Test three — the tapes: South Bend's litigation, and Mishawaka's smaller records fights

2012–2026 — the boundary drawn, then the home record

The boundary: The famous tapes litigation of this region is South Bend's, and this addendum does not move it. The recorded line ending 6031, Communications Director Karen DePaepe, Chief Darryl Boykins, five cassettes and eight conversations, litigation running since 2012 through the state and federal courts and a Seventh Circuit remand on the Indiana Wiretap Act — all of it is the South Bend Police Department's record and another city's file. Mishawaka's entire connection is a venue: the case's later proceedings sat before a St. Joseph Superior Court judge in a Mishawaka courtroom. A fight does not change its city because its judge sits across the line, and the police-tapes test for Mishawaka is negative. No wiretap, recordings or tapes litigation against the Mishawaka Police Department stands in the court or press record searched.

What Mishawaka's records fights actually are: The department's documented fights over records are public-access fights, decided not by courts but by the Indiana Public Access Counselor, and they are printed here whole at opinion strength. In South Bend Tribune v. Mishawaka Police Department, 20-FC-6 (2020) — complaint filed by managing editor Cory Havens after the department's handling of records around a fatal accident of 31 December 2019 — the Counselor held against the department: the Access to Public Records Act requires law-enforcement agencies to include accidents in the daily log, and MPD had excluded car crashes not involving a crime. In 16-FC-64 (4 May 2016), arising from a redacted release about a student who left Hums Elementary unattended, the Counselor found no violation. And in 22-FC-73 (11 July 2022), reporter Marek Mazurek sought the factual basis for former Assistant Chief Bryan Fox's five months of paid administrative leave (from November 2021) and his retirement effective 5 April 2022; the department answered that Fox had retired voluntarily while on leave, so no disclosable factual basis existed. The Counselor's opinion declined the department's logic in general — administrative leave can be punitive, five months is "nothing short of a five-month paid vacation on the taxpayers' dime" if not investigatory, and a resignation under an ultimatum is not voluntary — and concluded conditionally: the city "should reevaluate its denial"; if the leave and departure were disciplinary in nature, a factual basis must be provided on request. No further disposition stands in the record reached.

The three tests, printed working: (1) Documented — yes, in the Counselor's published opinions. (2) Genuinely contested — yes, in 20-FC-6 and 22-FC-73 both, charge and answer on the record. (3) City-significant — at the smaller size: a daily-log practice ordered corrected in principle, and a personnel-records denial sent back for re-evaluation; no office, policy or building changed on this record beyond the log itself. These are records fights, honestly so called — they are not a tapes case, and this addendum does not promote them into one.

Sources:

1. Indiana Public Access Counselor, advisory opinions 20-FC-6 (2020), 16-FC-64 (4 May 2016) and 22-FC-73 (11 July 2022) (in.gov/pac) — the three Mishawaka Police Department matters, read whole.
2. Redress South Bend, December 2025–February 2026 — the South Bend tapes litigation's course and Mishawaka venue, boundary material.
3. Searches of court and press records for recordings or wiretap litigation against the Mishawaka Police Department, run November 2026 — negative, as printed.