The lawsuit by the Chicago Civil Rights Project, which describes itself as a group of lawyers specializing in civil rights and police misconduct, said the city is illegally destroying the records after 30 days unless a specific request is made for their preservation.
The 30-day deadline is a relic from days when such recordings were made on tape and unnecessary in an era when they can be stored electronically at relatively low cost, the lawsuit alleged.
According to the lawsuit, the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications could store 20 years of 911 calls by purchasing less than $10,000 worth of electronic storage.
Recordings — including video — that are missing or recorded over have long been an issue in civil lawsuits against the city and Police Department.
"Balanced against the financial, let alone human cost of just one wrongful conviction, it is unconscionable that the City refuses to preserve this evidence," Nick Albukerk, an attorney and the group's co-founder, said in a statement.
Bill McCaffrey, a spokesman for the city's Law Department, said the city hasn't seen the lawsuit and couldn't comment. But McCaffrey said the city "has taken significant steps to improve transparency and access to public records during the past year, including increasing the time to store audio recordings from 30 to 90 days."
The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court, seeks an order a halt to the destruction of 911 recordings and to transfer older recordings on backup systems into the city's electronic system.
The issue of how the city preserves and releases such records — particularly in police shootings — has grown in prominence since the court-ordered release of video of the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald more than a year later sparked protests, cost the city's top cop his job and led to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation of police practices.
The lawsuit called the 30-day deadline unnecessary and nearly impossible to meet because lawyers often don't know that quickly if such records are relevant.
The lawsuit alleged that the practice of deleting recordings after 30 days violates the Illinois Local Records Act because the city doesn't investigate whether such materials contain "probative evidence" or acknowledge that the recordings may still have value.
sschmadeke@chicagotribune.com
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