In January I filed a FOIA request with the Miamisburg Ohio Police Department for file documents in the unsolved August 1976 homicide of Jane Louise Allan, 13, of Royal Oak, Michigan. I was motivated to do so because if indeed the OCCK case files are all being digitized, possibly related cases should be included in that process as well. I also wondered if, despite the era and the sad fact that Jane’s body had been dumped in the Miamisburg River, there was any physical evidence in her case.
Because I was aware that a few years ago a diligent sheriff’s deputy in Ohio had circled back to Jane’s case and the OCCK case in light of a murder investigation of some POS who had killed women but “liked” kids, I figured this PD would be on it. (There was never a link made between this old POS murderer and the Michigan kids.)
While I was impressed by this sheriff deputy’s diligence, I was wrong about Miamisburg PD or at least their FOIA practices.
Even the most ultimately intransigent law enforcement agencies usually respond promptly, as required by statute, to request more time to evaluate the request. Then, usually, the games begin.
Not a fucking thing from this outfit.
So a few weeks later, I contacted the PD again through their lame FOIA portal. Hey, second request here–and I renewed the request.
Nothing.
I had to do this a third time a few weeks after that.
A decade ago, I would have sent them a certified letter pointing out their legal failures and probably suggesting that if the FOIA coordinator was a civilian working for such an agency they do anything–including taking out a gigantic loan to get a better education–to get TF out of that nasty, corrupt business. But that was a decade ago. I know how these knuckle draggers work. It’s apparently nothing personal.
I would have gone more crazy on them had I not seen a page on the Ohio Attorney General’s website about Jane’s case. That’s more than the Michigan AG has ever done.
https://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/Files/Law-Enforcement/Investigator/Cold-Case/Homicides/Allan
Some time after my third request (which was simply, renewing my request for the third time for the case file of Jane Louise Allan) I got an email from the City. “See attached,” it said. There was an email from the PD–here’s the document–FOLLOWED BY A SMILEY FACE EMOJI. A fucking smiley face.
They sent me one page; essentially a coversheet for the case. That’s it. No explanation for what was being withheld or why–here you go, stupid civilian.
On the list of questions for the meeting with the OCSD and the MSP in late February was a question about whether these men were coordinating with Miamisburg PD to add Jane’s case into the evaluation. As I explained, these detectives could not answer a single question in the meeting THEY called with my brother and with Kristine’s sister. [Jane Who?]
There is plenty of caselaw, even in fucking Michigan, about how law enforcement and other state institutions abuse the “open investigation” excuse to withhold documents in these ancient cases. Courts have rejected this bullshit in cases of 5 years old, let alone 50. But you have to litigate to get the chance to address this caselaw. In the case of my dad’s FOIA appeal in his case against the Oakland County prosecutor many years ago, the Oakland County judge didn’t address a single case cited in my dad’s brief in her pro-Jessica Cooper, two sentence ruling shutting my dad down. Whether this judge knows it or not, she essentially gave Cooper the free reign to hide files at the OCSD and, I believe, later shred documents as she was leaving office.
Like, where were the notes about your meeting with the mysterious “Bob” in 2010? Same goes for you, OCSD (“we have no documents in the OCCK case, contact the MSP”).
I’m told the MSP is now charging just under $75.00 an hour to answer FOIA requests in the OCCK case. “Hundreds of boxes” and many file cabinets–all disorganized, all mayhem, at $75 an hour?
Observe the many ways these agencies and detectives are trying to keep a lid on the OCCK case and investigation, even after 50 years.
God forgives and the disgusting brotherhood doesn’t, right?