Police Records Lawsuit Names Urbana, Rantoul, Champaign State’s Attorney (Illinois)

A lawsuit filed last week alleges willful and repeated violations of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by several public bodies in Champaign County.  The City of Urbana, the Village of Rantoul, and the Champaign County State’s Attorney’s Office are accused of charging improper fees and unlawfully delaying and denying requests for police records.

The lawsuit was brought by Check CU Founder Christopher Hansen, and it describes FOIA requests sent to each public body which sought records related to possible police misconduct. 

In requests sent to the City of Urbana and the Champaign County State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO), Hansen asked for records related to the 2018 arrests of Quintin Brown and Wayne Colson, who were arrested and imprisoned by Urbana Police for an alleged robbery and shooting in January 2018.  A year later, both men were released after the State’s Attorney Julia Rietz said there was no case for prosecution because there existed no physical evidence linking the men to the incident.

The Champaign SAO first attempted to charge improper fees for the records, then eventually denied the entire request.  Though state law requires a five day response time, after more than a month the City of Urbana has not provided any records.

In a request sent to the Village of Rantoul, Hansen asked for records related to a 2015 officer-involved shooting.  In that incident, police shot tear gas into a motel room after a standoff with a potential robbery suspect.  When the man ran out of the room, police shot and killed him.

The Village, as it has done with numerous previous FOIA requests, is refusing to provide the records within the required time.  Whereas state law indicates five business days, Rantoul has been delaying their responses, sometimes taking more than two months.

Check CU has already published three articles which further illustrate the tactics used to delay and deny records:

Champaign State’s Attorney Denies Records on Year-Long False Prosecution, Imprisonment of Two Men

Urbana Officials Unlawfully Delay FOIA Requests for Months

Rantoul Officials Unlawfully Delay FOIA Requests for Months

All three public bodies attempt to justify their fees and delays using provisions in the Freedom of Information Act which allow them to declare that a request is “voluminous” or to treat a request as coming from a “recurrent requester”.  However, it is illegal to apply these standards to news media and non-profits.  Check CU Founder Christopher Hansen made clear in his requests (and every prior FOIA request back to October 2020) that he was a writer for CheckCU.org, and that the records would be used to write articles and provide information to the public.

From Illinois statute (5 ILCS 140/2)(g):

“Recurrent requester”, as used in Section 3.2 of this Act, means a person that, in the 12 months immediately preceding the request, has submitted to the same public body (i) a minimum of 50 requests for records, (ii) a minimum of 15 requests for records within a 30-day period, or (iii) a minimum of 7 requests for records within a 7-day period. For purposes of this definition, requests made by news media and non-profit, scientific, or academic organizations shall not be considered in calculating the number of requests made in the time periods in this definition when the principal purpose of the requests is (i) to access and disseminate information concerning news and current or passing events, (ii) for articles of opinion or features of interest to the public, or (iii) for the purpose of academic, scientific, or public research or education.

Assistant State’s Attorney Matthew Banach argued that Hansen does not qualify as news media, and he insisted on charging fees for public records.  Banach denied four different FOIA requests when the fees weren’t paid.

For the past eighteen months, Urbana FOIA Officers Ross McNeil and Curt Borman, as well as the Village of Rantoul Clerk Janet Gray and Village Attorney David Wesner, have ignored dozens of communications from Hansen in regards to his news media status.  They continue to treat nearly every records request as coming from a “recurrent requester”, making it impossible to acquire records in a timely manner.

Having made exhaustive attempts at communicating directly with Urbana, Rantoul, and the Champaign SAO, the question of Check CU and Chistopher Hansen qualifying as news media will now be decided by the courts. 

Civil Rights Law Firm Loevy & Loevy, based in Chicago, filed the complaint (shown below) on behalf of Check CU Founder Christopher Hansen with the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court in Champaign, Illinois on April 7th, 2022.