Under Arizona’s Public Records laws, you may request any kind of existing public record in the custody of the Pima County Attorney’s Office. This means that we do not provide information separate from or about records, and we do not create new records or search databases maintained by other agencies. If you are seeking a statement from our office, please contact info@pcao.pima.gov.

Arizona’s Supreme Court has defined public records as that with a “substantial nexus” with a government agencies’ activities. They do not include documents of a “purely private or personal nature,” even when such documents are held within our office or its systems.

You may be required to pay fees under certain circumstances: a small fee for time and resources spent scanning, printing, or mailing records, and a separate fee for commercial requests.

Pursuant to Pima County Administrative Policy 4-4(V)(D), our office charges $0.35 per page for printed copies of records and $5.00 for compact discs or USB drives containing records. Pima County may charge a further $10.00 per hour for staff time exceeding one hour spent on making print copies of records or scanning paper records to create electronic copies.

Pursuant to A.R.S. § 39-121.03, our office charges a fee to furnish records in response to requests made with a commercial purpose. If you make a commercial request, you are required to provide a statement describing the purpose for which you intend to use the records.

Arizona law defines a commercial purpose as “the use of a public record for the purpose of sale or resale or for the purpose of producing a document containing all or part of the copy, printout or photograph for sale or the obtaining of names and addresses from public records for the purpose of solicitation or the sale of names and addresses to another for the purpose of solicitation or for any purpose in which the purchaser can reasonably anticipate the receipt of monetary gain from the direct or indirect use of the public record.” This does not include use as evidence or research in an action in any judicial or quasi-judicial body.

Charges include (a) a portion of the cost to our office for obtaining the original or copies of the documents, printouts or photographs; (b) a reasonable fee for the cost of time, materials, equipment and personnel in producing such reproduction; and (c) the value of the reproduction on the commercial market as best determined by our office.

If you use records for a commercial purpose other than that indicated in the required statement, you may be subject to damages including commercial fees, attorney fees and costs, or triple actual damages if the commercial use would have caused our office to withhold records.

Many of our requestors seek more than one category of records, covering different topics, dates, or involved persons. We encourage requestors to split large or complex requests such as these into multiple requests to simplify the process of determining what records are responsive.

We are required to redact or withhold certain types of information and records by law. We also redact or withhold some records based on the interests of privacy, confidentiality, or the best interests of the State of Arizona.

Commonly redacted or withheld records include:

• Legally privileged records, such as attorney work product and communications seeking or providing legal advice;
• Personal identifying information as described in A.R.S. § 13-2001(10), including information which can be used to access this information;
• Medical records protected by federal or Arizona law;
• Records or information related to court proceedings under A.R.S. Title 39, articles 4 and 5;
• Images of autopsies, human remains or biomatter;
• Criminal history information obtained through the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS); and
• Names of juveniles and victims of sexual assault or domestic violence.

If you would like any personal identifying information unredacted, please provide a signed statement from the person or persons involved authorizing our office to release this information.

If your request for records includes body-worn camera video (BWC), please note that we use a medium blur due to the time and resources required to review and redact BWC. If you determine that you need specific BWC footage unblurred following release, please let us know which videos you would like individually reviewed.

Our office receives many requests of different sizes and levels of complexity, and at any given time may have dozens of open requests totaling tens of thousands of individual records. Each of these records can vary significantly in size, and the time it takes to review them usually cannot be predicted until we have already begun the review.

Our normal practice is to review requests in chronological order, although we try to dedicate a portion of our time to small requests that can be finished quickly, and we may prioritize some requests if necessary or in the best interests of the State. As the time required to finish reviewing prior requests usually cannot be predicted, we cannot normally estimate when we will complete review of your records. If circumstances permit us to make a confident estimate, we will do so.

Our office handles many different types of records, and it is not always possible to easily identify what records may be responsive to a public records request. We ask that you include as much information as possible to allow us to more effectively determine what records you are interested in. Useful information can include:

• Case and police report numbers;
• Names of involved individuals;
• Dates and locations of relevant events; and
• The specific category or categories of records you would like.

If your request does not include enough information for us to determine what records you are looking for, we will be unable to begin processing your request until we can receive clarification from you.