Police misconduct files must be
made public, court rules
BY FRANK MAIN
The Chicago Police Department
can no longer keep misconduct records secret, a state appeals court has ruled.
The Illinois Freedom of
Information Act doesn’t exempt “CR files,” which consist of misconduct
complaints against officers and documents created during the investigations,
the court found Monday.
The appeals court also found
that “RL” files are open to the public. Those files identify police officers
who have accumulated the most misconduct complaints. At issue were two RL files
that named officers with the most complaints between 2001-2006 and 2002-2008.
University of Chicago law
professor Craig Futterman hailed the ruling, saying: “I really do think this is
a watershed moment in Illinois in terms of police transparency and
accountability.”
Shannon Breymaier, a
spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department, said the city plans to ask the
Illinois Supreme Court to review the decision.
Jamie Kalven, an independent
journalist and community activist, had filed a Freedom of Information request
asking the Chicago Police Department to provide him with the Repeater Lists
(RL) files as well as Complaint Register (CR) files involving five officers,
Futterman said.
In 2009, the U.S. 7th Circuit
Court of Appeals ruled against Kalven because the information he was seeking
was part of a federal misconduct lawsuit. Third parties like Kalven don’t have
legal standing to become involved in a lawsuit once the plaintiff and defendant
settle the case and agree to seal the police misconduct files, the federal
appeals court ruled.
But the state appeals court
said those files are a matter of public record under the state Freedom of
Information Act.
The state appeals court
returned Kalven’s request to a lower court to decide what information the
police department can black out from the CR and RL files because of privacy concerns.
Futterman said he doesn’t have
a problem with the department redacting personal information about officers and
third parties — such as telephone numbers, Social Security numbers and the
like.
He also doesn’t have a problem
with the department blacking out the names of the people who file the
complaints and witnesses who are interviewed during the investigations.
But he said Kalven should
oppose any attempt by the department to block the public from seeing
recommendations by the police Internal Affairs Bureau and the Independent
Police Review Authority — the bodies that investigate complaints of police
misconduct — about how much discipline should be imposed against officers for
sustained complaints.
Futterman added that the
appeals court clearly stated that the names of the officers and the allegations
of misconduct can’t be redacted.
“Police officers do not have
recognized privacy interests in complaints of misconduct,” Futterman said. “We
entrust cops with a lot of power — power to use force and even to shoot and
kill. They have to have that power to do their jobs. But with that power comes
responsibility. ... This will allow the public to evaluate whether the process
of these complaints being investigated is a good process that we can trust in.”
The court battle over the
records stems from a 2004 lawsuit that Diane Bond filed against the Chicago
Police Department claiming she was abused by officers. Futterman was her
attorney and submitted evidence that less than 1 percent of misconduct
investigations resulted in a complaint being sustained.Bond settled her lawsuit
for $150,000, records show.
