Questions state police need to answer
When a gunman began his shooting spree in Northern Illinois University's Cole Hall, killing five people, he did so with guns that the state said he was authorized to own.
We know that, because he had a state firearm owner's ID card, or FOID.
But then it was learned that the gunman had a history of mental illness. He had been taking mood-stabilizing drugs, and had spent a year at a group home for treatment.
Under such circumstances, no one should be trusted to own a firearm.
Yet the gunman had a FOID. Why? Did he not, on his application, correctly answer the question: "In the past five years have you been a patient in any medical facility or part of any medical facility used primarily for the care or treatment of persons for mental illness"? And if so, was there a failure in the screening system, in background checks set up to catch such lies? Did his span of treatment, or place of treatment, fall outside the five-year and facility criteria? Was there a mistake made in granting the gunman permission to own firearms at any time?
We are trying to get these questions resolved. But the Illinois State Police refuse to give answers.
They have no cause to do so.
According to the state official with the primary authority to interpret state laws and regulations -- Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan -- the information we are seeking is public record. And, her office adds, the reasons the state police have cited for maintaining secrecy -- the need to both protect the dead gunman's privacy and confidentiality accorded to personnel files of doctors, nurses and others whose professions require state registration and licenses -- are invalid.
There is also a question of whether any right to privacy on the gunman's part ended at the very minute he ended his own life, when he turned a gun on himself.
The state police should be accountable to the law, and the public, and release information on the gunman's FOID. If they don't, at the minimum they come off as belligerently and inexcusably unhelpful as nagging questions over whether the shooter should have had guns that awful day go unanswered. Worse, it raises new questions -- that perhaps the state police have something to hide. That mistakes were made -- by law enforcement officials or mental health professionals -- that led to a shooting spree that could have possibly been prevented. And now it's time to cover up, not come clean.
That is not what we are saying definitively has happened here. But that is the impression the state police are risking if they hold to their stance on this matter.
If there is nothing to hide, the state police can easily prove such by releasing information that should be disclosed. They should want to do so, in the interest of confirming nothing was amiss in the granting of the shooter's firearms card, if that was the case. And from there, any criticism would rightfully turn toward shortcomings in policy, not police work.
It's not just us asking if the shooter should have had those guns. The families of those killed at NIU are asking the same thing. The state police are saying no to them as well in denying this request for information. Is that what they really want to do?