In mid-April this year, Mayor Marlin announced that the Urbana Police Department would be giving a presentation on the Aleyah Lewis arrest, which occurred on April 10th. At the City Council meeting held on April 20th, Marlin further announced that the city council members would be meeting with Urbana Police staff to review the incident.
I thought I would get a head-start on the Aleyah Lewis presentation by acquiring a copy of the 911 call and transcript, so I sent a simple FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to METCAD, asking for those records. METCAD is the dispatch office that handles 911 calls for local law enforcement and was created through an intergovernmental agreement by Urbana, Champaign, and the U of I. My request was submitted in an email sent on April 21st which simply read:
“I need any and all documents and recordings related to the Aleyah Lewis arrest that occurred on the afternoon or early evening of April 10 2020.
I prefer to receive the documents by email.”
On April 24th, just three days before Chief Bryant Seraphin and Lt. Jason Norton would play the 911 call publicly, METCAD fully denied my request (denial letter here). The reason cited by Betsy Smith, the operations manager for METCAD, was that releasing the 911 call would interfere with ongoing law enforcement proceedings. Somehow, for the April 27th presentation, Bryant Seraphin and State’s Attorney Julia Rietz came to the opposite conclusion, since they played the 911 call for the public to hear.
It should be noted that METCAD has a policies board, and that both Mayor Diane Marlin and Chief Bryant Seraphin are members. Though Rietz does not sit on the board, it is also staffed with County officials, such as Sheriff Dustin Heuerman and County Executive Darlene Kloeppel. Here is the most recent copy of METCAD Policy Board minutes (from their March 5, 2020 meeting) in case you’re curious.
As you might imagine, I was rather annoyed that METCAD would claim that the records were exempt from disclosure just days before one of their board members (Bryant Seraphin) would play the 911 call during a public meeting. I still wanted an original copy of the 911 call as well as the dispatch transcripts. On May 11th, I appealed to the Public Access Counselor (PAC) at the Illinois Attorney General’s Office (my appeal letter is appended to this letter from the PAC).
Even a month after having the 911 call having been played at a public meeting, Betsy Smith still refused to relinquish the original audio, arguing that doing so would interfere with the pending law enforcement proceedings. She also argued that “Aleyah Lewis” was not mentioned in their dispatch ticket, a point/argument that isn’t relevant in any way. Here is Betsy Smith’s response letter to the PAC. Smith even claims that the State’s Attorney’s Office advised that my request be denied, just days before the Urbana City Council presentation on April 27th.
The PAC normally isn’t very useful, but this particular case was just so absurd, and they readily overturned METCAD’s denial. On August 4th, the PAC issued a determination that METCAD had violated FOIA (letter here) and requested that Betsy Smith provide me with the records I sought.
The date is now September 17th, 2020, and Betsy Smith still has not complied with the Illinois Attorney General’s request. To recap, over the course of four months, I made a very simple public records request, was denied, had the denial deemed illegal, and since the public body still won’t comply, I have nothing. The really upsetting news is that this story is not atypical, but business as usual in the Corrupt CU.
The following documents support the claims I’ve made above:
Metcad FOIA Request – Aleyah Lewis incident 2020-04-21
METCAD Aleyah Lewis FOIA Denial 2020-04-24
METCAD Aleyah Lewis FOIA PAC Appeal (62969) 2020-05-11
METCAD Aleyah Lewis FOIA PAC Appeal Response (62969) 2020-07-02
METCAD Aleyah Lewis FOIA PAC Appeal Determination (62969) 2020-08-04
03-05-20 Regular Meeting Minutes
-Christopher Hansen, Urbana