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Foundation won’t sell Lincoln artifacts to pay down debt… yet

Thursday, May 10, 2018 - Posted by Rich Miller

A Springfield lawmaker said Thursday he’d be willing to look at selling some non-Lincoln artifacts that were part of the Louise Taper collection acquired in 2007 for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.

However, Rep. Tim Butler, R-Springfield, labeled as “ridiculous” any suggestion that Lincoln-related items should be sold to help retire the debt on the collection’s purchase.

Butler said he was told tangentially there may have been discussions about the library and museum divesting itself of some of the Taper collection. Butler said he first heard about the possible sale Wednesday.

However, the collection includes items that are not related to Lincoln, Butler said, and that’s a different matter.

* The Taper collection has been a source of controversy for years…

Two months before a major haul of Abraham Lincoln artifacts was purchased on behalf of the state, a New York appraiser raised questions about the authenticity of a $6.5 million stovepipe hat that purportedly belonged to the 16th president, newly released state records show.

That new disclosure represents the first evidence that state authorities were warned they might be on historically shaky ground with the hat before it was bought in 2007 from California collector Louise Taper as part of a $23 million acquisition of Lincoln items.

It also appears to further undercut assertions from the Lincoln presidential museum that there is “just not any question” about the hat’s provenance as the institution maintained in January when the hat was put on display without any recognition of its iffy past.

Taper’s collection, which included a large cache of Lincoln memorabilia and a smattering of other prizes such as a $40,000 dress worn by Marilyn Monroe, was acquired in May 2007 by a nonprofit foundation headed then by former Gov. Jim Edgar.

But the library folks still insist the hat is real and that they have the provenance to prove it.

* Anyway, the Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation has responded to the SJ-R story…

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation has been in talks with Governor Rauner’s office since the end of last year, including a meeting held earlier this week that helped enhance everyone’s understanding of the situation. Our goal has been to try to secure state funds to help keep a number of unique Lincoln artifacts in the State of Illinois while at the same time we continue to raise private support.

The Foundation took out a $23 million loan eleven years ago to acquire the artifacts to enhance the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum’s (ALPLM) collections and before they would be privately sold. We did so at the request of and to benefit the ALPLM. Since then, the Foundation has paid down more than $13 million of the outstanding debt exclusively through private fundraising.

While the Foundation’s lender has been quite helpful, we now face significant uncertainty about whether the Foundation’s lender will be willing and able to refinance the loan at affordable terms. The loan comes up for renewal in October 2019, just 20 short months away.

Based on the meeting with the Governor’s office this week, but receiving no financial commitments, the Foundation will continue its private fundraising efforts and be prepared to discuss a financial plan that would include some state funding, in the hopes of avoiding having to sell these unique artifacts. If the Foundation is not able to secure commitments in the very near future to retire most if not all of the remaining $9.7 million debt, it will have no choice but to accelerate the possibility of selling these unique artifacts on the private market which would likely remove them from public view forever.

It’s important to note that, in addition to private fundraising, the Foundation has made three prior attempts to secure appropriations from the Illinois Legislature to help pay down the debt.

Reading between the lines of that release, it looks to my eyes like the foundation may have to sell off Lincoln artifacts if something doesn’t change very soon.

…Adding… I’m told the Hollywood artifacts are already scheduled for a June auction.

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*** UPDATED x1 - Euthanizing comment retracted *** “Probable cause on a leash”

Thursday, May 10, 2018 - Posted by Rich Miller

* The Washington Post’s Radley Balko takes on a topic we discussed yesterday: The future of drug dogs if marijuana is legalized. Here’s part of his take…

I’ve written quite a bit about drug dogs in Illinois, and it turns out they’re pretty terrible at detecting drugs. In 2011, the Chicago Tribune published a review of drug dog searches conducted over three years by police departments in the Chicago suburbs. Just 44 percent of dog alerts led to the discovery of actual contraband. For Hispanic drivers, the success rate dipped to 27 percent. The following year, I obtained the records of an Illinois State Police drug dog for an 11-month period in 2007 and 2008. In nearly 30 percent of cases where the dog “alerted” no drugs at all were found. In about 75 percent of cases, the dog alerted either to no drugs or to what police officers later described as “residue,” which basically means no measurable quantity of a drug and not a significant-enough amount to merit criminal charges. Only 10 percent of the alerts resulted in a seizure of a large-enough quantity of drugs to charge someone with a felony.

This is pretty consistent with statistics from other states, as well as one fascinating academic study, which have shown that drug dogs are far more likely to merely confirm the hunches and suspicions of their handlers than they are to independently detect illicit drugs. The dogs’ high error rates often make them no more accurate than a coin flip. The problem of course is that the entire purpose of the Fourth Amendment is to protect us from searches based solely on a government official’s hunch or suspicion. There’s a reason some legal scholars call drug dogs “probable cause on a leash.”

The K9 trainers I’ve interviewed over the years have told me that drug dogs could actually be trained to only alert when there is a significant quantity of an illicit drug — that is, to ignore “residue.” The reason they aren’t is that police departments don’t want them trained that way. They want dogs that alert as often as possible. They want the dogs to err on the side of false alerts.

Why would police want a dog that falsely alerts? That’s the exact question the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia asked in a drug dog case a few years ago. The answer is incentives. Searches can lead to evidence of other illegal activity. One incentive is that police officers, particular those in drug enforcement, often evaluated based on the raw numbers of arrests. More searches mean more opportunities to make arrests.

But the more important incentive is civil-asset forfeiture. If the police find even the slightest bit of pot, sometimes even just residue, they can often justify taking a driver’s cash, jewelry or even the car itself. The owner of the property — even if completely innocent — then must endure a number of legal and procedural barriers to getting the property back.

*** UPDATE *** Thanks to a commenter for pointing this out…

The police dog trainer who said he believed drug-sniffing dogs would have to be euthanized has retracted his statement, according to his police chief.

Decatur Police Detective Chad Larner told the Bloomington Pantagraph earlier this week that if marijuana is made legal, the dogs trained to detect narcotics would have to be euthanized because they could not be retrained.

However, many experts have stated this is not the case, and Decatur Police Chief James Getz Jr. told the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday that Larner wishes he hadn’t made the statement, calling it “a bad choice of words.”

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*** LIVE *** Session coverage

Thursday, May 10, 2018 - Posted by Rich Miller

* Watch today’s action with ScribbleLive…

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