In an unsurprising piece of news, the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police fought tooth and nail to keep misconduct records secret.
Honestly, we need more Jamie Kalvens and dedicated attorneys who will work with them in states and cities of every size.
Most news organizations now lack the cash to take on FOIA lawsuits. That, somehow, has to change too. While there are a relatively large number of organizations working on federal FOIA, state FOIA is sadly neglected.
That ruling came from a lawsuit filed by South Side activist and journalist Jamie Kalven, who was pursuing police misconduct records. As a result of that litigation and a second lawsuit, several lists were generated with the names of officers who amassed the most complaints from around 2001 into December 2008.
The records showed the city rarely handed out punishment to the officers who were listed. Among the most complained-against officers, the records revealed, were those from one of the most scandal-plagued police units in the city’s history, the Special Operations Section, which disbanded in the 2000s after several of its cops abused and robbed citizens for their own financial gain.
In a separate lawsuit, the Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times later filed FOIAs requesting police misconduct records going back to 1967, when complaint records were first kept. CPD was days away from releasing the information in 2014 when the FOP filed a lawsuit and emergency motion with the Cook County Circuit Court claiming that making it public would violate the union’s collective bargaining agreement with the city, which required any disciplinary records five years old to be destroyed.
Read the whole story, it’s worth it. www.chicagotribune.com/...