The long lasting FOIA battle for historical records related to police accountability within the Chicago Police Department made its way to the Illinois Supreme Court. The arguments in front of the Illinois Supreme Court stem from the Chicago Police Department failing to respond within the 5 days required by law to a request for records under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. By law this failure eliminates the ability of the CPD to claim the request is overly burdensome. An exemption that is routinely used by public bodies across Illinois to get out from under the law’s requirements.

In this case specifically a lawyer filed a request for historical police accountability records ion Chicago. The request spanned multiple decades and included tens of thousands of pages of records at a minimum. After the CPD eventually got around to denying the request because it was overly burdensome lathe lawyer filed used in Illinois courts. At the trial level the lawyer won access but the appellate court reversed that decision which is why this case made it to the Illinois Supreme Court.

This sordid case also includes the city offering Charles Green the man whose name is on the request and whose supposedly is trying to access these records to clear his name for a crime he says he was wrongly convicted of, $500,000 to drop the case. In the end Green never got his money and depending on how the Court rules he may not get his records either.

Also on the show today we cover

• Fox 32 Chicago exploiting violence in Chicago to frame a multimillion dollar donation from a Illinois based billionaire to a University of Chic ago think tank as fighting gun violence in Chicago when it has nothing to do with gun violence at all.
  

• Governor Pritzker signing a bill that is as weak and useless on creating an alternative response system rather than sending cops to crimes that don’t require them to be there as it can be.