Editorial: In hindsight, withholding information was still a mistake

With the case all but behind them now, Carpentersville officials may see their decision to wait three months to release documents and video pertaining to the arrest of Josh Paul as evidence of some sort of success or perhaps even vindication.

There is significant risk in that sort of thinking.

Comparisons between the deaths of Paul in Carpentersville and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., are all but unavoidable. Suspicious deaths involving police and suspects, surrounded by unanswered questions ending in charges against no one.

It would take deeper analysis and sharper expertise than we have on the traditions and demographics of both towns to authoritatively determine why one case results in nationwide protests of police brutality and the other fades not-quite-quietly into local record books, but it's not hard to see that if circumstances were only slightly different, the Paul case could have become much more inflamed. And, as the video of Paul's arrest and subsequent expert reports suggest, unnecessarily so.

After Paul's death, Carpentersville village officials refused several Freedom of Information Act requests from the Daily Herald for the arrest documents and ignored a ruling by the state attorney general that they should be released. They promised to release them upon the conclusion of an Illinois State Police investigation into the arrest, and did so last week after the state police issued its report and the Kane County state's attorney ruled that no charges were warranted against the officers.

Carpentersville Public Safety Director Al Popp said the village's biggest concern during the three-month delay was "the integrity of trust" in the investigation of the incident. That's commendable, of course. But the fact is that withholding the materials fostered distrust that lingered throughout the long period during which the public and Paul's family had to wait.

Nor is that distrust automatically repaired by the ruling that no charges are warranted, or even, through retrospect, by the police report and video of the arrest, which citizens can now see for themselves.

Even if we acknowledge that the officers acted, in Popp's words, "absolutely ... by the book," as closely as the officials held the information - even going so far as to defy the state's highest law officer - one can only speculate what, if anything, they would have released had the legal authorities determined that criminal charges and a potential trial were warranted.

It may be to the community's and the police department's credit that there were no Ferguson-like resentments simmering toward police generally here, but it doesn't take much imagination to dread what could happen if such resentments were in play. Those who consider the village's strategy of closely controlling information a success should reflect more deeply. It more accurately may have been simply luck.