Delaware opened up access to some police misconduct records — but still denies requests for basic police data / March 14, 2024 by kaitlynn cassady

This story is being co-published by the Delaware Call and the Invisible Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit public accountability journalism organization.

How easy should it be for a police officer who has left one department due to misconduct to get a job with another? And does the public have a right to know about that officer’s checkered past?

Despite passage of two police reform bills in 2023, Delaware remains one of just 15 states that keeps data about police officers that the state has certified, and where they work, secret, according to a nationwide reporting project.

This makes it impossible for citizens and journalists alike to monitor the state’s oversight of so-called “wandering officers” who switch departments only to continue patterns of aggressive behavior toward civilians.

Now, Delaware’s culture of police secrecy is being challenged in court. A lawsuit filed last week on behalf of Delaware Call is seeking data held by the state Police Officer Standards and Training Commission (POST), which tracks all law enforcement officers currently working in Delaware, and which agencies employ and have employed them.

It’s some of the most basic information about public employees that most states around the country release — including Delaware’s neighbors Maryland and New Jersey.

Read the full article

Inside the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Brady lists / March 14, 2024 by kaitlynn cassady

For more than two decades, Cook County has boasted the infamous reputation of the being wrongful conviction capital of the U.S.—both a statistical fact, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, and the result of ongoing public revelations since the 1990s, when the Reader’s John Conroy first exposed Jon Burge and his crew torturing suspects into making false confessions, through to today’s waves of mass exonerations of the victims of Ronald Watts and his crew.

At the heart of many wrongful convictions is the violation of a legal obligation on the part of police and prosecutors to provide evidence to defendants that might help their case. This violation can look like anything from withholding reports about conflicting eyewitness accounts to a failure to disclose that the investigating officer has a history of dishonesty or brutality.

This obligation has been outlined in several U.S. Supreme Court decisions, starting in 1963 with Brady v. Maryland and followed in 1972 by Giglio v. United States. These decisions state that the prosecution is required to turn over any evidence that would be favorable to the defendant, including information that calls into question the credibility of the prosecution’s witnesses—such as police officers or other investigators. Further Supreme Court decisions, the Illinois Code of Criminal Procedure, and a rule of the Illinois Supreme Court add even more weight to these requirements.

Despite a history of expanding obligations on prosecutors and police, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO) and Chicago Police Department (CPD) fail to comply with Brady in several ways, according to interviews with experts, successive outside reviews, and an investigation into the agencies’ practices by the Invisible Institute and the Reader.

Read the full investigation

trina reynolds-tyler & Sarah Conway on The Sit Down with Shawnee Dez / March 1, 2024 by kaitlynn cassady

In the latest episode of Chicago Reader’s The Sit Down, Shawnee Dez speaks with Trina T and Sarah Conway about the two-year investigation they conducted to get a closer look into the ways that CPD handles missing persons cases and the disproportionate impact on Black women and girls in Chicago.

This episode comes on the leap day 02.29.24, a day Dez consider to be the intersection between Black History Month and Women's History Month and for that what better time to talk about an issue that is plaguing Black women at alarming rates.

For the contents of this episode, Dez offers a TRIGGER WARNING as some of what you may hear can be difficult. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, or may be missing please reach out to a trusted community member and professionals to seek the help you/they deserve.

Listen now

Virginia Is In The Minority Of States Keeping Even The Most Basic Police Data Secret / February 9, 2024 by kaitlynn cassady

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police, Virginia lawmakers took action on reports that state policing regulators failed to strip the police certifications from dozens of officers with criminal convictions ranging from embezzlement to possession of child pornography and sexual assault.

The Legislature passed a bill in October 2020 requiring police departments to complete internal investigations even if officers resign during them, and to provide any records of misconduct to new prospective employers for officers; strengthening the requirements for agencies to send reports of misconduct to state regulators; expanding the offenses for which officers can be stripped of their certifications; and requiring a state board to write a statewide standard of conduct for policing.

“This will keep them from job jumping,” said state Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, one of the main sponsors.

Three years later, barely anything has changed. The statewide code of conduct draft has languished in the review stage for over a hundred days past its deadline. While the state Criminal Justice Services Board (CJSB) has increased the number of officers it decertifies, critics accuse the board of inconsistently applying its expanded abilities to decertify officers.

And now, the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS), which houses the CJSB, refuses to publicly release basic data about police employment — data which it previously released, spurring this new reform law in the first place.

At the same time, Gov. Glenn Youngkin has introduced programs to encourage officers to move departments or even across state lines to Virginia — the exact “job jumping” that Sen. Locke warned against.

