IPRA “Online Case Portal” Including Video

Message from President Andruzzi:

My fellow members,

As you are all aware by now, the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) has unveiled the “Online Case Portal” on their website. This portal allows any member of the public to read reports, view video, and hear any audio from incidents related to officer involved shootings, Taser deployments resulting in death or great bodily harm, and incidents of death or great bodily harm that occur while in police custody.

Notably, moving forward the release of this information by the City will generally be within 60 days from the date of the incident. The only information redacted from any reports is information that is required to be redacted by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This means that any sworn member’s name, star number, and other information found on reports completed in association of the incident are not redacted. Additionally, any sworn member’s image is not blurred out of any video regardless of if the member was actually involved in the incident or simply on the scene. The site does not indicate which officers are being investigated or which are not. Furthermore, some of the incidents date back several years because the incident is still being investigated. Interestingly, there are incidents on the site where an offender has been found guilty in court, sent to prison, served their time and have been released, and yet IPRA is still investigating whether an officer acted properly.

Less than 24 hours prior to the announcement of this portal, members representing each of our unions—along with representatives from IPRA, the city, and the department—met to discuss and preview this portal. We quickly discovered that we were not invited to discuss the new portal; we were there to simply be told what IPRA was going to do. It is the position of our union, along with every other union, that the video release showing images of any member is in clear violation of our collective bargaining agreement. However, the city maintains that nearly all of the documents, audio and video files are the subject of FOIA requests and therefore must be released. We have argued otherwise.

At this time there does not appear to be any video showing the images of any of our members in the released videos, only patrolmen and Sergeants. Their respective unions have taken appropriate steps to resolve this issue. If you discover any image of one of our members in a released video, please contact a union representative or any board member immediately so that we too can take immediate action.