The Closed Case Files also represent an approximately 10% sample of records originally transferred to the Archives. Individual case files include a cover sheet identifying the citizen making the request or complaint, name of the city employee making the referral, a description of the request/complaint and any actions taken by city agencies, and a variety of related notations. While the OPA site does have some closed-case summaries listed, as described above, and a Case & Policy Newsletter, it does not publicly publish summaries for all the cases for which it has received complaints and looked into. Bettesworth said that the office looks into every complaint it receives.

To search and view individual court case information—for free—please go to the UJS web portal. On the web portal you will find:

  • appellate court case information (Supreme, Superior and Commonwealth);
  • criminal Common Pleas court case information
  • magisterial district court case information including:
    • civil cases
    • criminal cases
    • traffic cases
    • non-traffic cases
    • landlord/tenant cases

Court case information should not be used in place of a criminal history background check, which can only be provided by the Pennsylvania State Police.

Requesting paper case records from Pennsylvania's Magisterial District Courts

If you would like to request paper case records maintained by a magisterial district court office, please contact the appropriate magisterial district court office directly. If your request is complex, you may be asked by the magisterial district court to fill out a request form.

SEATTLE (AP) — Seattle’s police watchdog agency says city police officers didn’t violate any policies when they wore badges with black bands and kept their body-worn cameras turned off during protests this spring and summer.

The Seattle Times reports the Office of Police Accountability made the determiniation in new reports released Wednesday.

Particularly during the earliest Seattle protests this year in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis, protesters and others had accused officers of trying to conceal police misconduct by not recording their actions and by using black tape on their badges, which protesters said obscured officers’ serial numbers.

However, OPA determined complaints about officers’ badges were unfounded and officers’ recordings were “lawful and proper” per the Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) policy on body-worn cameras in place at the time.

Closed case summaries on the complaints and a dozen others were posted to the OPA’s website Wednesday. As of October, OPA had received 19,000 complaints about officer behavior and SPD’s response to protests and opened 128 investigations.

Opa Closed Case Files

Opa Closed Case Files

Though the complaints about badges and bodycams were not sustained by OPA, both cases led to policy changes in the department, with Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan issuing an executive order in June that SPD create a new policy requiring officers to record protests when officers anticipate they will have contact with the public, according to OPA’s case summaries.

On the badge issue, OPA determined the black tape officers wore over their badges was not meant to conceal officers’ identities but was worn to memorialize recently deceased officers from local law enforcement agencies.

Opa Closed Case Files Case

As for bodvy cameras, OPA researched the City Council’s historical records and determined the city has a longstanding prohibition against photographing peaceful protests for law enforcement purposes that stemmed from news reports in the 1960s and 1970s that Seattle police had maintained files on community leaders and civil rights advocates.