Read the full article

After fatal shootings, Rantoul police recommended more training. They just sent one officer to a gun range / February 6, 2024 by kaitlynn cassady

After Rantoul’s first-ever fatal police shootings in 2023, the Rantoul Police Department conducted internal reviews of both incidents.

In those internal reviews, the Use of Force Review Board — made up of different members in each incident — recommended further training for both the department and individual officers after absolving all but one officer of wrongdoing in both cases: the February 2023 shooting of 21-year-old Azaan Lee, and the June shooting of 18-year-old Jordan Richardson.

The Rantoul Police Department’s Use of Force Review Board recommended several department-level trainings, including reality-based training under stress, “force-on-force” training, using control tactics from multiple positions and a “refresher” on the department’s use of force policy.

However, Deputy Chief Justin Bouse confirmed the department has not implemented any of these trainings based on information obtained through open records requests from Invisible Institute and IPM News.

Read the full article

Champaign hired Police Chief Timothy Tyler despite disciplinary past and allegations of misconduct / January 29, 2024 by kaitlynn cassady

When Timothy Tyler applied for the Champaign Police Chief position in 2022, the Champaign City Council was given his “resumes and cover letters and recommendations — things of that nature,” according to Council member Davion Williams.

New documents obtained through open records requests by Invisible Institute and IPM Newsroom suggest the council was not privy to a more detailed accounting of Tyler’s policing history, which is marked by a trail of disciplinary actions and other incidents ranging from suspensions for “unfavorable” conduct while serving with the Illinois State Police to entanglements in several federal civil rights lawsuits.

After receiving information and questions about Tyler’s background and disciplinary history from Invisible Institute and IPM Newsroom, City Council member Davion Williams forwarded the email to City Manager Dorothy Ann David and asked, “Were we aware of these incidents as a city?”

Read the full article

This story is part of a partnership focusing on police misconduct in Champaign County between the Champaign-Urbana Civic Police Data Project of the Invisible Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit public accountability journalism organization, and IPM Newsroom, which provides news about Illinois & in-depth reporting on Agriculture, Education, the Environment, Health, and Politics, powered by Illinois Public Media. This investigation was supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project, which is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University | Medill.

How Chicago Became an Unlikely Leader in Body-Camera Transparency / January 29, 2024 by kaitlynn cassady

A decade ago, the Chicago Police Department drew national outrage after an officer shot and killed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Officials had refused to disclose footage of the murder while officers worked to cover it up. But the fallout from the case has also led to a lesser-known and surprising outcome: The city is now a leader in using body-camera footage to deliver transparency.

Notably, an independent accountability office — not the police department — decides what footage from police shootings and other serious incidents is released to the public. That seemingly straightforward setup, the product of the city’s policing reforms, appears to put Chicago in a league of its own.

Jamie Kalven, a Chicago journalist and advocate who helped reveal what had happened to McDonald, said, “That case changed public expectations and norms in Chicago. Releasing the video became the new expectation.”

Read the full article

Invisible Institute Wins IDA Documentary Awards / December 13, 2023 by kaitlynn cassady

The International Documentary Association hosted their 39th annual awards ceremony last night.

We are thrilled to share that You Didn’t See Nothin, our seven-part audio investigative podcast has won the award for Best Multi-Part Audio Documentary or Series.

Additionally, the short documentary Incident, which is partly based on our team’s investigation into the police killing of Harith Augustus in South Shore in the summer of 2018 has won the Best Short Documentary Award. Our founder Jamie Kalven is credited as a producer.

Watch the livestream

See No Evil: Why Does the Chicago Police Department Tolerate Abusive Racists in Its Ranks? / December 12, 2023 by kaitlynn cassady

I first encountered officer Raymond Piwnicki in the summer of 2001. At the time, the citywide demolition of high-rise public housing was gathering momentum in Chicago. Having recently regained control of the Chicago Housing Authority after a period of federal receivership, the administration of Mayor Richard M. Daley was making a concerted effort to replace its high-rise public housing developments with “mixed income communities.” Among its first actions was to disband the CHA police force, established a decade earlier by the housing authority in an effort to offset the Chicago Police Department’s neglect of its tenants. That, in turn, required beefing up the CPD’s Public Housing Section. While the public housing unit was ramping up, members of the Special Operations Section — an elite unit charged with rooting out, as Daley often put it, “gangs, drugs, and guns” — were deployed to public housing developments. Piwnicki was among them.

