By Joel Thurtell
Blogger Joel Thurtell at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center. Wayne County Circuit Court files should be here, but have been taken to some secret place. Joel Thurtell photo.
After all the hoopla about the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News’ battle to open more of the Kwamegate text messages to public view, I wanted to learn what the legal issues were.
So I headed for Detroit and the Wayne County Circuit Court where this well-publicized lawsuit was heard.
My quest was not purely intellectual. I was hoping I’d learn some tricks from the masters of Freedom of Information Act requests at the two Detroit dailies. Who knows, maybe I’d learn something that would help me when I file my own FOIA requests for documents about Rouge River pollution.
Now, I am not totally naive. I’d made this trip about three weeks ago when I was looking for another file that could have helped me understand a story I plan to write. But I was told then quite emphatically that Wayne County Circuit Court files have been removed from the courthouse and are in some undisclosed spot where the public is not allowed to see them. It seems the court was totally unprepared, despite warnings from the state about the need for post-Katrina measures to protect public records, for a June 27 lightning strike that started a fire and caused water damage, so I understand, to some of the files. I was told then by a court clerk that the files are not open to the public, even though court proceedings continue.
It occurred to me that some miracle might have occurred. Maybe thwacking the court in my columns had caused some re-thinking. Maybe the deep thinkers on the Wayne circuit bench realized it’s hard to run an open, democratically-based judicial system when nobody can read the record of your proceedings. Maybe, I hoped, the files had been miraculously brought back to their proper home in the basement of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.
That’s right, the records were stored in a basement room. Guess nobody in Wayne County government heard of gravity and what happens to water when it gets loose.
Hey, Wayne County, wake up! Water runs downhill, don’t you know?
Can't be bothered to make a proper sign? Wayne County clerks taped this crude sign to the door of the Wayne Circuit Court file room with the message that files are not to be had. Joel Thurtell photo.
In my earlier stories I made a point of mocking the crude, hand-lettered sign someone had taped to the file room door after locking it to the public. I figured maybe someone would have made a neat printout to replace that slovenly screed.
I thought sure after the last public spanking I gave the court in joelonthertoad.com, officials would have seen the light and returned the files so the public and presumably people with an interest in lawsuits might read the cases.
This time, I planned to record my foray with my new shirt-pocket digital camera. But I wondered whether the security guards are letting people take cameras into the building. I’d better look professional, I decided. That meant taking off my shorts, sandals and t-shirt, the blogger’s uniform, and ironing a dress shirt and a good pair of pants. It meant finding a sport coat that wasn’t too badly wrinkled for a quick excursion in the City-County Building, aka Young Center.
I don’t know if the coat and tie helped, but I had no problem getting through security with my camera. I headed for the basement by way of the stairs. I passed the elevators, the barber shop, and rounded the corner headed for the file room.
The door was locked. The same crude sign was taped to the door: “This Office is Closed Until further Notice! Thank you Mgt.”
I took a few photos, wondering what made me think Wayne County could get its act together and create a halfway decent sign when the file room door opened. A man walked out. Through the door, I saw the counter with a man and woman standing behind it. Glory be! They’re back in business! The door clacked shut. I twisted the knob. Locked.
A man wearing a black t-shirt walked by me. “They’re looking at September first,” he said.
“You mean the file room will be open September first?” I said.
“Right,” he said.
The sign also said, “Go to Rm 201 201.” So I headed for an elevator and went to Room 201. That’s where people line up to file lawsuits. As I stood in line, I overheard a clerk telling a man the files were taken to Virginia for cleaning. When my turn came, another clerk turned to me. I mentioned I’d heard the files had been taken to Virginia for cleaning. “That’s not true,” the woman said. “You hear all kinds of things. It’s true that they’re off the premises. They won’t be available until the first of the month.”
“I can’t see any files?”
Not till September, she said. “No one can go down there and look at a file,” she said, meaning the basement file room.
So much for reading that Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
“Freedom of information” — guess it’s kind of a relative term in Wayne County Circuit Court.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
