FOIA requests by Christopher Hansen, Urbana IL

While preparing this letter over the past few months, I made a number of FOIA requests, most of which were denied.  Here are the records:

A FOIA request was sent to the Champaign County Jail asking for a list of individuals who had worked for the jail over the past four years.  The request also asked for recent video from the jail security cameras, as well as all reports regarding any deaths that occurred in the jail during the past four years.  Nancy Griffin, the jail FOIA Officer, first granted herself a 5 day extension.  Then Griffin refused to send any video at all, making the same claim she did 3 years ago about the security of the facility. This time, however, she would not even send video of the sally port or intake room, and she claimed it is their policy never to release any video to the public (this is either a lie, or a new, more restrictive policy at the jail).  Griffin denied my request for jail death reports, claiming both that the request was too “voluminous” and that ChampaignCounty doesn’t actually produce any internal documents when a death occurs in their jail.  Griffin advised me to contact the Illinois State Police because they would be more able to fill such a request.  I did eventually get an impartial list of jail employees, but it was a printed and scanned spreadsheet file with misaligned columns, making searching impossible.  When I told Griffin that I needed the original spreadsheet file, she just sent another pdf variation.

Curious about Nancy Griffin’s affinity for denying FOIA requests in regards to the Champaign County Jail, a request was sent (by a different requester) for all of the Champaign County Jail FOIA requests and responses from the last 5 years.  The goal was to determine to what extent the Champaign County FOIA Staff were legally or illegally denying FOIA requests.  One might think that if any documents are easy to produce, it would be the very documents kept by the FOIA Officers themselves.  However, this request was fully denied by Lt. Curt Apperson because it was “unduly burdensome.”  Apperson went on to argue that providing data on 2,439 FOIA requests “would require a plethora of employee hours to complete.” 

On the advice of Nancy Griffin, a FOIA request was sent to the Illinois State Police asking for any reports in regards to deaths that have occurred at the Champaign County Jail during the past 4 years. Erin Davis, the Illinois State Police FOIA Officer, waited 6 business days to reply (the legal maximum is 5 days), only to grant themselves a 5 day extension.  Then Erin Davis fully denied my request, claiming that the “the burden on the public body outweighs the public interest.”

I continued to press Nancy Griffin about getting copies of death reports, even appealing to the Office of the Attorney General.  Griffin continued to claim that it would bean incredibly burdensome task to copy all of the death papers, and I would have to pay for the copies.  I directed Griffin to produce whatever number of pages from each death report that would not represent a “voluminous request” and that I did not want paper copies, but digital files.  I received no response from Griffin, but magically, a CD from the Sheriff’s Office showed up in my mailbox three days later, containing full copies of the death reports.  Curiously, the time/date attributes on some of the files predated my original FOIA request, and many of the files have dates from before Griffin officially denied my request.  Barring some unlikely digital error, it seems most or all of these digital files already existed during the time when Griffin was trying to convince me that she could not reasonably fill my request.

I sent a FOIA request to the Champaign Police Department asking for the video and audio from the Jennifer Ryan interview performed by Officer Bradley J Krauel wherein Ryan lied about her stolen items and tried to change her story.  Champaign Police denied this FOIA request, claiming that Jennifer Ryan’s “right to privacy outweighs any legitimate public interest in obtaining the information.” Again, I appealed the decision to the Public Access Counselor at theIllinois Attorney General’s Office, and I even got a response from Assistant Attorney General Sarbani Piya Mukherjeebut indicating that she would be reviewing the case.  However, 3 weeks later I still have not received a follow up from her.

I sent a FOIA request to the City of Champaign, asking for all emails sent or received by Mayor Don Gerard during the past 4 years.  I wanted to see if he had any contact with the Champaign Police Officers involved in the incident.  Sally Graning, City Legal Assistant, provided emails from the past year only.  When I asked why the emails from 2014 through 2017 had not be provided, it was explained to me by Assistant City Attorney Laura Hall that “with 500 employees,we get billions of e-mails,” so emails are only retained for one year.  I find it unlikely that the average City of Champaign employee receives 10 million emails per year, so my conclusion is that the City of Champaign destroys files after one year so that they are less prone to public review.

I also became curious at what rate the City of Champaign Staff were legally or illegally denying FOIA requests, so I sent a FOIA request to the Champaign Police Department asking for copies of all FOIA requests and responses from the last 5 years.  The City of Champaign did not raise objection to my request, which produced 10,869 FOIA results (more than 4 times what the Champaign Jail had refused to hand over).  Unfortunately, the City failed to provide the actual text of the requests (which I did ask for).  What they did provide was dozens of Excel spreadsheets containing just the names and dates of the FOIA requests.  That may have been acceptable if I could at least see to what extent the requests were granted or denied.  Unfortunately, before transmitting the files, someone stripped out multiple columns of data from the spreadsheets (including data on if the request was filled or denied). The City also records data on the type of file requested and how the FOIA request was transmitted.  I know this because whomever deleted all of this data was not careful and left small sections intact.  I cannot explain why someone would delete all of this data – there certainly is not a FOIA exemption that allows for this.

I sent a FOIA request to the Champaign County State Attorney’s Office, requesting my own discovery file (of which the prosecutor would have a copy).  The State Attorney’s Office (which definitely is subject to FOIA) ignored my request.

In the past 3 years I have made about 2 dozen FOIA requests in total.  Most of these requests were either wholly denied, or mostly or partially denied.  I have made multiple attempts at appealing decisions of denial to Sarah Pratt, Public Access Counselor at the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, but none have been fruitful.  My experience is that the Public Access Counselor unilaterally sides with the public entity denying the request.  In general, it seems the FOIA Officers representing the public entities have a strong motivation to restrict any information going out to the public, and will do whatever they can (including simply ignoring requests) to avoid compliance.  Even in situations where records are given, an effort is made to give as incomplete an answer as possible, as though they are just trying to make a show that the request has been answered.  Another frustration is that frequently the FOIA Officers will start with clean digital files, print them out, then scan them into a fuzzy pdf file which cannot be indexed or searched, and is harder to read.  I cannot think of a good reason to do this, and to me it seems they are going through extra steps simply to dilute the usefulness of the data and/or bolster the argument that filling a request is “unduly burdensome.”