Records Sharing Form (Government Entities )
To make a police report, you must report the situation to a police officer. You may call Public Safety Dispatch at 801-585-2677 to meet with an officer. Your request to talk with an officer will create a call log, which will show the date, time and nature of your concern. Once you have talked with the officer, the officer will decide if a formal report is to be submitted. When formal report is to be submitted, the officer will receive and can give you the case number for future reference. If there is not a formal report, you may still obtain the call log number.
To request a copy of a police report, fill out our Request for Records form. A discussion of the laws governing Utah public records follows. This should help you better understand who can access records.
The Government Records Access Management Act (GRAMA) is the records law for the State of Utah. This law is found in Title 63G, Chapter 2 of the Utah Code. GRAMA defines what a record is and establishes the criteria for accessing government records.
Media Requests, should also be ten days to respond unless it’s an expedited request then we have 5 business days (63G-2-204(3))
As defined in Utah Code Ann. § 63G-2-103 , public record means a record that is not private, controlled, or protected and is prepared, owned, received or retained by the governmental entity. Records requested must be able to be reproduced from the original record. A department is not required to create or format reports to meet a request.
Specifically GRAMA designates two law enforcement records to be public records:
- Chronological Logs, which give the general nature of the call, the date and time and any arrests or jail bookings.
- Initial Contact Reports, which are reports, prepared by peace officers engaged describing official actions initially taken in response to either a public complaint about or the discovery of an apparent violation of law.
Any person can make a public records request. However, public disclosure is regulated by several different statutes dependent upon the record. If you are the subject of the record, you may be entitled to information not available to the general public.
If you are a defendant in a criminal prosecution (have had criminal charges filed or have been issued a citation) you will be provided a full copy of the report through the prosecutor’s office as part of the discovery process.
A governmental entity has ten (10) business days. Extraordinary circumstances may require more processing time.
The media is entitled to any record that is deemed to be a public record pursuant to Utah Code Ann. § 63G-2-301. A governmental entity has five (5) business days after receiving a written request to provide the record, deny the request, or notify the requester that it cannot immediately provide a response due to extraordinary circumstances.