Illustration for FOIA 25-234: Four lab reports, two certificates, and 26.4 grams
FOIA 25-234 · Granted in part

On October 1, 2025, a request went to the Delta County Prosecutor’s Office asking for the laboratory testing behind the April 2024 Escanaba bar cocaine raid — the same investigation that FOIA 25-130 had already shown to be missing a defendant. The office received the request the same day by fax at 5:20 p.m. and answered on October 8, 2025. It granted the request and produced four Michigan State Police Forensic Laboratory reports, all bearing laboratory number MQ 24-101. It denied two smaller parts of the request with signed certificates of nonexistence. It charged nothing.

On its face that is a good response. It is timely, it is specific, it produces the records, and it costs the requester nothing. The problem is what the four reports turn out to describe. They test a plastic bag corner recovered from a trash pull on or about January 31, 2024, and two items turned over after a traffic stop documented in Delta County Sheriff’s Department Report 24-813. The largest quantity any of them confirms is 26.4 grams of cocaine, on Agency Item #20 — a little under one ounce. The request asked about evidence seized in the bar raid. Not one produced report identifies an item seized from inside the business, and the letter never says whether such a report exists.

That is the finding this page is built on, and it is a documentary one. The office answered a question about the bar by producing the laboratory file for the street. The two are part of the same investigation, so the answer is not irrelevant. But it is not the answer to what was asked, and the letter does not acknowledge the difference.

How to read this page

This page separates four things that are easy to blur together. First, what was asked. Second, what the office produced, report by report, including the quantities and the dates the laboratory actually recorded. Third, what the office certified does not exist. Fourth, what the produced records do not cover, which is the part of the file the letter is silent about.

Where the record supports criticism, the criticism is made and the page cites the document. Where the record is silent, the page says so rather than filling the gap. The laboratory reports are quoted directly because their own words are the strongest evidence available, and the four reports are published unaltered at the bottom of this page. The only documents redacted for publication are the ones carrying the requester’s name, address, email and phone number.

Summary

The request had three numbered parts. Part one asked for laboratory analysis reports, toxicology results or controlled substance testing reports from the Michigan State Police Forensic Laboratory, any regional forensic laboratory, or any contracted or private laboratory, concerning suspected narcotics seized in the Escanaba bar cocaine raid. Part two asked for any chain-of-custody cover sheets accompanying those results. Part three asked for any transmittal or return correspondence between the Prosecutor’s Office and the laboratory regarding the status or outcome of testing.

The October 8 letter grants part one, denies part two as nonexistent “over and above the cover sheets referenced and provided above for each individual lab report,” and denies part three as nonexistent outright. Each denial carries a signed certificate in the standard statutory form. The explanation offered for the chain-of-custody denial is worth quoting in full, because it is the clearest statement in the packet of how the evidence moved:

“As this matter was investigated primarily by the Upper Peninsula Substance Enforcement Team (UPSET), with the assistance of other agencies, to include the Delta County Sheriff’s Office, a review of the referenced reports, specifically UPT 19-24 and DCSO 24-813, reveals that all evidence initially seized by the Delta County Sheriff’s Office was immediately turned over to (referenced in the report as ‘TOT’) UPSET. The public body does not maintain or have in its possession any chain-of-custody cover sheets outside of the cover sheets referenced above, and references to the turning over of evidence in DCSO 24-813 and UPT 19-24.”

That is a coherent explanation, and it is the kind of explanation the statute contemplates: the office identifies the records it searched, says what they show, and certifies that nothing further exists. It is the strongest paragraph in the response.

What follows is weaker. The four reports the office produced are all real, all responsive in the loose sense that they concern the same investigation, and all attached with their Forensic Advantage discovery-packet cover sheets. But they describe three agency items — #14, #18 and #20 — and none of them is tied to a search of the business on Sheridan Road. The letter lists the reports by record number and date, never by what they tested, so a reader who does not open the attachments would never learn that the bar itself is absent from the file.

