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Attorney general seeks to expand FOIA requests
Frequent readers of this column will know the ongoing dilemma the Lodge and its mem- bers face with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The infamous file destruction TRO granted by Judge Flynn in November, 2014, (which currently remains at the Il- linois Supreme Court) started with the
FOIA requests made by the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune. Reg-
ularly, the city receives a myriad of FOIA requests
from news outlets, community groups and citi-
zens seeking disciplinary records from the men and women of the Lodge. Unfortunately, the courts already have ruled that CR files (if they exist) amount to public records and must be turned over.
Earlier this year, on Jan. 28, CNN made a FOIA request to the Chicago Police Department seeking “all emails related to” a particular police shooting “from Police De-
partment email accounts and personal email accounts where business was discussed” for a number of specified officers within the particular range of dates. The Depart- ment responded by providing nearly 1,000 documents generated from Department email accounts, explaining
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the methods used by CPD to search for the respon- sive records. However, the city informed CNN that it had not conducted (nor would it conduct) a search of the officers’ privately owned, personal email accounts. For once, the city responded the
right way!
As part of the appeal process, CNN took the matter to the Attorney General’s Office. As part of its investiga- tion, the Attorney General’s Public Access Bureau asked the city to explain why it failed to comply fully with the FOIA request. In its response, the city stated that:
Under...FOIA, only “public records” are subject to dis- closure, and that, in order for a record to constitute a
18 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ OCTOBER 2016