Larry Willis, publisher and co-owner of the County Journal in Percy, about 140 miles south of Springfield, was just doing what journalists do last July when he asked Illinois State Police for a report on a traffic accident.
The wreck was nothing earth shattering. There were no celebrities involved or giant fireballs of death or moments of drama as a mother miraculously summoned sufficient strength to lift an overturned SUV from her pinned toddler.
“Jimmy hits Johnny,” in the words of Don Craven, attorney for the Illinois Press Association.
Willis says he asked for the report because state police had suddenly stopped releasing the name of anyone but ticketed drivers in press releases about accidents, and hospitals won’t tell reporters how injured persons are faring unless journalists can provide names. Willis asked for the report after state police in his area told him that the clampdown on information came on orders from Springfield.
What Willis got from state police was bizarre, even for state police who are notorious for refusing to release information, regardless of what the law requires.
Police told Willis that he could have the accident report, including the names of all drivers, for $5 and after waiting for five business days, but it would not include the names of police officers who responded to the wreck. It was reasoned illogic, judging by the written response Willis received, and so deserves to be quoted in its entirety:
Release of the information requested, particularly the names of current and/or retired police officers, would endanger the life or physical safety of law enforcement personnel. Police officers, as well as the valuable and dedicated support personnel who work with them, face unknown and unpredictable dangers every day. To place the identities of dedicated civil servants into the public recklessly endangers the lives and safety of those individuals. Recent and unpredictable attacks on police officers and other criminal justice employees and their families point to an alarming trend in violence targeted directly at those persons simply because they represent law and order.
Does it pass the smell test?
“If you’re a pig farmer, it smells pretty good,” Craven says.
After declaring that cops who investigate traffic accidents can’t be identified lest they be hunted down and killed, Lt. Steve Lyddon, the department official who put his name on the department’s answer to Willis, listed seven instances from as far away as Canada in which someone has killed a cop, prosecutor, prison official or clerical worker simply because the victims worked in law enforcement.
There is no evidence that any of the killers cited by Lyddon tracked down their targets via requests for public records. Indeed, at least one of the killings, a 2006 slaying of an officer in Maywood near Chicago, has never been solved, and so it’s tough to know whether the slaying was the result of a beef against cops or a personal grudge or a hallucinating madman who mistook the officer for a giant Gila monster. The former justice of the peace accused of gunning down the prosecutor who filed theft charges against him didn’t appear to hate prosecutors per se, only the one who ruined his career. The guy who gunned down four officers in Washington state while they sipped coffee didn’t have to look further than the four squad cars in the parking lot to know that cops were inside the coffeehouse. The slain head of the Colorado prison system had his name appear in newspapers on a regular basis, as does his successor, who remains alive and well.
“I don’t mean to minimize the loss of life, but these are kooks,” Craven observes. “Maybe you should not put your byline on your articles because journalists in the Mideast get beheaded. Pretty soon, if you run from the shadows, the shadows win.”
Illinois State Police did not respond to an interview request, so there is no way to know if they are issuing mirrors on sticks so cops can check the undersides of take-home cars before going to work each day. Nor is there any hint on how they might be dealing with the fact that the name of everyone who works for the state police appears on a database posted on the website of the state comptroller, which lists them all in alphabetical order, along with their salaries. Court files are also chock full of the names of police officers, as are internal affairs files that are public records that must be released upon request, according to several court rulings.
Faced with the necessity of informing his readers about accidents, Willis says he’s more concerned with getting the names of drivers and passengers as opposed to police officers, and so Craven recently met with officials from the state police and the governor’s office about state cops refusing to release names that are divulged as a matter of routine by other agencies, including the Springfield Police Department, which discloses names of all drivers involved in accidents so that the State Journal-Register can publish a comprehensive police beat. Craven says the cops wouldn’t budge. He got no answers, he says, when he asked about the written refusal to name officers charged with keeping the public safe.
“They looked at me like they didn’t know that was the position they’d taken,” Craven recalls. “They were not aware of the adoption of any such policy.”
Contact Bruce Rushton at brushton@illinoistimes.com.