What was asked, and how the office answered

The request was dated October 1, 2025 and received the same day. The Zimbra fax receipt in the packet shows the transmission arriving at 5:20:31 p.m. Eastern on October 1, 2025, from a fax number the published copy redacts, addressed to the county’s administrative fax line. The office answered seven days later, on October 8, 2025, well inside the statutory response window.

The request opened by tying itself to the earlier file:

“Pursuant to Michigan Freedom of Information Act (MCL 15.231 et seq.), I am requesting copies of laboratory testing results related to the evidence seized in the Escanaba bar cocaine raid, which was the subject of my prior FOIA request #25-130.”

It then set out the three numbered parts described above, limited itself to records “already created and maintained by your office as part of the prosecution/case file,” asked that only exempt information be redacted with the specific statutory exemption cited under MCL 15.244(1), asked for electronic delivery, and closed with a request that “any fees be waived or reduced under MCL 15.234(1)” as a matter of significant public interest.

The response is headed by the office’s standard letterhead, which names Lauren M. Wickman as Prosecuting Attorney and Civil Counsel, Beth Wickwire as Chief Assistant Prosecutor and Deputy Civil Counsel, and Lauren Mattson as Assistant Prosecutor. It is signed by Wickman as Prosecuting Attorney and FOIA Coordinator. The disposition is a grant of part one and denials of parts two and three, with the two certificates printed in the body of the letter rather than on separate sheets.

The letter lists the four granted reports in a way that repays close reading. It describes them as:

  • “Michigan State Police Forensic Laboratory Report MQ 24-101, Record Number 2, dated March 4, 2024, related to Agency Item #14, seized from trash pull conducted on or about January 31, 2024… documenting the results of ‘microscopic, chemical and/or instrumental analyses’ performed on the item, including corresponding cover sheet.”
  • “Michigan State Police Forensic Laboratory Report MQ 24-101, Record Number 2, dated March 12, 2024, related to Agency Item #14, seized from trash pull conducted on or about January 31, 2024… documenting the testing for latent prints, including corresponding cover sheet.”
  • “Michigan State Police Forensic Laboratory Report MQ 24-101, Record Number 3, dated February 3, 2025, related to Agency Item #18, turned over to UPSET following a traffic stop conducted by Delta County Sheriff’s Office, as documented in previously provided UPT Report 19-24, Supplement 4, and Delta County Sheriff’s Department Report Number 24-813…”
  • “Michigan State Police Forensic Laboratory Report MQ 24-101, Record Number 4, dated February 6, 2025, related to Agency Item #20, turned over to UPSET following a traffic stop conducted by Delta County Sheriff’s Office…”

Two things are wrong with that list, and both are visible without leaving the page. The first is that it labels two different reports as “Record Number 2” — one dated March 4, 2024 and one dated March 12, 2024. The second is that the March 4 report is stamped Record No. 1 on its own face. The letter never lists Record No. 1 at all; it lists Record 2 twice, Record 3 and Record 4. The document that carries the only controlled-substance finding on the trash-pull item is the one the cover letter misnumbers.

The paper trail

The chronology is short and precise, and it is worth laying out because the timing is the one part of this response that is not in dispute.

Figure 1 · Interactive

From the request back to the evidence

Select a marker to read what the record shows for that date. The two earliest markers are the events the produced laboratory reports actually describe; the two latest are the request and the answer.

Record
Days from receipt to answer7
Laboratory reports produced4
Certificates of nonexistence2
Fees quoted$0

Source: the Zimbra fax receipt of October 1, 2025, the original request, the response letter dated October 8, 2025, and the four MSP Forensic Laboratory reports in the responsive set. The date of the traffic stop is not stated in any produced document.

Five dispositions in one letter

The letter does not present its answer as a single decision. It moves through the request part by part, and the parts land differently. Setting them side by side is the cleanest way to see the shape of the response, because the letter itself never does.

