Opinion
2655
December 24, 2002.
Judgment, Supreme Court, New York County (Walter Tolub, J.), entered January 4, 2002, which granted respondent Police Department's motion to dismiss petitioner's Freedom of Information Law application, and dismissed the petition, unanimously affirmed, without costs.
Pro Se, for petitioner-appellant.
Helen P. Brown, for respondent-respondent.
Before: NARDELLI, J.P., SAXE, SULLIVAN, ROSENBERGER, ELLERIN, JJ.
If petitioner was dissatisfied with respondent Police Department's September 1996 response to his November 1995 request for all police reports relating to his 1993 arrest, he was required, in order to preserve his right to judicial review, to exhaust his administrative remedies by filing an administrative appeal within 30 days (see Matter of McGriff v. Bratton, 293 A.D.2d 401). Respondent represents that its review of petitioner's FOIL file indicates that no such appeal was taken. The application court was entitled to rely on this representation in finding that petitioner did not take an administrative appeal, "particularly since the petitioner failed to offer a factual basis for his claim to the contrary" (Matter of Calvin K. v. DeFrancesco, 200 A.D.2d 619, lv denied 83 N.Y.2d 756). Moreover, belated judicial review of respondent's 1996 response cannot be based on petitioner's second request, in July 2000, for the same records, albeit more specifically described (see McGriff, 293 A.D.2d 401). In any event, assuming that petitioner's July 2000 request and respondent's November 2000 response thereto involved different records from those requested and provided in 1995 and 1996, there is no evidence that petitioner took an administrative appeal of the 2000 response.
THIS CONSTITUTES THE DECISION AND ORDER OF THE SUPREME COURT, APPELLATE DIVISION, FIRST DEPARTMENT.