statutory basis inapplicable, the Department's withholding may stand on the others. - **The "law-enforcement investigative exemption" is asserted hedged, not categorical.** Page 5: *"The Department cites Ark. Code Ann. § 25-19-105(b)(6) only as applicable. The Department is not asserting that every entry in every requested record necessarily relates to an undisclosed law-enforcement investigation. Rather, the Department asserts that to the extent the requested records or entries reveal or relate to undisclosed investigations of suspected criminal activity, the exemption applies."* And: *"the requested bulk records, by their nature, may include investigative searches, case-related searches, offense reasons, investigative justifications, hot-list activity, and search histories that cannot be separated from the system records without revealing investigative activity or system use patterns."* The hedge is the segregability argument applied to investigations: it's not that every record is investigative, it's that investigative content cannot be cleanly extracted from the rest. - **The City has requested an Arkansas AG opinion on the same questions.** Page 6: *"Because the issues raised in your appeal involve recurring questions regarding the interaction between Arkansas FOIA, the Arkansas Automatic License Plate Reader System Act, vendor-hosted ALPR platforms, and records generated by or derived from ALPR system use, the City is also requesting guidance from the Arkansas Attorney General. That request does not alter the Department's current response or withholding decision."* This is procedurally significant: an AG opinion is advisory, but Arkansas agencies and courts give it substantial weight, and the AG's public-information coordinator regularly issues opinions interpreting FOIA's interaction with sectoral statutes like the ALPR Act. - **The Department commits to continued production of "non-exempt records."** Page 6: *"The Department will continue to produce non-exempt records, including contracts, invoices, procurement records, policies, and the public compiled practice-and-usage data required by Ark. Code Ann. § 12-12-1805, to the extent such records exist, are in the Department's possession or administrative control, have not already been produced, and are not otherwise exempt."* This carves out a path forward for incremental productions of contract/invoice/policy/statistical records without touching the withheld categories. ## Item-by-item rationale (Department's articulated grounds) | Item | Maintained ground | Verbatim characterization of the records | |---|---|---| | **D — SharedNetworks** | § 25-19-105(b)(11) + §§ 12-12-1802/1808 (to the extent applicable) + § 25-19-105(b)(6) (where applicable) | *"They reveal internal Flock platform sharing relationships, network names, shared-with-me and I'm-sharing configurations, agency-to-agency access relationships, permission structures, access settings, search permissions, hot-list permissions, video or device permissions where applicable, share dates, and access-management functions. These records reflect how access to the Department's Flock system and related data is configured and controlled."* (p. 2) | | **G — Federal Searches export (full-deployment-life)** | §§ 12-12-1802/1808 + § 25-19-105(b)(11) + § 25-19-105(b)(6) (where applicable) | *"It may reveal search activity, user or agency activity, date/time parameters, search windows, search scope, networks searched, search type, search reason, case-related information, plate or partial-plate information, vehicle descriptors, returned results, and other data captured by or derived from the ALPR system."* (pp. 2–3) | | **H — Currently enabled custom hot lists** | § 25-19-105(b)(11) + §§ 12-12-1802/1808 (where applicable) + § 25-19-105(b)(6) (where applicable) | *"Internal Flock hot-list configuration records, enabled-list snapshots, shared-list settings, live system views, or related records … reveal system configuration, access settings, sharing settings, alerting structure, and related data used to control access to the Flock system and data residing in the system."* (pp. 3–4) | | **I — Pre-April-2025 audit logs** | §§ 12-12-1802/1808 + § 25-19-105(b)(11) + § 25-19-105(b)(6) (where applicable) | *"They are internal platform records reflecting individual system activity, search activity, access activity, user activity, agency activity, case-related activity, query activity, search parameters, search reasons, search times, network scope, and other ALPR system use. Depending on the entry, audit logs may also contain plate data, partial plate data, vehicle descriptors, case numbers, offense reasons, search justifications, date/time windows, and other data captured by or derived from the ALPR system."