The heat in Chicago on July 9, 2001, was blistering. At the Stateway Gardens public housing development, it was the sort of midsummer day that draws tenants and their children outside in hopes of catching a breeze. As adviser to the resident leadership at Stateway, I worked out of an office on the ground floor of a high-rise on South State Street with a small team of residents known as the Neighborhood Conservation Corps. One of our projects — a collaboration with professor Craig Futterman and law students from the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic of the University of Chicago Law School — was to monitor police performance in an effort to improve police-community relations. That afternoon, we were meeting with Futterman and two of his students to discuss an incident that had occurred a few months earlier.

Full article from Jamie Kalven

Investigation reveals flaws in how CPD handles cases of missing Black girls and women / November 29, 2023 by kaitlynn cassady

The reporters on the seven-part series found that Chicago detectives repeatedly brushed off family members’ concerns, mishandled evidence and recorded inaccurate data that made finding missing people harder.

Reset learns more

Arkansas declines to release police officer database, preventing public oversight of problem cops / November 29, 2023 by kaitlynn cassady

When new officials took on the oversight of Arkansas law enforcement officers under Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders early this year, they made keeping bad cops off the street a focus.

They said they adopted new processes and safeguards intended to prevent problem officers from hopping from department to department and have even looked at individuals who may have slipped through the cracks in the past.

But Arkansas remains one of 15 states that keep the identities of its officers private, making public oversight near impossible.

The Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training denied several Advocate public records requests for data from its database of certified law enforcement officers in the state.

The database containing names and information about all Arkansas officers also has private information that is exempt from disclosure, according to commission officials.

Further, spokespeople and attorneys at the agency said that disclosing the names of all the state’s officers could lead to the identification of those working undercover.

Meanwhile, more than 30 other states have made redactions or organized officer certification data in a way that it can be released to a group of news organizations across the U.S. — including Arkansas’ neighbors Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Missouri.

Read the full article here

Learn more about our national data project

Metro Times, Invisible Institute file lawsuit against Michigan State Police for access to records / November 29, 2023 by kaitlynn cassady

Metro Times and a nonprofit news organization teamed up to file a lawsuit Monday against the Michigan State Police for refusing to disclose public records about the identities of current and former police officers.

The lawsuit, filed in the Michigan Court of Claims by the University of Michigan’s Civil Rights Litigation Initiative, alleges MSP violated the Michigan Freedom of Information Act by refusing to divulge the data.

Among other things, Metro Times and the Invisible Institute requested the names of all certified and uncertified officers in Michigan, along with information about their employment history. The information is held by the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES), which is housed within the MSP.

INVESTIGATIONS

MEDIA

NEWS

POLITICS & GOVERNMENT

Metro Times, Invisible Institute file lawsuit against Michigan State Police for access to records

The request is part of a project to create a national database tracking “wandering cops” who engage in misconduct

By Steve Neavling on Tue, Nov 28, 2023 at 6:00 am

SEND A NEWS TIP

TT News Agency / Alamy Stock Photo

Michigan State Police on patrol in Lansing in 2021.

Metro Times and a nonprofit news organization teamed up to file a lawsuit Monday against the Michigan State Police for refusing to disclose public records about the identities of current and former police officers.

Among other things, Metro Times and the Invisible Institute requested the names of all certified and uncertified officers in Michigan, along with information about their employment history. The information is held by the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES), which is housed within the MSP.

The request for the data was part of a project to create a national database to identify, track, and report on “wandering officers” who move from department to department after engaging in misconduct.

So far, 34 states have disclosed at least the names of certified officers, in response to requests made by a national coalition of news organizations.

Metro Times and the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit based in Chicago, requested the data on Jan. 3. On March 8, MSP declined to provide the identities of certified and uncertified officers, along with other information, arguing “the public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy.”

Read the full article here

Learn more about this national data project

Chicago Reader: What happens when your loved one goes missing? / November 14, 2023 by kaitlynn cassady

Over the last two years, reporters Sarah Conway (City Bureau) and Trina Reynolds-Tyler (Invisible Institute) investigated how the Chicago Police Department (CPD) handles missing person cases and found a pattern of neglect and discrepancies in the police response.

Black people make up about two-thirds of missing persons cases in Chicago, according to the last two decades of police data, and the vast majority of these cases are for Black children under the age of 21. In particular, Black girls and women between the ages of 10 and 20 make up nearly one-third of all Chicago missing persons cases despite comprising only two percent of the city population as of 2020.