Figure 2 · Interactive

What the office did with each part of the request

Select a disposition to read what the letter says about it. Filter by whether the office produced the records or certified them out of existence.

Select a disposition

Source: the response letter dated October 8, 2025 and the four MSP Forensic Laboratory reports in the responsive set. The “scope” row describes an absence in the record, not a statement by the office.

What the four reports actually tested

The four reports are all from the Marquette Forensic Laboratory of the Michigan State Police Forensic Science Division, at 1924 Industrial Parkway in Marquette. All four carry laboratory number MQ 24-101 and agency number UPT-19-24, which ties them to the Upper Peninsula Substance Enforcement Team file rather than to a prosecutor’s-office case number. All four are on forms that state the laboratory is accredited to the ISO 17025:2017 standard and the AR 3125 supplemental standard for testing laboratories by ANAB since March 3, 2021. Three of the four name Sara Kozmor of the Controlled Substances or Seized Drug Unit as the analyst; the latent-print report is signed by Ryan P. Gerbig of the Latent Print Unit.

Figure 3 · Interactive

Four reports, three items, one file

Select a report to read what it tested, what it found, and which agency item it came from. Filter by whether the report concerns the trash pull or the traffic stop.

Select a report

Source: the four laboratory reports in the responsive set, pages 1 through 11 of that file. Quantities and dates are transcribed from the reports themselves; the office’s cover letter does not state either.

The numbers: 26.4 grams, not four ounces

This is where the produced file and the public story about this case come apart, and it is worth being precise about it.

FOIA 25-130 was built on a request that described “the April 2024 Upper Peninsula Substance Enforcement Team (UPSET) investigation of a bar in Escanaba, Michigan, which resulted in the reported seizure of approximately 4 ounces of cocaine, drug paraphernalia, and illegal prescription medications.” That description came from press coverage. The Daily Press quoted Prosecutor Wickman saying the men “had thrown something out the window that turned out to be a large quantity of cocaine,” and Public Radio 90 reported that the search uncovered cocaine, drug paraphernalia and illegal prescription medication.

The 25-130 page was careful about that figure, and this page is careful about it too: it originated in a requester’s description of press coverage, not in a produced record. What the laboratory file now supplies is the first measured quantity in the archive, and it is smaller than the press figure by a wide margin.

Quantities and findings recorded in the produced laboratory reports
ReportAgency itemSource described by the officeFindingQuantity recorded
Record 1#14Trash pull, on or about January 31, 2024Residue, cocaine, Schedule 2None stated — residue on a bag corner
Record 2#14Trash pull, on or about January 31, 2024Latent print examinationNot applicable
Record 3#18Traffic stop, DCSO Report 24-813Cocaine, Schedule 2Not legible in the produced copy
Record 4#20Traffic stop, DCSO Report 24-813Cocaine, Schedule 226.4 grams

Twenty-six point four grams is a little under one ounce. Four ounces is about 113 grams. The difference is not a rounding error; it is a factor of more than four, and it matters because the “four ounces” figure is the reason the case reads as a major narcotics prosecution rather than a possession case. The laboratory file, as produced, does not support four ounces. It supports 26.4 grams on one item from a traffic stop, an unstated quantity on a second item from the same stop, and residue on a bag corner from a trash pull.

What this page does not establish

It does not establish that no larger quantity was seized. It establishes that no produced laboratory report records one. A laboratory report is not a seizure inventory, and the office produced no seizure inventory. It is possible that items were seized and never submitted for testing, or that a report exists outside the four produced. The point is narrower and still significant: the only measured quantity in the file is 26.4 grams, and the office did not produce anything that reconciles that with the four ounces the press described.

The page also does not fault the office for the press figure. The office did not create it. What the office did was answer a request about the bar raid with reports about a trash pull and a traffic stop, and say nothing about the gap.

