Search Warrant Data (Illinois State Police)

To Whom It May Concern:

Pursuant to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act., I hereby request the following records:

For all search warrants, applications for search warrants, cancellations, and authorization for search warrants between 2012 to the date of processing this request, please provide the following points of record for each:

Full Name of requester
If arrest, arrest ID (eg some cities/states use, "Incident Report")
Reason(s) for search warrant (typically either hand-written, or checkboxes)
Badge ID (or similar) of requester
District/Unit
Name of Judge
Name of approving officer
Whether an Arrest happened
Requested location of search warrant
Location of search warrant execution
Type of search warrant
Statements used to justify search warrant
Time and date when search warrant was submitted for approval
Time and date when search warrant was executed
Whether anything was seized
Whether anything was found
License plate of vehicle (if relevant)
Race of person for search warrant
Age of person for search warrant
State of person for search warrant
Whether an informant was involved
Method of contact with informant leading to search warrant (eg, phone call, mail, fax, email, etc)
Description of person search warrant executed on
Legal code of violation
Description of violation
Date of violation
If search warrant related to debt: name of company debt is owed to, amount owed
Whether FBI involved
ID associated with FBI document (eg, IR #)
Whether search warrant was cancelled
Whether contraband found
Whether narcotics found

The records responsive to this request are likely available in a database, or in some query-able format. If your department or agency does not have direct access to the records, please raise to the respective department that can run queries directly (eg, through SQL).

Should your agency not have all of the requested records within a single record or document, please provide me the relevant documents that do, even if that requires more than one class of document. Should some of the records be unavailable, please let me know ahead of time so that we can narrow the request accordingly.

As the records responsive to this request are imperative for understanding how search warrants are executed, I ask that the public interest of these records be evaluated to the extent that the public's interest outweighs this request's burden. To add, this request is being sent to the largest city of every state and will be collated together to create a comprehensive map of search warrants throughout the US. As such, the records are not only important for understanding search warrants at a local level, but also at a national and state-wide level.

Please ensure that provided documents comply with Section 508, as these records will be shared with members of the public who are covered under the ADA. This guide should be helpful: https://www.hhs.gov/web/section-508/making-files-accessible/checklist/pdf/index.html

If this request was sent to the wrong department or agency, please let me know so that I can send to the correct place.

The requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

In the event that there are fees, I would be grateful if you would inform me of the total charges in advance of fulfilling my request. I would prefer the request filled electronically, by e-mail attachment if available or CD-ROM if not.

Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation in this matter. I look forward to receiving your response to this request within 5 business days, as the statute requires.

Sincerely,

Lucy Parsons Labs

Thank you for your response.

Your response, while it indicates that burden exists, has not provided clear and convincing evidence that the records should be exempt, except in that the request could potentially take a long time to complete. This is made worse by the fact that you response does not give any actual time estimates, which I presume would fall under "convincing evidence": "All records in the custody or possession of a public body are presumed to be open to inspection or copying. Any public body that asserts that a record is exempt from disclosure has the burden of proving by clear and convincing evidence that it is exempt."

Your response also indicates that you would essentially need to combine the information from several systems in order to complete this request. If it is easier, please provide those bits of information in separate files/spreadsheets/csvs. I can join the sets of records myself. I hope that this reduces the burden significantly. Please also note that, as your agency has not done this search before, it only has a high level context into how long it would take. It is very, very often the case that these sorts of requests are dramatically easier to complete than first thought.

That all said, this request will be used to validate that search warrants are being executed in a manner that complies with the constitution in regards to our rights wrt being searched illegally. To the extent that it is well within the public's interest to understand whether our bodies of governments are complying with the constitution correctly and uniformly, this request meets the criteria that the public interest outweighs the burden on your public body. This interest is only furthered by the fact that this wide scale understanding of search warrants in the state of Illinois has not yet been done by any private organization. This interest is furthered even more by the many, many cases throughout Illinois in which a search warrant was not executed in a way that conforms with local, state, and federal law.

As the text of my original request states, this request is not a commercial request, nor is it for profit.