From 2000 to 2021, Chicago Police categorized 99.8 percent of missing person cases as “not criminal in nature.” Our seven-part investigation calls this number into question. City Bureau and the Invisible Institute identified 11 cases that were miscategorized as “closed non-criminal” in the missing persons data despite being likely homicides — more than doubling the number of official homicides in missing persons police data. These 11 cases were part of a much larger pattern of neglect.

Read the full article in the Chicago Reader

Explore our full investigation at chicagomissingpersons.com

New documents show Rantoul Police Department cleared main officers of wrongdoing in 2023 fatal shootings / November 10, 2023 by kaitlynn cassady

After two fatal officer-involved shootings in early 2023, the Rantoul Police Department conducted internal investigations into the use of force during those incidents.

Newly obtained documents show the department cleared three officers involved in the city’s first-ever fatal police shootings — including the two who pulled the trigger — and found one officer violated department policies.

In February, Officer Jose Aceves shot and killed 21-year-old Azaan Lee, and in June, Officer Jerry King shot and killed 18-year-old Jordan Richardson in the village of 12,000 north of Champaign-Urbana.

The internal investigations into the shootings occurred in the weeks following the incidents. But the findings were not made public on the department’s transparency site until Nov. 9 — 11 days after the Invisible Institute and Illinois Public Media requested the documents through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The documents reveal that, while Rantoul police absolved both Aceves and King of wrongdoing, the department’s Use of Force Review Board made almost identical recommendations for additional department-level training in both cases.

Read the full article here

Emails reveal UIPD’s plan to use surveillance to monitor campus crime in real time / November 8, 2023 by kaitlynn cassady

The University of Illinois Police Department has requested nearly a million dollars in federal funding to open a real-time crime center.

The center would enable police officers to receive more information from a growing number of surveillance methods while responding to incidents, according to UIPD spokesperson Pat Wade.

If the real-time operators find anything of “evidentiary value,” that information can be communicated to the officers, he said.

“We are already using [automatic license plate readers] and we think a real-time crime center would enhance our ability to use those in real-time,” Wade said.

The center would also draw information from drones and other surveillance technologies that have already been purchased, including digital evidence recovery equipment for investigations and dogs trained to detect explosives. UIPD has also purchased additional training courses for officers and emergency management equipment for the Campus Emergency Operations Center that connects police with other first responders.

Read the full article here

Arbitrating police terminations could result in a ‘decade of police impunity’ / November 7, 2023 by kaitlynn cassady

A potential change in the way Chicago police officers appeal disciplinary charges could result in secret hearings, more officers getting off the hook for misconduct, and an overall breakdown in the city’s newly strengthened police oversight infrastructure.

That’s according to city officials, from Mayor Brandon Johnson to Inspector General Deborah Witzburg to police board chair Ghian Foreman, and experts who worked on the consent decree between the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the Illinois Attorney General’s office.

The change would allow most officers facing serious disciplinary charges—terminations and suspensions longer than a year—to have their cases heard by an arbitrator, rather than the Chicago Police Board (CPB). The CPB currently holds public trial-like hearings for officers facing serious discipline, and the board members consider those cases during monthly public meetings.

Arbitration proceedings, by contrast, are conducted in secret, and the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 (FOP), which represents rank-and-file CPD officers, will have a hand in selecting the arbitrators that hear these disciplinary cases.

Read full article

Illustration by Mads Horwath for Chicago Reader

Chicago police’s pending contract will subvert advances in accountability - Chicago Tribune / October 27, 2023 by kaitlynn cassady

A defining moment is at hand for the administration of Mayor Brandon Johnson. Having campaigned as a strong advocate for reimagining public safety, the mayor now confronts a test of his resolve on issues of police accountability and transparency.

The city’s pending contract with the Fraternal Order of Police contains a provision that, if ratified, will strike at the foundations of the oversight system erected in the years since reform of the Chicago Police Department became an urgent civil priority in the aftermath of the police murder of Laquan McDonald.

The provision at issue is the result of an arbitrator’s ruling that endorsed FOP’s effort to protect officers who have been found to have committed the most serious offenses — for which the discipline sought is termination or suspension of more than a year — to escape accountability by sending their cases to closed-door hearings before FOP-friendly arbitrators, rather than having their cases adjudicated before the Police Board, as is current practice.

Read the full Op-Ed by Jamie Kalven and Craig Futterman

A Note on Collective Commitment from Our New Executive Director / October 24, 2023 by kaitlynn cassady

My name is Andrew Fan. I’m a data journalist and the new executive director of the Invisible Institute.

