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Greeley Police Department by the Numbers
112,609
Residents
575
Requests Per Month
49
JustFOIA Users
6
JustFOIA Forms
In the plains of northern Colorado, the City of Greeley is a hub of activity… which means its police department processes thousands of records requests every year from residents, journalists, attorneys, and other agencies.
Managing public records requests through a shared email inbox wasn’t just inefficient, it was unreliable, untrackable, and overwhelming.
This case study explores how Greeley Police Department transformed their request management process with JustFOIA—and why they’re never looking back.
The Tipping Point
Records and Evidence Manager Kelly French had a problem: Prior to JustFOIA, requests were submitted via a generic email address that all records staff could access. There was no spreadsheet or other formal tracking system—staff managed requests manually within the email inbox.
If a staff member replied to a request from their individual email, others in the department couldn’t see the conversation. This meant it was difficult to see if a request was finished or being worked on. Sometimes more than one person was working on a request without others knowing, so they duplicated each other’s efforts. Worse still, it could cause requests to fall through the cracks and not get answered.
The GPD’s volume of requests—and the records staff’s workload—continued to increase. But because of the lack of tracking, Kelly didn’t know the actual volume of requests and couldn’t make a good case for additional staff.
Then, there came a tipping point.
The PD was hit with a court case related to a records request that would have gone much smoother if they’d had a better way to track request completion.
“So really that was kind of the catalyst of saying, ‘You guys, we have to have a better system than just e-mail. This is not working for us,’” Kelly recalled.
The Search for a Solution
Around that same time, the City of Greeley purchased JustFOIA, and Kelly even assisted with its implementation. Although she saw the benefits of the system for the City, she thought that the Police Department’s uses would be too different to share a system with them.
While the City’s records requests typically fall under the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA), the Police Department is subject to the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act (CCJRA), which has different timelines, exemptions, and enforcement.
“This isn’t the way that police would use it,” she remembered thinking. “They have three days to have a request done [under CORA], but that doesn’t apply to us. I could really see the benefit of this, and we absolutely had to have it, but we had to have it on our own terms.”
So she set out to find out whether JustFOIA would work for law enforcement by reaching out to friends at other agencies, including Weld County Sheriff’s Office. She discovered that JustFOIA could be configured to meet their exact specifications. With Weld County’s enthusiastic recommendation, she decided to move forward with JustFOIA.
Kelly did her due diligence in seeing demos and getting quotes from two other software companies, but she just wasn’t as impressed. With the enthusiastic recommendations of both the City of Greeley and Weld County Sheriff’s Office, she pushed for—and was approved to purchase—JustFOIA.
Implementation
JustFOIA offers full-service implementation, with a Project Coordinator to scope out requirements, create all necessary forms and workflows, and train the system administrator. From there, the administrator typically trains the remainder of the team.
Kelly described implementation with their Project Coordinator, Connie, as “super easy.”
“We were able to take the information that she sent us and just run with it. Before we went live, I said, ‘Well, let’s just play around with it!’”
In doing so, they discovered how easy the software was to use—even helping them develop the confidence to tweak and create forms on their own.
Read more about JustFOIA’s personalized onboarding experience.
Results
Since switching to JustFOIA, they have significantly improved efficiency, transparency, and record-keeping.
Benefits of the system include:
Keeping Track of Requests
With JustFOIA, all records requests are now housed in a single, trackable system, eliminating the chaos of email-based requests. Instead of requests getting buried in inboxes, staff can now log in and see exactly where a request stands.
Having a structured tracking system has also helped prevent missed requests.
Improving Transparency
One of the biggest challenges with the previous system was that only the staff member who received an email response knew the status of a request. If that person was out of the office or left the agency, others were left scrambling to figure out what had happened.
With JustFOIA, any authorized staff member can access the system and immediately see the history of a request.
“I like that any of my other folks can go in and say, ‘Oh yeah, we have your request. Here’s the note that Hayley put in saying that she’s waiting for the Sergeant to approve it,” Kelly said.
This level of transparency also reduces the number of follow-up calls and complaints from requesters, as staff can instantly provide updates.
Keeping an Audit Log
Law enforcement agencies need to maintain clear records of all communications and transactions related to records requests in case of challenges. JustFOIA ensures that every request, response, and document release is automatically tracked—something that was not possible with their old email-based system.
With JustFOIA, all correspondence is centralized and easily retrievable, preventing situations where the agency struggles to prove compliance with records laws.
Justifying More Staff
Before implementing JustFOIA, Greeley PD had no clear way to track how many records requests they received each year. This lack of data made it difficult to justify hiring additional staff.
Since implementing JustFOIA, they have discovered that their request volume has tripled—a critical insight that has helped them advocate for additional resources:
“I need to create a second position, but we didn’t have the data before. I couldn’t justify getting another position unless I knew I had the numbers to back it up.”
With clear request volume data, Greeley PD now has concrete evidence to support staffing decisions to ensure that records requests are processed efficiently.
Getting the Most Bang for Their Buck with More Use Cases
Initially, Kelly and the Greeley PD had only one or two forms for CCJRA requests. But once they saw how much easier it made it to request and disseminate information, they began exploring other uses.
While JustFOIA offers administration assistance packages for clients who want to expand their system after implementation, Kelly said she’s taken on the creation of new forms herself.
“It’s so easy just to create a form exactly how you want it,” Kelly said.
Members of the public can now request Body-Worn Camera footage and Traffic Accident Camera footage through JustFOIA.
“As Colorado law expands and requires even greater transparency, it’s just the easiest way to keep track of everything,” Kelly said.
In addition to public-facing records, Kelly has developed forms for internal and law enforcement-specific uses. One is for the District Attorney to request internal affairs and investigations records. Another streamlines sending employees’ records to other agencies.
“If somebody left our agency and moved to Florida, and they wanted to go to a different law enforcement agency, we used to tell the other agency, ‘If you want to view this person’s personnel file, you have to come here.’ And we were like, ‘Who does that?’ Nobody. Nobody does that. We’re in the age of technology!”
This new form allows authorized personnel at another agency to submit a photo i.d. and receive all relevant files about the prospective new employee.
Ready to Learn More?
Would Kelly ever leave JustFOIA?
“That’s not an option,” she said firmly. “There’s no way that we could ever go back to doing it the way that we were doing it before.”
“Keeping the software is justified obviously by the number of requests we get, but also—we don’t want to end up with another court case.”
Is it time for your agency to save time and protect yourself from lawsuits with better records request tracking? Fill out the form below to contact us today!