Collinsville Perceives Self-Defense to be a Threat of Violence

On Jan­u­ary 3, 2008, the City of Collinsville, Illi­nois received my Dec­la­ra­tion, as evi­denced by the return receipt for cer­ti­fied mail. Below is the FOIA request I sub­mit­ted to Collinsville.

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST MADE TO CITY OF COLLINSVILLE

REQUEST FOR RECORDS PURSUANT TO THE ILLINOIS FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 5 ILCS 140/1 ET. SEQ.
Date: March 8, 2009
Requestor’s Name: Mark McCoy
Requestor’s Address: Collinsville, Illi­nois
Requestor’s Phone Num­ber: ***-***-****
Request Made to: City of Collinsville, Illi­nois
Request made for: Cer­ti­fied paper copies and CD Rom/Electronic for­mat, if avail­able.
Records to be: Picked up at City Hall upon fulfillment

Spe­cific Pub­lic Records Requested:
Pur­suant to the Illi­nois Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act , 5 ILCS 140/1 to 140/11, I write to request access to and a copy of the fol­low­ing. Any pub­lic record, as defined in 5 ILCS 140 et.seq. includ­ing but not lim­ited to the following:

Any infor­ma­tion, email, records, memos, let­ters, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, cre­ated, received, or pos­sessed by the City of Collinsville, its employ­ees, offi­cers, or agents relat­ing to Mark McCoy.

Any infor­ma­tion, email, records, memos, let­ters, com­mu­ni­ca­tions cre­ated, received, or pos­sessed by the City of Collinsville, its employ­ees, offi­cers, or agents con­cern­ing the web­site markmccoy.com

Any infor­ma­tion, email, records, memos, let­ters, com­mu­ni­ca­tions cre­ated, received, or pos­sessed by the City of Collinsville, its employ­ees, offi­cers, or agents con­cern­ing a Pub­lic Dec­la­ra­tion of Sov­er­eignty, Expa­tri­a­tion, and Dis­so­lu­tion of all Pre­vi­ous National and Polit­i­cal Alle­giance, signed by Mark McCoy, and which was filed with the St. Clair County Recorder of Deeds on Jan. 4, 2008, and which bears the Let­ter Num­ber A02084317, and received by the City of Collinsville on 1/3/08.

I agree to pay any rea­son­able copy­ing and postage fees. Please pro­vide a receipt indi­cat­ing the charges for each document.

As pro­vided by The Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act, I will expect your response within seven (7) work­ing days.

If you choose to deny this request, please pro­vide a writ­ten expla­na­tion for the denial includ­ing a ref­er­ence to the spe­cific statu­tory exemption(s) upon which you rely. Also, please pro­vide all por­tions of oth­er­wise exempt material.

Please be advised that I am pre­pared to pur­sue what­ever legal rem­edy nec­es­sary to obtain access to the requested records. I would note that will­ful vio­la­tion of the open records law can result in the award of rea­son­able attor­ney’ fees.

Thank you for your assistance.

Sin­cerely,
Mark McCoy
Collinsville, Illinois

Today, March 24, 2009, I received my FOIA response from the City of Collinsville. The response con­sists of only one page. That page is a memo from then Mayor, Stan Scha­ef­fer who refers to my Dec­la­ra­tion at Para­graph 4 of Page 2, to wit:

“I reserve MY nat­ural right to exer­cise any and all means of self-defense with any and all weapons or devices at my dis­posal against any and all aggres­sors that may result in harm or death to Myself or oth­ers who may assail me.”

In the eyes of Stan Scha­ef­fer, that con­sti­tutes a “threat of vio­lence”.  Mr. Scha­ef­fer also refers to the “Kirk­wood inci­dent” where a dis­grun­tled cit­i­zen killed sev­eral peo­ple at City Hall; asso­ci­at­ing me with a vio­lent killer.

Here is the FOIA reply I received. In my opin­ion, the response is incom­plete. There were three other peo­ple copied on this memo in con­junc­tion with the City Coun­cil. I can­not believe that out of all those peo­ple this was the only doc­u­ment gen­er­ated as a result of my Dec­la­ra­tion and the infer­ence of a “threat of vio­lence”. I will need to file an appeal for an incom­plete response, and quite pos­si­bly a law­suit for vio­la­tions of the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act. More to come.……