Private investigators and attorneys requesting public records? Threats work best.
David Cuillier, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Arizona ran two expirements:
In the first experiment, in October 2007, Cuillier mailed public records requests on behalf of the journalist to the 104 city and county police agencies in Arizona. Half got a friendly worded letter and the other half received a terse, legalistic letter that threatened litigation for noncompliance. The threatening letter is provided online by the Student Press Law Center and is used by thousands of journalists.
The student journalist, who gathered the records for a story, recorded whether each agency responded as required by law, how soon the agency responded, whether the agency provided the records, how much the agency charged for photocopies as well as other details.
Of the agencies that received the friendly letter, half responded. Of the agencies that received the threatening letter, two-thirds responded. The threatening letter also resulted in a faster response, more compliance with the request and lower copy fees.
Overall, 42 percent of the police agencies didn't respond to either letter, a violation of public records law.
In a second study, in March 2008, another journalism student working on a story requested school superintendent contracts and high-school football coach contracts from all school districts in the state. Cuillier mailed the same friendly letter to a third of the districts, a neutral letter to a third, and the same threatening letter to a third of the districts, randomly assigned.
While we would like to think that laws work, the reality is that the public records process is arbitrary and broken, based on the whims of record custodians and officials who may or may not adhere to the law or respond in a timely fashion. At the state and local level, on average police agencies will illegally deny a valid records request for incident reports 71 percent of the time. Florida court clerks interviewed for a study said they deny valid records requests if they feel the person doesn’t deserve it. This behavior exists at the federal level, as well. A study of records requests in Canada show that requests from journalists and politically sensitive requesters are more likely to be denied and delayed than requests from other people. The FOIA process causes a wall of paranoia and mistrust between requester and agency, sometimes resulting in a contest of wills and psychological warfare. This is not beneficial to agencies or requesters.
Links: http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2010/031810cuillier.pdf
http://uanews.org/node/34334