Dallas online police records held hostage

Story here

Quote :

DALLAS - he Dallas Police Department has access to their own police reports, but now the public does not. At least, not without some effort.

CBS 11 News has obtained a letter from Butler Solutions, the company that operates and maintains the online public police reports service for the DPD. The letter states that the DPD and the City of Dallas have not paid for the service since January.

In the TV story I saw, they showed that the city has records that they have done so.
Basically what's going on is this: Butler Solutions submitted in January to renew their contract with the city. The city hasn't even debated it yet, and now the company is upset and they're holding the records hostage. If you want to get a police report in Dallas, you've got to go down there and get a written copy now. (It was available online.)

Quote :

Butler Solutions said, in order for the company to move forward and continue to provide online public police reports for the city, "Dallas Police Department and City of Dallas will need to provide in writing, a definite date that the contract will become a City Council agenda item."

The company is demanding the letter be signed by at least two of the following people: DPD Chief David Kunkle, Chief Information Officer Worris Levine, City Manager Mary Suhm or First Assistant City manager Ryan Evans.

Here's the fun part that the article doesn't state: Nobody knows whether this is illegal or not. (That was also in the TV broadcast.)

It's sad that everyone has to let their egos get in the way of everything.

I dunno, that seems like a pretty reasonable response on the part of the company. If they are performing a service for a fee and their fee is not being paid, withholding the service until the fee is paid is the next logical step. Being as it's police records and the police kind of need those, they aren't obstructing actual police work because the police do have access to the records.

Why is this bad again?

Yeah, I'm not really seeing the problem. Just a little payment scuffle.