Over the past two weeks the media has reported that three of the four perpetrators of last summer’s vicious attack on a 48-year-old Park Ridge man at Hinkley Park following the Taste of Park Ridge (“TOPR”) have pled guilty and been sentenced. The case against the final defendant is set to go to trial June 29 in juvenile court.
So we found it more than a little unusual to read in this week’s online Park Ridge Herald-Advocate that the Park Ridge Police Dept. had denied a Freedom of Information Act request from the H-A for copies of the official police reports from that incident (“Youngest teen charged in 2014 Park Ridge beating given probation,” June 2).
As we understand FOIA (courtesy of a “Citizen’s Guide” to FOIA published by the Paul Simon Institute of Southern Illinois University), arrest reports are subject to public disclosure under FOIA unless certain exceptions apply – the most common of which appears to be where disclosure would obstruct an ongoing criminal investigation. On the other hand, names and addresses of witnesses and/or minors are simply redacted from the reports produced.
Given the current posture of all four cases, we can’t begin even to imagine how the production of the police reports to the H-A could obstruct an ongoing investigation. By now those investigations should all be complete, and those reports would have already been produced to the attorneys for all four individuals. And the PD isn’t offering to produce the reports in redacted form.
So why is the Police Department balking?
Could it be the PD is concerned that the report(s) of not only the beating incident but also the two earlier police calls to Hinkley Park that evening might reveal merely perfunctory responses to those earlier calls? Or a delayed response to the beating call?
Up until now, the PD has kept a tight lid on what would seem to be critical information about the responses to those two earlier calls, including information we asked about in our 08.12.14 post re Chief Kaminski’s dog-and-pony show before the City Council:
- If the exact time of the officers’ arrival was so important, why wasn’t the time of their departures also important? Could it be that those departure times might show that the responding officers who “checked the area” for fireworks, alcohol, drugs, etc. really weren’t all that thorough in performing that task?
- Why didn’t the chief identify the time(s) and location(s) of those “other calls” the ROs supposedly had to run off to instead of staying at Hinkley and providing the kind of “police presence” central to the “community policing” the department claims to be practicing – especially on the second call, when the number of teens had inexplicably grown from 30-40 to around 75 in just 35 minutes?
- Why didn’t the chief talk about the reported police dispersal of more than 50 teens from the Library grounds between 9:00 and 9:30 p.m. – the ones who supposedly migrated en masse the two blocks to Hinkley and further swelled those ranks?
Our limited experience with Chief K, a longtime Park Ridge resident, suggests to us that he’s basically an honest and decent guy who has run his Department creditably. But the way this whole Hinkley situation has been FUBARed makes it seem as if the Police Dept. was neither ready nor willing to deal in any meaningful way with the mass of youths at Hinkley that night.
And rejecting the H-A’s FOIA request does nothing to dispel that impression.
As this year’s TOPR quickly approaches, the residents deserve to finally know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about how the Police Department handled – or mishandled – the Hinkley situation last summer. That starts with the release of the police reports.
And Chief K needs to remember that it’s not the screw-up but the cover up that presents the bigger problem.
UPDATED (06.05.15). This week’s Park Ridge Journal contains a letter by Chief Kaminiski about the sentencing of two of the perpetrators of last summer’s beating of a middle-aged Park Ridge man in Hinkley Park following that night’s Taste of Park Ridge festivities (“Park Incident, Outcome, Tough Lessons To Learn,” June 3). It makes several good points about vile incidents such as this serving as “teachable moments” for our youth.
We heartily concur.
That being said, this situation also presents an important “teachable moment” for Chief K and his department – who still seem determined to stonewall the disclosure of information about the events leading up to that incident that our citizens deserve to have. While we can’t say that better policing earlier that evening might have prevented the incident and its aftermath, it’s not much of a stretch to entertain that possibility.
Chief K’s message applies to himself and his department no less than to the average citizen: “[T]here are consequences for your decisions and…they can be rather significant.”
So if the department didn’t botch those first two calls to Hinkley, Chief, why not release the reports that will answer the questions we asked and prove your assertions?
To read or post comments, click on title.
16 comments so far
Great questions that should have been answered months ago. Hope the department answers them before the FBI has to come in again and seize more computers and records.
Is it the police chief or is Park Ridge’s legal council pushing against the FOIA request? Does it really matter-as you point out the cover up is worse than what ever mistakes may have been made by the police last summer.
But to many of us in Park Ridge who are aware of the events of that night-that fight/beating may not of taken place had the police chief and the police department handled the two calls made by PRPD employees about a gathering crowd and potential vandalism differently. Police officers should have stayed at the park until the crowd was dispersed or at least as a show of authority. The failure to do this and in part the outcome can be blamed on Kaminiski.
How does Kaminski handle the aftermath last summer? He places blame on the PRPD for not having a blanket closing time for all the PRPD amenities at Hinkley. Then he writes an editorial to the local papers lecturing the community on how to use this horrible event as a “teachable moment”-a moment that probably would not have happened if Kaminski and the police had done their job-the one the taxpayers pay them to do. Now Kaminski has authored another lecture to the community now that two of the young adults were sentenced to jail time. http://www.journal-topics.com/news/article_2c151ec6-0a2f-11e5-93c0-4f6f9d0b4e9e.html
Enough of the lectures chief. It is time for you to retire. You already are getting a pension from Evanston. Now you will get a second pension from PR. You even had the audacity to go before the city council in PR and ask for the cash value of the health care you are not getting from PR because Evanston is picking up that cost through your pension.