* (p. 4) | ## People and orgs mentioned - [[Conway Police Department]] — the responding agency. - **Custodian of Records, Conway Police Department** — the appeal response is signed in this title; no individual is named. (Compare the 2026-05-22 [[Custodian Response Letter]], also signed in this title.) - [[Drake Vickers]] — the CPD FOIA officer who transmitted the appeal response by email on 2026-05-28 at 09:01 CDT (Gmail thread `19e50c97d4482910`, message `19e6ee41be8b3616`); his transmittal note read: *"Provided is a response to the latest appeal request."* - **Charles Finkenbinder** — Conway City Attorney; cc'd on Joshua's 2026-05-22 appeal and would be the natural Conway-City-side referent for the announced Arkansas AG opinion request. (No entity page; included here for trace purposes.) - **Office of the Arkansas Attorney General** — the addressee of the City's announced opinion request (p. 6). No entity page yet; if the AG issues an opinion responsive to the City's request, that opinion will need a Tier-2 archive under `web archive/`. - Joshua Dunlap — the FOIA appellant (correspondence side; not a corpus actor). ## Concepts invoked - [[Arkansas Automatic License Plate Reader System Act]] — the Department cites §§ 12-12-1802 (captured-plate-data definition) and 12-12-1808 (disclosure restrictions) across every item, and addresses Joshua's § 12-12-1804 (150-day retention) argument on Item I. - [[Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR)]] - [[Flock Audit Logs and Retention]] — the conceptual home of the Item I dispute. - [[Flock Network Sharing - Hot Lists]] — Items D and H. - [[Federal LE Data-Sharing Pipeline]] — Item G. ## Events documented - 2026-05-27 — the Department's response to the appeal is dated. - 2026-05-28 09:01 CDT — Drake Vickers transmits the response by email. ## Cross-references - [[Custodian Response Letter]] — the 2026-05-22 original withholding letter that the appeal challenged. The appeal response is functionally that letter's reasoned defense. - [[The Disclosure-Posture Reversal at Conway PD]] — the synthesis essay anchored on the items-D/G/H/I withholdings; the appeal response is the Department's substantive defense of the posture the synthesis documents. - [[SharedNetworks 2025-12-17 Snapshot]] — the Item D record produced in `PD-2026-354` whose successor is withheld. - [[Federal Searches CSV]] — the Item G record produced in `PD-2026-354` whose full-deployment-life successor is withheld. - [[Conway PD Audit Logs Series]] — the post-April-2025 audit logs produced in `PD-2026-354`; the pre-April-2025 logs are the Item I record withheld. ## Surveillance-PII handling No license-plate numbers, residential addresses, officer personal information, account numbers, or other PII appear in this legal letter. The document is a reasoned legal response by the Department's Custodian of Records, with statutory citations and characterizations of record content but no underlying record data. ## Open questions / follow-ups 1. **The announced AG opinion request.** Page 6 announces that "the City is also requesting guidance from the Arkansas Attorney General" on the same questions the appeal raises. The request itself is not in the corpus. Monitor for: (a) the City's request letter to the AG (likely a public record); (b) any AG opinion issued in response. If the AG issues an opinion, it will be a Tier-2 source that materially affects every Arkansas ALPR FOIA going forward — Conway PD's, LRPD's, ASP's, PCSO's, future jurisdictions' — and should be archived to `web archive/` per the AGENTS.md Web-research workflow. 2. **The § 25-19-107 circuit-court remedy.** The Department's denial of the appeal exhausts the administrative process at CPD. The next procedural step under FOIA is a circuit-court action under § 25-19-107(a)(1)(A) (citizen denied rights under FOIA may petition for mandamus or injunctive relief; court must hear within seven days; attorney's fees available unless agency's position is "substantially justified"). Whether to file is a decision for Joshua; recorded as an open follow-up in `PLAN.md`. 3. **The substance-versus-incidental segregability framing.** The Department's affirmative case is that the protected information is "the substance of the requested records." This is a legal-theory frame that could be tested against the records themselves: if a record can be produced with field-level redactions that leave the structural content (which networks, which agencies, which date ranges, which volumes) visible, the "substance" argument weakens. The wiki cannot test this without access to the withheld records; the AG opinion (if issued) may. 4. **The hedged § 25-19-105(b)(6) "to the extent" language across all four items.** The Department has structured its withholding so that no single statutory basis must be sustained for the withholding to stand. A court (or AG) considering one ground at a time would need to address each layer. The hedge is also what allows the Department to assert the investigative exemption without claiming every record entry is investigative — a posture more defensible than a categorical claim, but one that arguably calls for record-level review rather than wholesale withholding.