DETROIT, MI -- If you want records from Detroit police related to officer-involved shootings tracking back to 2010, it won't be easy to come by, VICE News learned during a recent investigation.

In fact, for police-involved shooting records from between 2010 and 2016, the Detroit Law Department, which processes requests for Detroit police, said it would take up to nearly 12 years and cost $77,000 to produce.

The "Detroit Police Department told VICE News it would take up to 3,120 business days and cost at least $77,532 to retrieve police shooting records that other departments made available online for free," VICE News said in a statement issued Monday, Dec. 11.

VICE News submitted open records requests for police-involved shooting data to the nation's 50 largest departments during its recent nine-month investigation into the topic.

VICE Police-involved shooting project

Of those, Detroit proved to be impossible to get information from, at least within the time frame of the investigation.

"Forty-seven agencies (eventually) responded with data sufficient for analysis," VICE said. "Many fought hard to keep the information secret, and some responded to VICE News' requests only under threat of legal action.

"One department sent a CD-ROM containing a single spreadsheet file through the mail. Another wanted to charge VICE News thousands of dollars unless the records were inspected in person."

Detroit Police Sgt. Nicole Kirkwood said the context in which VICE News portrayed the department's response is "clearly not accurate."

She says there was a "whole list of things" the reporter requested.

FOIA response to VICE News:

The Detroit Law Department sent MLive a copy of its response to Brooklyn, New York-based VICE News reporter Carter Sherman.

Based on the response, Sherman asked for records related to every police-involved shooting, fatal and nonfatal, dating back to 2010 that would reveal the following:

incident time and date

location

complaint no.

officer's name (pursuant to privacy concerns)

officer rank

officer race

subject name (pursuant to privacy concerns)

subject race

subject weapon (if any)

outcome of incident (fatality, injury, etc.)

summary or narrative of shooting

While the request was for numerous pieces of information, most -- if not all -- of the requested data appears in a standard police report.

Detroit police track all use-of-force incidents.

The Law Department said in its response that, "due to the scope of your request, the city would incur significant labor costs in retrieving the records responsive to your request ... In order to process your request, it is out understanding that DPD personnel would have to manually search multiple sources ... "

The Sept. 18-dated letter said the hourly cost of the lowest-paid employee capable of compiling the records was $24.85, and the most the employee could devote to the task would be 1-2 hours per day.

The quickest the request could be fulfilled, would be about 6 1/2 years, according to the response.

Further, the letter states the Law Department -- in addition to fees for police to produce the records -- would charge $26.93 per hour for an employee to separate and redact exempt records to data.

MLive has requested further explanation of the high costs from Detroit police and is awaiting response.