PR needs a new police chief-one that lectures less and does the job they are paid to do.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Because of the police department’s failure to answer the questions we have asked, we have to assume that the answers would prove unfavorable to the department. And as we wrote last summer, Chief K’s dog-and-pony show for the Council was a joke.
That being said, we believe that in many/most other respects it appears that Chief K has done a solid job.
Anon 1:23- You’re nuts. Chief Kaminski has completely turned this Park Ridge Police Department around. The Park Ridge Police department was embarrassing and in shambles before he got there.
He is an honorable man who truly acts with the best interests of the community. He’s a seasoned veteran who has worked (successfully) way tougher beats than Park Ridge.
Obviously you have an agenda…but will hide it. I wish you anon 1:23 would retire away from park ridge.
I have to ask what it is you are really mad about. I mean what is it that the chief has done for you demand retirement??
I am not saying he is perfect (who is??) but I can see nothing he has done to cause such anger.
As to “lectures”, I think there are parents in PR who need a “lecture”. If your kid was one of the over one hundred chanting USA I think the words/advise of the chief were completely on point and 100% appropriate!!!
Why is anybody talking about the chief being fired or retiring? Even if it were shown that the two visits to Hinkley earlier that evening were slap-dash, that can’t negate the chief’s total body of work here in Park Ridge since he started after the Caudill days.
It is disappointing to me that, years after the Ekl Report, we still have the police department acting as if it is hiding something about the Hinkley incident. Chief Kaminski’s “body of work” is good, but there is something wrong when he allows (or directs?) the stonewalling of this information.
Couple of nights ago there was an accident and Glenlake & Cumberland. (Not to be confused with the one at Devon & Cumberland) I called the minute I saw what happened.
Not only did I get transferred but the phone rang 4 times before it was answered.
Makes you wonder what’s going on.
I’ve had multiple run ins/altercations with the police in the 6 years I’ve rented here and holy cow, this police force is arrogant AND incompetent. Before I describe my run ins (without outing myself), I can safely say the Hinkley incident speaks for itself. Incompetence all around, I don’t need to say much more about dat.
But as for me, I mean seriously, fireworks? You’re gonna give me a ticket for a couple dozen roman candles? It was only 11:00 p.m. And the warning for putting garbage out a few days too early? really? And lose the attitude mr. rent-a-cop: a two year associates degree from Everest University doesn’t give you the right to think you’re all high and mighty. and, i don’t want to throw around the P or the Z word (profiling & xenophobia) but look at the police blotter – it’s all non-white and/or foreigners getting pulled over for traffic infractions in this town any car older than 4 years or is a car typcially driven by a non-white/rich person (and you officers know *exactly* what I mean) is profiling and they darn well know it.
EDITOR’S NOTE: No funnier the second time.
If the two original calls involved ‘minors’, isn’t it by law not to release the material and the names of the offenders and victims?
EDITOR’S NOTE: According to all reports, neither of those first two calls involved any arrests. So there should have been no “offenders” or “victims” identified in such reports.
It’s always interesting to read where many of the Metra rough riders always have a statement as to how the P.D. should be run. What’s next…a Comte on how can we spend more city funds for a statue for our vary own…Hillary Clinton ? Maybe State Sen. Danger Dan K. can transfer the state slated funding for the now stopped Denny Hester statue over to the Hillary project of Park Ridge. The only question is…should she be in pants too ?
EDITOR’S NOTE: No, the only question is…how long have you been off your meds?
Park Ridge Serf is a perfect example of why we don’t more people renting.
Who has “multiple.. altercations” with the Park Ridge police dept? You kind of remind of Ray McDonald, who the bears just cut.
Holy Crap. . . These comments went off the deep end…
12:08, do you know for a fact that the Park Ridge teens who attacked the man in Hinkley Park are living in rented rather than owned residences? Do you know how many single-family homes are rentals?
He’s not an undesirable because he’s a renter; he’s an undesirable because he thinks the laws are made for other people, not for him. Half the homeowners in town think it’s ducky to shoot off loud fireworks until all hours pretty much every weekend night during warm weather, keeping babies and their exhausted parents awake, scaring the crap out of dogs and the elderly, and generally adding to the audio-blight, noise pollution or whatever it’s called during the few moments airplanes aren’t cracking the sound barrier. And that’s supposed to be OK. Never mind that sudden, loud noise is one of the only two instinctive fears (the other is falling) we never outgrow. Never mind the number of kids as well as adults who end up in Lutheran General’s emergency room due to fireworks accidents. A coupla brewskis and why not let the eight-year-old earn his manly stripes? Sheesh. And BTW, they’re not “rent-a-cops.” At least not yet.
EDITOR’S NOTE: What if “the eight-year-old earn[ing] his manly stripes” is a girl?
Sounds highly-sexist to us.
What was that stray thought supposed to accomplish? To indicate you think it’s ok to break the law as long as you’re not a renter?
EDITOR’S NOTE: To what “stray thought” are you referring?
battening on the gender of the kid in the emergency room due to fireworks. Misdirection to the max. But for why?
EDITOR’S NOTE: You might want to check with your ESL instructor and then take another shot at a lucid commment.
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