The two certificates

Both denials are made in the form the statute requires. MCL 15.235(5)(b) obliges a public body that denies a request because the record does not exist to certify that fact, and the letter prints two such certifications, each signed by the FOIA coordinator.

The first covers chain-of-custody cover sheets. The office’s reasoning is that the evidence was seized by the Delta County Sheriff’s Office and immediately turned over to UPSET, so the prosecutor’s file holds only the laboratory’s own cover sheets — the four Forensic Advantage discovery-packet pages that accompany the reports. That is a specific, checkable explanation, and it is consistent with the documents: each report in the produced set is preceded by a packet cover page listing the request date, the packet identifier and the release type.

The second covers transmittal or return correspondence with the laboratory. Here the letter offers no reasoning beyond the certificate itself. It states that “a review of the records reveal they do not exist,” and certifies accordingly. That is lawful. It is also thin: the request asked specifically about correspondence “regarding the status or outcome of the testing,” and the file plainly shows a working relationship with the laboratory — four submissions, four releases, two different units, two different analysts. Whether any email, transmittal sheet or status inquiry passed between the office and the laboratory in the course of that work is exactly the kind of question a certificate is supposed to answer after a search, and the letter does not describe the search.

Neither certificate is a scandal. Both are in the statutory form, both are signed, and both identify the record sought by quoting the request. The criticism available here is narrow: the second certificate states a conclusion without describing the search that produced it, and MCL 15.235(5)(a) asks a public body to explain the basis for a denial. A certificate that says “they do not exist” is the certificate; it is not the explanation.

The mislabeled record

There is a small, concrete documentary defect in this response, and it is worth recording because it is the kind of thing that makes a file hard to audit later.

The cover letter lists four reports. Two of them are called “Record Number 2.” The first of those is dated March 4, 2024 and concerns the controlled-substance analysis of Agency Item #14. The second is dated March 12, 2024 and concerns the latent-print examination of the same item. The March 4 report, on its own face, is stamped Record No. 1, with the report released March 4, 2024, examination complete March 1, 2024, and date received February 20, 2024. The March 12 report is stamped Record No. 2, which is correct.

So the letter never lists Record No. 1, and it lists Record No. 2 twice. The numbering runs 2, 2, 3, 4 in the letter and 1, 2, 3, 4 in the documents. A reader trying to match the letter to the attachments has to work out which “Record Number 2” is which from the dates alone, and a reader who takes the letter at face value would conclude that the controlled-substance finding on the trash-pull item is a different document from the one in the packet.

This is a clerical error, not a concealment. Nothing appears to have been withheld by it; all four reports are in the packet. But it is the second time in this line of requests that a Delta County response has misdescribed its own attachments — FOIA 25-215 answered one request three ways in a single letter — and it is the kind of error that a proofread would have caught.

What the file does not say

The central question on this page is not whether the office complied with the mechanics of FOIA. It did: it answered in seven days, it produced records, it certified what it says does not exist, and it charged nothing. The question is whether the records it produced answer the request it received.

The request asked for testing “related to the evidence seized in the Escanaba bar cocaine raid.” The office’s own description of what it produced places the evidence in two other places: a trash pull on or about January 31, 2024, and a traffic stop documented in DCSO Report 24-813. A trash pull is not a raid. A traffic stop is not a search of a business. Both are part of the same UPSET investigation — the agency number UPT-19-24 runs across all four reports — but neither is the event the request named.

No produced report identifies an item seized from inside the Northtown Crown Da’Bar on Sheridan Road, or from the apartment above it, on April 30, 2024. The letter does not say that no such report exists. It does not say that such items were never submitted for testing. It simply produces four reports about other seizures and stops.

That silence is the finding. A public body answering a request about the bar had three honest options: produce the laboratory reports for the bar seizure, certify that none exist, or explain that the items seized at the bar were never submitted and why. It took none of them. It produced the rest of the file instead.

