Former CPD Officer Jason Van Dyke Was Kept Off Online Illinois Corrections Database While In Prison, And It Turns Out He's Far From Only One
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Transparency – it's a key word these days, especially in government, and the recent high profile prison release of former Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke raised some concerns.
This is because there was no public record of him within the Illinois corrections system. So CBS 2's Tim McNicholas used the Freedom of Information Act to dig in, and got quite the surprise about lots of secret prisoners.
In 2018, Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery for shooting and killing 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014.
In early 2019, Cook County Criminal Court Judge Vincent Gaughan sentenced Van Dyke to 81 months in prison, followed by two years of supervised release. Van Dyke was released from prison this month – having served about half that 81-month sentence, because he was eligible to take time off his prison term for good behavior while in custody.
When word got out that Van Dyke was likely soon to be released, we started asking more questions – only to find secrecy. In fact, just a few days before Van Dyke was released, Illinois Department of Corrections officials would not say whether Van Dyke was in custody.
Former Kane County State's Attorney Joe McMahon – who served as special prosecutor in the Van Dyke trial – didn't know either at the time, and said the IDOC wouldn't tell him.
"It makes people question whether he is, in fact, in the custody of the Department of Corrections," McMahon said on Jan. 31.
We learned Van Dyke was not even listed in the Illinois Department of Corrections' online database of state inmates. When we asked why, the state told us that's because of security concern.
The state didn't just hide his location, but Van Dyke was not listed in the public database at all – even though it turned out he was still in custody of the state.
"To say, 'We're not going to even tell you if the person was in custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections,' I don't see any reason for that," said CBS 2 Legal Analyst Irv Miller. "That's not a security issue. That's a transparency issue."
The next day, a spokesperson finally did tell us Van Dyke was in state custody – just not in the database. That got us wondering, how many other secret inmates are there in Illinois?
We filed a public records request and learned of 203 people in custody but not listed online -- up from just 142 in August of 2017.
"It's bad policy. It's bad public safety," said Jenny Vollen-Katz, the executive director of the John Howard Association – a prison watchdog. "Even if we can't know exactly where they are for security purposes, it's important to know whether someone is still in custody or not."
About 53 of those inmates are not listed because they were transferred to an out-of-state facility. But that doesn't explain the remaining 150.
And Vollen-Katz said she has tried to get answers, but can't.
"It's hard to know whether its human error, bad record-keeping, whether it's because certain options don't exist in the database for people to check off," Vollen-Katz said.
As it is now, Van Dyke is still not in the database – even though other people out on parole are listed as such.
Another high-profile convict not listed in the database at all is former Bolingbrook police Sgt. Drew Peterson who is serving 38 years for the murder of his third wife, and an additional 40 years for trying to hire someone to murder Will County State's Attorney Kames Glasgow after going to prison.
When we asked the state why they can't at least list those inmates as being in custody, they told us it is for security reasons.
