GRPD’s ‘Secret Line’ Calls Were Purged [Video]
A WOOD-TV 8 investigation finds the back door 3407 line the Grand Rapids Police used to take private calls has been purged of at least a year's worth of calls.
Target 8 investigators had filed a Freedom of Information Act request to hear recorded calls from the line, but city administrators appeared to have erased the calls.
The 3407 line was an apparent way for police officers to communicate things that were private in nature and not to be heard over the main channels.
The 3407 line came to light during an incident involving then Kent County Assistant Prosecutor Josh Kuiper, who was pulled over by officers after driving the wrong way down a street and hitting a parked car.
In conversations on that line, it appears a Lieutenant in the GRPD instructed Officers to get Kuiper home without charges. That led to the Lieutenant being fired and Kuiper resigning.
FOIA requests were filed by WOOD-TV 8 and the ACLU following that incident, however, documents obtained by Target 8 investigators showed the recordings from the line had been purged.
“You’ve got to wonder what is so damaging that was on those recordings that the city had to destroy them over the weekend in order to keep the public from seeing them?” said ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Miriam Aukerman told Target 8.
“What is so damaging that the city would violate the Freedom of Information Act in order to destroy those recordings?” Aukerman said.
The city’s then-Information Technology Director Paul Klimas, who worked on the purge, told Target 8 he could have tried to retrieve the recordings in response to the FOIA requests but was never asked.