In my five years at the Invisible Institute, including serving as the interim director for the last year, I’ve learned that leadership within our organization is not a solitary act. Our team values shared decision-making, striving for collective leadership on projects, drawing in community perspectives about our work, and gathering to talk as an organization before embarking on new initiatives.

This process is central to what makes our work notable and powerful. Our audio team’s collective approach to storytelling is on full display in their most recent podcast, You Didn’t See Nothin. This way of working also sits at the heart of CPDP.co, our groundbreaking police data site built on hundreds of iterative design conversations between technologists, data analysts, lawyers, and dozens of young people who talked to us about what they wanted to know about police in their communities.

As executive director, my role is to help my colleagues pursue projects that are both creative and help build a more just Chicago. This model of leadership emerges directly from the example set by our founder, Jamie Kalven. Jamie’s decades of work as a journalist are grounded in his long-term relationships with the people he reported on, many of them residents of Chicago’s high-rise public housing. Even as he founded an organization, Jamie consistently embodied a way of working that centers on inquiry and honest conversation instead of traditional hierarchy.

This kind of shared decision-making is not always straightforward or simple; it is a constant work in progress.

Last week, I sat in on a listening party for our inaugural audio class for South and West siders. After just four weeks of intensive classes, the students, most of them first-time audio producers, created incredible audio stories that centered people in their lives, ranging from firefighters to artists to elders.

The class was a testament to talented storytellers building their voices in a new medium and also to their dedicated teachers, Erisa Apantaku and Sarah Geis from our audio team.

It was also a testament to our way of working. Our audio team is fresh off completing their second widely-celebrated podcast in just three years. At the same time, they are deeply interested in finding new ways to incorporate collaborative relationships with Chicagoans into their work and to craft models to train a broader set of audio storytellers. I am deeply excited to see what they do next.

Our work is distinct, but it also needs your support to continue. Investing in alternate approaches to storytelling takes resources. Our investigative reporting on wrongful convictions, police use of force, and public records produces real change, but also takes time and patience. If you’ve taken a minute to use our online tools, listened to our narrative podcasts, or read some of our investigative reporting in the last year, I hope you’ll consider making a donation to help us sustain the work. All donations to our narrative opportunity fund through the end of 2023 are matched through a generous gift from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. We deeply appreciate the support.

Champaign Police investigate ‘agency culture’ of not following domestic violence reporting laws / October 10, 2023 by kaitlynn cassady

Champaign resident Rita Conerly called the police at 4:22 p.m. on Oct. 10, 2020, because her former partner — who she lived with for over a decade — was outside her home.

Champaign Police Officer Jonathan Kristensen responded to the call. First, he spoke with the caller, who shares children with her former partner. She told Officer Kristensen that her former partner did not have a driver’s license, but was driving anyway.

Officer Kristensen then asked Conerly if she wanted a present that her former partner, whom she had previously taken out an order of protection against, had brought her daughter.

“That is an insult,” she later told a dispatcher when she called to complain. “That is not a way to serve and/or protect me.”

She said she did not want the present, and Officer Kristensen approached her former partner. After speaking with him for only two minutes, Officer Kristensen said he would “let you guys go on your separate ways,” which the former partner agreed to.

The officer only spoke to Conerly for a minute and a half and left without taking a report, even after she told him the order of protection against her former partner had expired weeks earlier.

When he left, Officer Kristensen notified dispatchers, “Advice given. Spoke w all parties.”

That week, Conerly filed a complaint against the officer who responded to the call. Officer Kristensen failed to follow protocol and protect her from her abuser, she wrote in the complaint.

“He didn’t ask me for my name. He didn’t ask me for any other information for the incident that happened,” she said in an interview. “He did not ask for anything.”

Read the full article

Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition: "Even with new POST database and reforms, Colorado is in the minority of states keeping comprehensive police officer data secret" / October 4, 2023 by kaitlynn cassady

In a new article from the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, journalist Sam Stecklow writes of our ongoing data transparency project. In partnership with a coalition led by Big Local News, we have been working to make police employment history data public. Colorado's refusal to release this information makes it one of just 15 states that keep this information secret, preventing the press and public from being able to monitor "wandering officers" who move from department to department.

In other states where such databases are disclosed, reporters and researchers have shown significant gaps in state oversight systems that have allowed officers with troubled pasts to be shuffled to school district departments and passed around tiny suburban departments. Departments have failed to notify criminal defendants about officers’ histories of misconduct, and officers have continued to work in law enforcement even after criminal convictions. In Florida, researchers showed that wandering officers are not only more likely to be fired at their new departments, but also rack up even more citizen complaints.

Read the full article by Sam