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.
Arkansas declines to release police officer database, preventing public oversight of problem cops /
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.
Metro Times, Invisible Institute file lawsuit against Michigan State Police for access to records /
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.
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
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.
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.
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.”
Learn more about this national data project
Chicago Reader: What happens when your loved one goes missing? /
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 /
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.
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.
Emails reveal UIPD’s plan to use surveillance to monitor campus crime in real time /
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.
Arbitrating police terminations could result in a ‘decade of police impunity’ /
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.
Illustration by Mads Horwath for Chicago Reader
Chicago police’s pending contract will subvert advances in accountability - Chicago Tribune /
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.
A Note on Collective Commitment from Our New Executive Director /
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 /
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.”
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.
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" /
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.
You Didn't See Nothin Finalist for Signal Awards /
You Didn’t See Nothin has been nominated in two categories for the Signal Podcasting Awards: Limited Series & Specials - Best Host and Limited Series & Specials - Documentary.
The Signal Awards seeks to honor and celebrate the people and content that raise the bar for podcasting.
Luminaries and leaders within the industry will judge Shows, Limited Series & Specials, Individual Episodes and Branded Shows & Advertising across categories ranging from Best Innovative Audio Experience to Best TV & Film Recap. See all categories here.
You Didn't See Nothin Nominated for Black Podcasting Awards /
You Didn’t See Nothin has been nominated in four categories for Black Podcasting Awards. You Didn’t See Nothin is a finalist in Best Sound Design, Best History Podcast, Best True Crime Podcast, and Best Limited Series Podcast. Winners will be announced via livestream on September 24th at 1:00pm CDT. Watch the livestream here.
Black Pod Awards emerged from a Twitterstorm before we all knew what a global pandemic meant in real-time. We exist to be part of the answer to what is beyond #OscarsSoWhite. We exist to share more recognition for Blacks behind the mic, editing software, and more. We exist because all the work that goes into podcasting earns AND deserves more acknowledgement from us by us.
Chicago Reader: ‘Black Light Cinema Project’ brings film to the forefront /
Black Light Cinema Project” opened July 7 at the South Side Community Art Center with a focus on belonging, home, archival materials, and the self. The topic of identity saturates both galleries, although with different content, allowing them to juxtapose one another while working in unison.
In a five-minute documentary entitled Beneath The Surface, cai thomas looks at Trina Reynolds-Tyler, the data director at the Invisible Institute, and her work on gender-based police violence in Chicago. The film shows shots of protests and research, while Reynolds-Tyler discusses feelings of isolation, narrative justice, and how she’s aiming to uncover and expose the data and the truth behind these stories.
You Didn't See Nothin Winner of Best Serialized Story - Third Coast International Audio Festival /
We’re thrilled to announce that You Didn’t See Nothin has been named the Best Serialized Story of the 2022-23 Third Coast/Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition from Third Coast Audio Festival.
The Competition features over 1000 hours of submissions from around the world, stories chosen by a panel of 21 exceptional Judges — stories that push the boundaries of what audio is capable of, and reveal our world in sound.
Learn more about the competition and see the full list of finalists here.
You Didn't See Nothin on Snap Judgment /
Illustration by Teo Ducot
You Didn’t See Nothin host Yohance Lacour sat with the Snap Judgment team for an interview on the making of the podcast, race in America, and the “meat of the matter.” Listen to the interview with Snap Judgment host Glynn Washington, as well as the first episode of You Didn’t See Nothin, “Young Black Male” on Snap Judgment.
Hear all episodes of You Didn’t See Nothin wherever you listen to podcasts.
A “Pattern of Problematic Conduct”: Urbana Officer Tests Police Accountability /
“I had a big goose egg on my forehead,” Tianna Morrow recalled, after being pushed down by Urbana police officer John Franquemont. “I busted my head on the cart where the kids put their shoes.”
Morrow and her boyfriend, Lamar DeShawn Phillips, who are both Black residents of Urbana, were sleeping when they were woken up in the middle of the night by police in January 2018. They had crashed on the couch at an apartment rented out by Phillips’ brother. Morrow says they had his permission to be there, but police were called by the brother’s girlfriend, who was also residing in the apartment.
After he refused to leave, Officers Franquemont and Adam Marcotte, both white, moved in to arrest Phillips, and a struggle ensued. Franquemont put Phillips in a headlock, but he slipped out. Phillips attempted to escape through the front door, but Franquemont grabbed him and punched him several times in the face, according to reports by both Franquemont and Phillips.
Morrow tried to plead with the officers, but Franquemont shoved her and she fell back hitting her head on the shelf. When she got up, Marcotte pushed her and she hit her head a second time, she said in an interview with the Invisible Institute.
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 Illinois 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.
Mayor Brandon Johnson must make explicit commitments to transparency /
“History holds important lessons for the new administration of Mayor Brandon Johnson. It is inevitable that situations will arise in which he and his team will have strong incentives to restrict access to public information to maintain an official narrative that serves their purposes. That is why it is essential for him to make explicit transparency commitments at the beginning of his tenure.
We should be realistic about this. Power imposes itself through narrative, and information control is a necessary tool for that purpose. We cannot design our institutions with the expectation of exceptionally enlightened leadership. We must design them to withstand limited, fallible, self-protective human beings like ourselves.”
Jamie Kalven writes in the Chicago Tribune Opinions Column on the need for transparency from the City of Chicago and three of the priority items Mayor Johnson can engage to maintain his campaign commitment to transparency. Read the full article here.
In 1997, a 13-year-old was beaten by white Bridgeport teens. A podcast challenges the racial narrative that followed. /
Clark’s story left an indelible mark on Lacour — a father, a leather artist and a former drug dealer who went to prison in 2008 for trafficking heroin and got out in 2017. Lacour pores over the minutiae surrounding the hate crime case with a passion. He looks at events like the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York through the lens of the Clark case, which makes him realize “how far we are from any kind of reconciliation.”
“It was a story that symbolized and represented so much about Chicago and America and race and power to me, that it’s always been close to me and has been a personal flashpoint for me,” Lacour said.
Chicago Tribune talked with Yohance about the Clark case and You Didn’t See Nothin, which is part memoir, part investigation. Read the conversation here.
Bonus Episode - Somebody Podcast /
Three years after the release of the “Somebody” podcast, Chicago continues to block the full release of the inspector general report investigating the police response to Courtney Copeland’s murder. In this update episode, Shapearl Wells discusses the summary findings of the report that were publicly shared while she presses on for full transparency.