NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — On January 26, the Mayor of Niagara Falls, Rob Restaino, announced that his administration would no longer be issuing police incident reports to the media, and thus the public, without a news organization filing a Freedom of Information Law request.
"Initially, there was no policy," Restaino said. "I think we were just simply delivering the incident report."
On Wednesday, Mayor Restaino's office announced that it will now be releasing police incident reports without a FOIL request, and redacting any victim information.
"The process will track the language of the New York State foil act in terms of accepted or rejected information," Restaino said in a Facebook video posted Tuesday. "This framework will now be implemented on the incident reports, as it should have been since the inception of the process of transmitting the incident reports decades ago."
Prior to all of this, victim information was already redacted in police reports.
In a statement to 2 On Your Side, the public information officer for Niagara Falls Kristen Cavalleri said the following:
"Effective today, the Niagara Falls Police Department will once again begin sending Police Incident Reports out as previously done (via email), with the updated process for redactions that more strictly follows state guidelines concerning the protection of victim and witness information."
Last week when the announcement was made, 2 On Your Side filed multiple FOIL requests for police incident reports between January 1 and February 2. The Niagara Falls records officer has responded to our request but has yet to provide the information we've requested.
RELATED: Niagara Falls no longer issuing police reports to the public. Want one? You'll need to FOIL one