search

jjarmoc / chicago-area-general-orders

A collection of General Orders from Chicago area police departments
2 stars 1 forks source link

Berwyn, FOIAed #4

Open stoey opened 4 years ago

stoey commented 4 years ago

A template message to make sure I get the right stuff would be handy - I can do the FOIA part

jjarmoc commented 4 years ago

Berrrwyyyyyn!

I’ll get a template together to share, and probably link it to the repo’s readme for others to use. I’m on my phone now, so give me a little bit and I’ll respond.

It’s not hard though, basically you need to say “Under the Illinois FOIA law, I’m requesting a copy of all General Orders active in the police department.” Just google a bit to find the FOIA officer for the city in question.

tqbf commented 4 years ago

I was just looking at Berwyn yesterday. I can save you a little bit of time: the FOIA officer in Berwyn is the city clerk: MPaul@ci.berwyn.il.us.

Normally I'd suggest you take a minute to make sure the General Orders in Berwyn aren't already public, but I did that, and it looks like they aren't.

Here's my template, which I've used successfully in a couple suburbs:

Subject: Open Records Request re: Police General Orders

Hello! I went looking for this online and couldn't find it, so:

Pursuant to 5 ILCS 140/1, the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, I'm
writing to request the following information:

A complete copy of the General Orders of the [CITY/TOWN/VILLAGE OF WHATEVER].

Please send this information electronically.

I am requesting this information as an individual, for personal and
not commercial use.

Please direct questions about this request to the following email address:

MY@EMAIL

Per 5 ILCS 140/3, I look forward to your timely response to this
request. Thanks in advance for this.

Sincerely,
MY CONTACT INFORMATION

If you can, let us know when you get the request out. The clock starts ticking at start of business the first business day they receive it, and they have just 5 days to respond. We can help if they don't.

stoey commented 4 years ago

Filed - got an immediate response asking for clarification on the definition of General Orders. I'm following up now.

They also mentioned they're out today for Veteran's Day today so the clock starts tomorrow.

stoey commented 3 years ago

I got a response on the 19th saying that they don't maintain electronic copies of the general orders (which seems odd) and have said that need additional time to gather them from each division in the PD.

With Thanksgiving the new deadline is the 11/30/2020, we shall see what they actually send!

jjarmoc commented 3 years ago

That’s a really surprising response. As you say, we’ll see what they come back with!

Thanks for the effort.

jjarmoc commented 3 years ago

@stoey Did you happen to get any response today? If not, it may be time to follow up.

stoey commented 3 years ago

They asked for an extra day last week as they were going to be out out yesterday, I said that was fine - we'll see what shows up today!

jjarmoc commented 3 years ago

I just committed what you've gotten so far in #21, but I'm going to leave this issue open as it seems their response was far from comprehensive.

Are you going to try again?