When Larry Young started requesting records from police, he just wanted to find out what had happened to his daughter, Molly. More than six years after the 21-year-old was found shot to death in her ex-boyfriend’s Carbondale apartment, Young is still fighting law enforcement agencies for records under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, or […]
Read More… from Citizens Count on the Illinois Freedom of Information Act but Keep Getting Shut Out
A local activist has filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Public Schools, claiming the District has dodged Freedom of Information Act requests for records related to the ouster of former Blaine Elementary School Principal Troy LaRaviere.
“Government agencies stonewall the public because they think they can get away with it. They can't,” said Nick Burt, the plaintiff in the suit. “If CPS is terminating educators because they are critical of the mayor's wasteful and ineffective school privatization agenda, the public has the right to know.”
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Read More… from Activist Sues Chicago Public Schools For Records Of Troy LaRaviere’s Ouster
Senior members of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration received and sent emails about the video of the police shooting of Laquan McDonald long before the mayor said he was fully briefed, emails obtained by NBC5 News show.
The emails were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and show that the mayor’s chief of staff, deputy chief of staff and top press aides were included in email chains.
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Read More… from City hall emails show trail to top Emanuel aides
The Chicago Police Department violated the state's Freedom of Information Act by refusing to release a video of a white police officer fatally shooting an African-American teen to a newspaper, according to a recent opinion from the Illinois Attorney General's Office.
The five-page ruling on Nov. 6 was made public one day before a Cook County judge is scheduled to decide whether to make public the police car dashboard video of Laquan McDonald's shooting.
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Read More… from AG says Chicago police shooting video should have been made public
In 1788, revolutionary leader Patrick Henry said: “The liberties of people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”
That basic democratic principle is still important more than 200 years later.
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Read More… from BGA takes Rosemont to court in fight over Freedom of Information Act
Embattled professor Steven Salaita has filed a lawsuit against the University of Illinois to force the campus to hire him and compensate him for lost income and damages to his reputation.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court of the Northern District of Illinois.
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HB 3796 will help ease the burden on public bodies when responding to large Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and will allow requesters to be directed to websites for information already posted online.
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From WICS.com: A judge has ruled in favor of ABC Newschannel 20 and other media outlets in a Freedom of Information Act case surrounding some Springfield Police internal affairs files.
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The city is ordered to release the documents ABC Newschannel 20 requested. As soon as we receive them, we will report on them.
Visit WICS.com for more.
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Read More… from Judge orders city to release police internal affairs files
From Daily Herald: Prospect Heights Mayor Nick Helmer announced Monday that Freedom of Information requests are costing the city so much that he has ordered the names of all requesters and what they asked for posted on the city’s website.
The list is under City Services>Administration>FOIA on the city’s website, prospect-heights.il.us. The city charged the Water Fund $3,452 for FOIA processing in August, although it was not clear what period that covered.
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From Press-citizen.com:
The Press-Citizen was one of several media outlets in August who made a public records request from the University of Iowa for the application records of James Holmes — the University of Colorado neuroscience student suspected of the July mass shooting in Aurora, Colo.
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Read More… from Universities inconsistent on student privacy