Opinion: a grant that answers a different question

The most useful thing about this response is that it is good enough to be instructive. It is timely, it is free, it produces real records, and it certifies what it withholds. If every Delta County FOIA response looked like this one on its face, most of the criticism on this site would have nothing to attach to. And yet the response does not answer the question it was asked, and it does so without ever saying anything untrue.

That is a harder kind of opacity than a denial, and it deserves to be named precisely. A denial can be appealed. A certificate of nonexistence can be challenged. A fee estimate can be paid or fought. A grant that produces four genuine records about a trash pull and a traffic stop, in answer to a request about a bar raid, cannot easily be appealed at all, because on paper the office granted the request and produced documents. The requester received twenty-three pages. What the requester did not receive is any document about the thing he asked about, and there is no box on the appeal form for that.

Consider how the response would read to someone who did not open the attachments. The letter says the request for laboratory reports is “GRANTED,” lists four reports by number and date, and encloses them. It reads as a complete and cooperative answer. The gap only appears when you read the reports and notice that the agency items are #14, #18 and #20, that #14 came from a trash pull, that #18 and #20 came from a traffic stop, and that nothing in the packet came from the business.

That is the same structural move this archive has documented elsewhere, in a gentler form. FOIA 25-215 answered one request three ways in a single letter, so that no single disposition could be appealed cleanly. FOIA 25-199 produced a press release, a complaint and a laboratory weight in one packet, each telling a slightly different story. Here the office produces a real grant of real records that are adjacent to, but not the same as, what was asked. The requester is not refused. He is redirected, politely, to the rest of the file.

There is also the matter of the numbers. The public account of this case has rested on “approximately 4 ounces” of cocaine. The laboratory file, now produced, records 26.4 grams on the largest item and residue on another. Those are not the same case, and the difference is not the office’s fault — the office did not write the press coverage. But the office has now produced the document that settles the question, and it did not mention what the document says. A one-sentence note in the cover letter — “the largest quantity tested was 26.4 grams” — would have corrected the public record at no cost. Its absence is not misconduct. It is the difference between producing a document and accounting for it.

The fairest reading is that this is a competent response to a request the office read narrowly. The office appears to have treated “evidence seized in the Escanaba bar cocaine raid” as a label for the whole UPSET investigation, pulled every laboratory report bearing the UPT-19-24 agency number, and sent them. That is a defensible reading of a request that itself used the raid as a shorthand for the case. It is not the only reading, and it is not the reading the words support, but it is not a pretext.

What makes it worth documenting anyway is that the narrow reading was never disclosed. The letter does not say “we have interpreted your request as seeking the laboratory file for the UPSET investigation.” It says the request is granted and lists four reports. A requester who wanted the bar seizure specifically would have to notice the substitution himself, and he would have to notice it by reading eleven pages of laboratory forms closely enough to see that the agency item numbers do not match the search warrant. Most requesters will not do that. That is what makes the technique work, and it is why it belongs in the record even though nothing in it is unlawful.

The office’s good day

Balance requires recording what went right here, and more went right than in most of the responses in this archive.

The office answered in seven days, against a five-business-day statutory window that allows a ten-business-day extension. It produced the records rather than pricing them. It charged nothing, which is the outcome the MCL 15.234 waiver request was aiming at, even if the letter never says so. It certified its denials in the statutory form rather than leaving the requester to guess. It enclosed the appeal form, the statutory excerpt and the county’s FOIA policy page without being asked. And it explained the chain-of-custody denial in specific, checkable terms — naming UPT 19-24 and DCSO 24-813, and describing how the evidence moved from the sheriff’s office to UPSET.

