By: Diane Benjamin
I feel citizens have a right to know “who knew what and when” concerning Officer Schumaker’s racist comments. I filed this Freedom of information act request to find out:
All emails between Tari Renner, David Hales, and Police Chief Finney concerning the June 2013 Calhoun/Denny’s incident and the actions/discipline of Sgt. Ed Shumaker. Begin Search on 6/29/13. Include Renner’s personal email accounts.
What I received was numerous redacted emails between City Manager David Hales, Acting Police Chief Finney, and former City Attorney Todd Greenberg. The reasons given:
-The Records constitute “personal information,” the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. § 7(1)(c)
Invasion of personal privacy? Who’s personal privacy? Their answer doesn’t say.
-The Records are preliminary drafts, notes, recommendations, memoranda, or other records in which opinions are expressed or policies or actions are formulated. § 7(1)(f)
-The Records constitute or reflect communications between the City and an attorney or auditor that are not subject to discovery in litigation or were prepared or compiled at the request of an attorney advising the City in anticipation of criminal, civil, or administrative proceedings or an internal audit of the City. § 7(1)(m)
The City Attorney doesn’t prosecute cases, so there is no reason to believe he was advising on prosecuting Calhoun. Since Finney and Greenburg are no longer City employees, who does redacting emails protect? The incident happened 20 months ago, so why the secrecy? The emails do say the FBI was investigating, but it’s not clear who called them. They decided not to pursue a case. Some emails do express concern over the community’s contentions response to the incident.
This weekend I was in on an email exchange between a citizen and Mayor Renner concerning the unemployment rate in Bloomington – more on that later. I asked the Mayor about the redacted emails, he didn’t respond to my FOIA comment. So, citizens can decide for themselves what David Hales “knew and when he knew it”.
To: Tari Renner <trenner@cityblm.org>
From: Diane Benjamin <teapartybloom@gmail.com>
Date: 01/31/2015 02:28PM
Cc: Kevin Gerrard
Subject: Re: Bloomington has the lowest unemployment rate of any metro Illinois city
Here’s my theory, Hales at the very least, knew all about the remark incident when it happened. Either Renner knew about it also, which means they are both lying, or Hales failed to mention it Renner which I find hard to believe. The reason they called the FBI in was to revenue the situation in case the Sgt. was in jeopardy of facing federal charges. When the FBI decided to do nothing, the City did nothing. Then it came out in court and it was then the lies start to fly.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
Here’s what we know for sure. Tari is on record from the time of the incident in 2013 stating that he saw the tape, reviewed it with police personnel and that he stood by the police officer. Now that the tape is out and we see the racist comment and the desire of the officer that he hopes the person bleeds to death Tari now cries “not in our town, we’re better than this.” So which is it, Tari? You either: 1. knew about this at the time and thought you’d cover it up by supporting the police. 2. you didn’t see the tape at all and lied to us about viewing it. Or, 3. you saw the tape but somehow missed the racist comment on the tape along with the officer’s wish that the person die. Number 3 is the hardest for me to believe, and the other two options don’t look any better. No matter how you slice this Tari is lying and if we had any type of respectable journalism going on in this town, someone would be investigating this and wouldn’t be giving him a free pass.