The conversation surrounding racial tension and police brutality in recent years has fostered heated discussions between citizens across America.
Now imagine being the person trying to report those events to the public in a racially-fueled Chicago.
Journalist Brandon Smith shared the process of uncovering the video of the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald to a group of students and faculty members in the Caterpillar Global Communications Center Monday night.
Smith was working at The Chicago Reader when he first heard about the possibility of a video of McDonald being shot multiple times and killed by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke.
While working on another story about police brutality within a Chicago detention center, Smith said he met an activist, who shared the story of McDonald with him. Smith said the activist had read a story written by journalist Jamie Kalven, who was one of the writers to initially report on the death of McDonald.
“Jamie Kalven had reported … about an autopsy report of a young man who was killed by police about a year earlier,” Smith said. “The autopsy showed he was shot 16 times, which contradicted the police’s story that he was shot once. So, this story made a big splash. It was in Slate Magazine … It mentioned there was a video of this thing, but the police are not releasing it.”
After deciding to look into the story, Smith said he contacted his lawyer to file a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which allows the disclosure of information controlled by the United States government.
“I said, ‘Pursuant of this law, which says these documents are public, please give me the video,’” Smith said. “As a corollary, I requested to know who else has requested it and what [the police] have told those people, too.”
Smith said the police only got back to him for the latter part of his request. According to the Chicago Police Department, the police, who claimed the incident was under investigation, denied other requests.
Smith also said it took almost three months for the police to reject his FOIA request, even though the police acted faster to deny the requests of other media outlets.
“I thought [the police] were either reevaluating in good faith or they are acting in bad faith and they are stalling,” Smith said. “When they eventually denied, we sued. [The activist and I] sued, and we had some good arguments in the suit. [These arguments] were all the lawyer; this was his good work.”
Smith said his lawyer argued the city had to prove the police were still investigating and state its case as to how the release of the video could harm their investigation.
“They couldn’t do either of those things,” Smith said. “The judge at one point asked them, ‘Are you providing any evidence to support your claims here?’ And they had to say, ‘No, your honor.’”
Smith and his lawyer went on to win the FOIA case and obtained the video to release via The Chicago Reader in an article published on Nov. 24, 2015.
Smith said it is important to report on the stories that would not have been made possible if not for the advocacy efforts of journalists.
“I feel like everyone is an advocate for a certain thing, and journalists are expected to be an advocate,” Smith said. “I feel like you can be an advocate for transparency, you can be an advocate for human decency and justice … I’ve never been ashamed to be an activist or an advocate.”
Students in attendance said Smith’s presentation was insightful and inspirational.
“I think when it comes to advocacy, people need to find something that pushes them, that pushes them not to their limits, but beyond their limits,” Brittany Horton, a curriculum and instruction graduate student, said. “He was denied with [his FOIA request], right. Instead of settling for that, he decided to say, ‘You know what? If the police are not going to release this video, I am going to sue in order to see what would happen, what would come about it.’ I think we all need to find something that makes us tick, something that we are so passionate about … that way we go beyond the call of duty to do something that we really want.”
Currently, Smith works as a freelance journalist, alongside Sydney Combs, who also sat in on the panel. The two focus on reporting stories of social justice, according to Combs.
