When 17-year-old Laquan McDonald was shot and killed by Chicago police in 2014, some officers there reported that McDonald had “lunged” at them with a knife, and other officers reported that they had been “victims” of McDonald’s aggression.
The only way for the public to know what really happened, was to see the police officers’ dashcam video of the scene. That video was public property, recorded by a public agency with public employees who work for taxpayers. That video belonged to the public.
But the city of Chicago would not turn it over, even after several individuals and organizations filed Freedom of Information Act requests to get it.
The Illinois Freedom of Information Act – or FOIA -- is a state law which says that most everything in a government office belongs to the public, and the public has a right to see most of what that office produces: Documents, videos, letters, memos, notes, reports, and more. That includes the dashcam video of Laquan McDonald’s shooting.
But the city of Chicago balked and forced a fight in court, where – more than a year after the shooting -- a judge finally ordered the city to release the video. The release was a landmark moment in Chicago, as it showed clearly that McDonald did not “lunge” at anyone, and that no police officer could have been considered a “victim.”
NBC 5 Investigates has found that the court fight for that video cost a lot of unnecessary money.
The city of Chicago charged taxpayers $84,516.77 to hire attorneys from outside law firms to help them fight the video release. The city had to pay another $97,500 to reimburse the requestors for their attorney fees, plus a $25,000 penalty.
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All told, Chicago taxpayers were forced to pay $207,017.77 for a video that should have been made available more than a year before, with no legal fight, or massive costs, at all.
And this is not uncommon.
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While individuals and organizations and media outlets file all kinds of FOIA requests, and many of those requests are honored with no problem, NBC 5 Investigates has found hundreds of cases over the past 12 years where a public body did not want to release public documents, and entered into a costly court fight before finally releasing them.
“Any time the government withholds records and goes to court to try to defend that, they’re using taxpayer dollars to try to keep records secret,” Matt Topic, a Chicago attorney with the law firm Loevy & Loevy, who specializes in FOIA cases, told NBC Chicago. He has represented NBC 5 Investigates and many other organizations when a public agency tries to keep its material under wraps.
NBC 5 Investigates filed public records requests for financial records, judgment and settlement documents, and payment records to outside counsel from most Chicago-area governmental bodies.
We found that over the past 12 years public officials have spent at least $13,452,812.92 in taxpayer money, in their unsuccessful efforts to hide public material– material they could have simply turned over in the first place.
For example, in 2015 the Chicago Tribune asked to see the emails and text messages of then-mayor Rahm Emmanuel, which he sent and received as part of his official work. The mayor’s office refused, forcing the Chicago Tribune to go to court, where the city charged taxpayers more than $380,000 to fight a losing cause. The court ordered the material to be made public.
“Too often what happens is government officials are hiding behind FOIA exemptions to try to keep things secret – that would be embarrassing – [but] it doesn’t harm the public to be released,” Topic said. “It only harms public officials who want to keep something secret.
“There’s a lot of money that can be involved, and there are a lot of things the city could better spend money on, rather than keeping records from you," Topic said.
