In a decision that could have wide-ranging implications, a state apellate court has ruled that internal affairs records of police departments are public documents that should be available for anyone to read.
The decision came in a case involving an allegation of excessive force filed against a Sangamon County sheriff's deputy.
"Whether he used excessive force or otherwise committed misconduct during an investigation or arrest is not his private business," the court ruled. "Not every scrap of paper that enters a personnel file necessarily is personal information.”
The Springfield State Journal-Register reports that the court also said "the results of internal investigations don’t matter: If someone complains about an officer’s conduct in the course of his official duties, the investigative reports are public records."
“That a complaint against a deputy sheriff is ‘unfounded’ is nothing more than a conclusion of the sheriff’s office: in response to the complaint, the public body investigated itself,’” Judge Thomas Appleton wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. “If the Act allowed a public body to deny access to complaints that it deemed to be unfounded, defeating the Act would be as easy as declaring a complaint to be unfounded.”
Sangamon County Sheriff Neil Williamson, the defendant, told the SJR that he was surprised by the ruling and didn't yet know if he wold appeal to the state supreme court. The case could go from there directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Public records advocates were surprised - happily - by the ruling too.
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“Records of police misconduct have been very difficult for the public to access, and this decision makes clear that those records, to the extent that they deal with misconduct in an officer’s role as an officer, should be made public,” said Craven, the acting director of the Illinois Press Association.
Or, in the words of SJR commenter Nimzoman: "Imagine that. What a cop does on duty isn't his private business."
Steve Rhodes is the proprietor of The Beachwood Reporter, a Chicago-centric news and culture review.
