Mayor Lori Lightfoots’ administration has fought the release of filings involving allegations against top fires official Chicago Tribune

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As Mayor Lori Lightfoot neared her final month in office, her administration released hundreds of pages of mostly unredacted documents involving allegations of workplace misconduct in city government after fighting for keeping many of them secret for more than two years.

The filings involved an investigation related to Chicago Fire Commissioner Annette Nance-Holt and other fire department employees, and separate allegations of workplace discrimination in city government stemming from complaints filed with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission or the Illinois Department of Human Rights.

The Tribune requested separate sets of records in September 2020 and May 2021. The city resisted, but on appeal in both cases, the Illinois attorney general’s office sided with the Tribune and said that the files should have been published.

Still, the Lightfoot administration didn’t agree to release them until the Tribune filed a lawsuit and a Cook County judge sided with the newspaper in a September 2022 ruling. released documents so heavily redacted that they provided virtually no usable information. This led to further negotiations with the Tribune before a set of legible documents was handed over in April.

A spokesperson for Lightfoot did not respond directly when asked why the office fought so hard to keep the records secret.

The City is committed to making our records available to the public to the fullest extent possible in accordance with laws and regulations governing confidentiality and privacy, spokesperson Ryan Johnson said in an email.

Despite campaigning on the promise to bring light and make city government more transparent, Lightfoot and his administration have consistently fought requests for public records made through the State’s Freedom of Information Act. state and kept a lid on many of the city inspector general’s reports during his four years. years in power.

We are within our rights to withhold records when the city believes the material is protected by (the state’s Freedom of Information Act), Johnson said. However, the city fully complied with the courts ruling after the Court determined that this material was not exempt under federal and state rules and regulations.

Records showed that following an investigation into allegations of misconduct by Nance-Holt and three other fire department employees, the city closed the case, saying it found no no evidence to support wrongdoing. The person behind the original allegations eventually recanted his charges against Nance-Holt, records show.

The allegations were being investigated at a time when the fire department was under intense scrutiny for its handling of sexual harassment and other offenses that had long plagued the department.

In the case involving Nance-Holt, a 300-page investigative file shows a woman told city investigators that an ex-boyfriend who was a Chicago firefighter shared a sex video that the couple had done a few years earlier with another employee of the fire department.

That employee, a fitness instructor, was dating Nance-Holt at the time, records show. The woman involved in the video accused Nance-Holt of using her knowledge of the video and her past relationship with the fitness instructor to harass her.

The accuser also filed a complaint with police, filing a report claiming, among other things, that Nance-Holt harassed and taunted her about the video, according to a November 2019 police report.

But about two weeks later, the accuser told a CPD detective that the information in her initial report to police was not accurate and that she did not wish to expand on her allegations in the report. The police investigation was then suspended.

The accuser also later denied to other city investigators that Nance-Holt intimidated her.

In December 2019, an official from the city’s office of inspectors general sent a letter to the city’s human resources department regarding another allegation by the same woman. In this case, the woman claimed the fire department fitness instructor used sexually explicit photos in an effort to blackmail her, according to an interview the IG office conducted with the direct supervisor. accusers.

But when the IG office questioned the accuser, she denied being blackmailed. An IG official advised Human Resources that he would not be opening a full-fledged investigation into the matter. The IG office also shared other information about the case with HR, which eventually took over.

The HR department investigated for about a year and a half, confirming the existence of the sex video. The firefighter who made it said he shared it with the accuser but denied sharing it with the fitness instructor.

In June 2021, shortly after Lightfoot announced that the shed had chosen Nance-Holt to take over as fire marshal, the city officially closed the case with no wrongdoing found.

An email from CFD’s general counsel referenced Nance-Holt dating the fitness instructor and said that while Nance-Holt did not directly supervise him, he ultimately reported to him.

The Tribune confirmed that Nance-Holt informed then-fire marshal Richard C. Ford II in writing of his relationship with the fire instructor, as required by the city.

Reached by the Tribune, Nance-Holt declined to discuss the case. Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford referred all inquiries about the case to the EEOC division of the city’s human resources department, adding that the fire department’s internal affairs division n did not handle the case.

Records from the EEOC and the Illinois Department of Human Rights include numerous complaints by city employees against their respective agencies for offenses ranging from racial discrimination to sexual harassment.

For example, at least one complaint against the fire department unrelated to the one involving Nance-Holt was filed by an employee in 2019 alleging that a poster at a CFD facility contained a sexually explicit image.

The Chicago Fire Department operates in a culture of discrimination, harassment and retaliation against female employees, the complainant alleged. The issues are systemic and span all areas of the department, from training, to medical, to internal affairs, to labor, to operations, and more. but for fear of reprisals in a job where teamwork is paramount, (women) are afraid to speak up.

Langford, the fire department spokesman, said the matter is ongoing.

Another complaint details high-profile allegations against former Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, who was fired by Lightfoot in late 2019 for lying about the circumstances of a night out on the town that ended with his discovery by police sleeping in the driver’s seat of his city-issued vehicle, which was parked on a street not far from his home.

The complaint against Johnson included allegations of sexual misconduct filed by a female subordinate who was with him in the hours before he was discovered in his vehicle. The allegations, which Johnson has denied, were first made public in a 2020 lawsuit by the then-subordinate.

As is common in transparency lawsuits, city ratepayers will bear all legal costs related to the fight for public records. Lawyers for the Tribune said last month that those costs amounted to tens of thousands of dollars.

Chicago Tribunes Joe Mahr and Rosemary Sobol contributed to this story.

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