City Council president blocks records on alleged sexual abuse

TUESDAY, March 8 — Lansing City Council President Adam Hussain has decided to withhold hundreds of pages of records involving an alleged sexual assault at the Fire Department, saying that those documents are better kept secret than released to the public.

“In balancing the public interest in obtaining the records against the effect on frank communications with city employees, I have determined that releasing such notes and records of these investigations would have an immediate and severe chilling effect on the city’s ability to conduct meaningful and useful investigations into serious allegations, and to reach accurate conclusions and administer appropriate penalties,” Hussain wrote City Pulse, which had requested the documents more than six months ago.

Former Battalion Chief Shawn Deprez alleged to City Pulse last summer that she was sexually assaulted by a superior and subjected to unchecked homophobic and sexist harassment by some of her former colleagues over her decades-long career — ending only when she retired in 2019. Deprez also alleged that she had been sexually assaulted several years ago at a fire station.

Lansing Mayor Andy Schor promised to review the accusations. City Pulse also filed a public records request that sought to uncover any and all misconduct complaints made by Deprez, as well as all documentation to show how those complaints were handled at the Fire Department.

Deprez promised that file would be thick due to all of the complaints she filed — and she wasn’t kidding. City officials were able to rustle up about 650 pages of documents in fulfilling the request last month. Only six pages of them, however, were actually released to City Pulse.

While those records helped substantiate portions of Deprez’ claims, they also raised more questions — including why city officials failed to take action and allowed one of her alleged abusers, former Captain Jon Daniels, to keep his job despite a recommendation that he be fired.

The city also declined to release any records to show how the allegations were investigated.

More than 230 pages of records were withheld specifically because city officials considered them to be “frank communications preliminary to a final agency or determination” — messages and notes between city officials that are best kept secret, according to the City Attorney’s Office.

Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act spells out various exemptions for which governments can shield records from public release. In this case, city attorneys contended that these specific investigatory records were merely “of an advisory nature to the extent that they cover other than purely factual materials and are preliminary to a final agency determination of policy or action.”

It’s the same legal tactic that city officials used in 2020 when the Police Department flatly refused to release untold hundreds of records on internal investigations of officer misconduct.

Like then, City Pulse again filed an appeal with the City Council for more documentation. But unlike former Council President Peter Spadafore, newly installed President  Hussain has decided to support the city administration and has refused to release any more records.

Most of them are “handwritten notes” taken by human resources employees during interviews, Hussain said. And as such, they are “not purely factual in nature” and also include opinions.

“There are also frank communications between city employees discussing how to handle the allegations and investigations,” Hussain told City Pulse, contending that because none of the documents involved “final” decisions, the public doesn’t have a right to have access to them.

City Pulse waited about six months for the City Attorney's Office to fulfill the request for records before asking Schor to intervene, which he did. The documents were released a few days later — albeit only six pages' worth.

City Pulse is now free to appeal Hussain’s decision by filing a complaint in 30th Circuit Court and arguing that the withheld records had been arbitrarily denied — which could then lead to the city being forced to cover City Pulse’s legal costs, as well as punitive damages of up to $1,000.