There is one more thing, and it is the kind of thing that rarely makes it into a file like this. On October 2, 2025, the day after the request arrived, Tracy Lantagne of the Delta County Administration Office emailed the requester to point out that he had left the delivery email address off the county’s form. Her message reads: “I received the attached FOIA request from you today and noticed the email address is was not inserted into the form letter and think that was an oversight on your end. Could you confirm whether or not you would like the response emailed to you at this email address?” The requester replied the same day: “Yes please, that was an oversight on my end.”

That is a county employee noticing a requester’s mistake, reaching out unprompted, and fixing it before it could cost him a delay. It is exactly what a FOIA coordinator should do, it is not required by the statute, and it is the opposite of the behavior this archive usually documents. The email exchange is published with the request documents, with the requester’s address redacted, because it belongs in the record alongside the criticism.

Comparison with other requests

Three earlier files bear directly on this one.

FOIA 25-130 is the parent case. It asked for defendant names and final dispositions from the same April 2024 investigation and received two judgments of sentence for one defendant, James Joseph Johnson, and nothing at all about the second man arraigned, Ronald David Frans. That page is titled “Two Defendants, One File, No Explanation,” and 25-234 adds a third name to the file. The laboratory report on the trash-pull item lists two suspects: Johnson and Corey Allen Way. The traffic-stop reports list Johnson alone. The judgments produced in 25-130 name Johnson and Frans. Across the two responses the office has now identified four men connected to this investigation — Johnson, Frans, Way, and the unnamed passenger whose vehicle was stopped — and has produced sentencing records for one. The 25-130 page has been updated with the laboratory findings.

FOIA 25-215 is the closest structural analogue. There, one request received three dispositions in a single letter — two certificates of nonexistence and a grant priced at $13,248 — so that no single decision could be appealed cleanly. Here the structure is simpler but the same instinct is visible: a grant that produces adjacent records, two certificates for the parts that are easy to certify, and no statement at all about the part that would require an answer.

FOIA 25-199 produced a press release, a criminal complaint and a laboratory weight in one packet, each describing the same 1.7 grams slightly differently. The lesson there was that the office will produce the document that settles a factual question without ever saying what the document settles. The 26.4-gram finding here is the same lesson in a different file: the record now contains the number, and the cover letter does not mention it.

The pattern across all four is not fabrication and it is not refusal. It is a consistent preference for producing documents over explaining them, and for letting the requester do the work of noticing what the documents mean. That preference is lawful. It is also, over four files, a method.

The law this page relies on

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.233(1) requires a public body to respond to a FOIA request within five business days of receipt, with a possible ten-business-day extension under MCL 15.233(3) where the request requires examination of a voluminous amount of separated records or consultation with another public body. This request was received October 1, 2025 and answered October 8, 2025 — five business days later, with no extension taken. On timing, the office complied.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.235(5)(b) requires that, if a public body denies a request because the public record does not exist under the name given or another name reasonably known to it, the public body shall certify that fact in writing. The October 8 letter prints two such certifications, both signed by the FOIA coordinator, one for chain-of-custody cover sheets beyond those produced and one for transmittal or return correspondence. Both are in the statutory form and both quote the request language they address.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.235(5)(a) requires that a denial be accompanied by an explanation of the basis under the act for the denial. The certificate under subparagraph (b) is the mechanism for a nonexistence denial, and the two provisions work together: the certificate establishes the fact, and the explanation establishes the basis. The chain-of-custody denial meets both, because the letter explains how the evidence moved to UPSET. The transmittal-correspondence denial meets the first and is thin on the second, because it states the conclusion of a review without describing the review.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.234(1) permits a public body to waive or reduce fees where a request is in the public interest, and the request here asked for exactly that. The office charged nothing, which achieves the result the waiver was seeking. But the statute contemplates a decision, and a decision is what makes the outcome reviewable and repeatable. A silent waiver leaves the next requester with nothing to cite and nothing to appeal, and it leaves the office with no stated position on when a public-interest waiver is warranted.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.240(1) gives a requester the right to appeal a denial, in whole or in part, to the public body’s head or to the circuit court. A certificate of nonexistence is a denial for these purposes. A grant that produces records about a different subject than the one requested is harder to characterize: it is not a denial on its face, and the appeal form has no box for “granted, but not what I asked for.” That is the practical difficulty this response creates, and it is worth stating plainly because it is the mechanism by which a compliant-looking response can still leave a request unanswered.

