Jeff Kelly Lowenstein was looking at fatal police shootings in Chicago, and so he began with a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) to the Chicago Police Department.
It quickly became a lesson for Lowenstein, a reporter for Hoy, a daily Spanish-language newspaper, in the difficulty reporters face in getting needed information.
“We filed a number of FOIA requests, probably about four,” said Lowenstein, who was a reporter at the Chicago Reporter at the time. “We asked for this data in a number of different ways and didn’t really get much response.”
(The story continues here.)