City of Champaign Sued for Denying Police Complaint Records

On March 21^st, 2022 Check CU asked the City of Champaign, Illinois to provide copies of complaints submitted against police officers in 2021 and 2022.  Three days later, City Clerk Shannon Myers fully denied the request.

Myers claimed that releasing the complaints would interfere with pending or contemplated law enforcement and administrative proceedings, and that the records were also exempt as “preliminary drafts, notes, recommendations, memoranda and other records in which opinions are expressed….”

Civil Rights Law Firm Loevy & Loevy, based in Chicago, filed a complaint on behalf of Check CU Founder Christopher Hansen with the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court in Champaign, Illinois on April 8^th, 2022.

The lawsuit alleges that the “CITY OF CHAMPAIGN improperly asserted FOIA’s exemptions for preliminary drafts and interference with pending law enforcement investigations to withhold complaints filed against police officers in 2021 and 2022.”

And that “CHAMPAIGN has not shown how the disclosure of the records would “interfere with pending or actually reasonably contemplated law enforcement proceedings” and would “interfere with active administrative enforcement proceedings.”