Michigan law — the statutory framework applied here

Legal interpretation: MCL 15.244(1) requires that, where a requested record contains material exempt from disclosure, the public body separate the exempt material and make the remainder available. The request asked for exactly that treatment and asked that any exemption be cited specifically. The office redacted nothing from the four laboratory reports, which is consistent with its position that they contain no exempt material. The requester’s own identifying information was removed from the published copies on this site, not by the office.

Authorities and sources cited on this page

Show the statutes, cases, and sources cited on this page

Every factual statement above is drawn from the documents the office produced, and every legal statement is drawn from the Michigan Freedom of Information Act as cited. The sources are:

  • FOIA request 25-234, dated October 1, 2025 and received by fax the same day at 5:20:31 p.m. Eastern, as shown on the Zimbra fax receipt.
  • Response letter of October 8, 2025 from the Delta County Prosecutor’s Office, signed by Lauren M. Wickman as Prosecuting Attorney and FOIA Coordinator, three pages, granting the laboratory-report portion and denying the chain-of-custody and transmittal portions.
  • Certificate of nonexistence for chain-of-custody cover sheets beyond those produced, printed in the response letter.
  • Second certificate of nonexistence for transmittal or return correspondence with the laboratory, printed in the response letter.
  • Michigan State Police Forensic Laboratory Report MQ 24-101, Record No. 1, released March 4, 2024: cocaine residue, Agency Item #14, suspects Johnson and Way, analyst Sara Kozmor, investigating officer Josh Dishaw, agency number UPT-19-24.
  • Michigan State Police Forensic Laboratory Report MQ 24-101, Record No. 2, dated March 12, 2024: friction-ridge examination of Agency Item #14, analyst Ryan P. Gerbig.
  • Michigan State Police Forensic Laboratory Report MQ 24-101, Record No. 3, released February 3, 2025: cocaine, Agency Item #18, suspect Johnson, analyst Sara Kozmor, investigating officer James McDonough.
  • Michigan State Police Forensic Laboratory Report MQ 24-101, Record No. 4, released February 6, 2025: 26.4 grams of cocaine, Agency Item #20, suspect Johnson, analyst Sara Kozmor.
  • Forensic Advantage Discovery Packet cover sheets for packets MQ24-101, MQ24-101 2, MQ24-101 3 and MQ24-101 4, listing request dates and release types.
  • Notice of Denial of FOIA Request form, request 25-234, date received 10/01/2025, date of notice 10/08/2025, received via email and fax.
  • Email exchange of October 2, 2025 between Tracy Lantagne of the Delta County Administration Office and the requester regarding the missing delivery email address.
  • Michigan Freedom of Information Act, MCL 15.231 through 15.246, in particular MCL 15.233, 15.234, 15.235, 15.240 and 15.244.
  • FOIA 25-130, “Two Defendants, One File, No Explanation,” for the April 30, 2024 traffic stop and search of the Northtown Crown Da’Bar and the two arraignments that followed.

The redacted copies of the response, the forms, the statutory and policy enclosures, the original request with its fax receipt and email exchange, and the four laboratory reports are linked under Documents below. Requester identifying information has been removed from the published copies; the laboratory reports contain no requester information and are published unaltered.

What would move this forward

Three follow-ups would resolve most of what is unresolved here, and each is narrow enough to be answerable.

The first is the bar itself. A request limited to a single question — whether any item seized from inside the Northtown Crown Da’Bar or the apartment above it on April 30, 2024 was submitted to any laboratory for testing, and if so for the resulting report, and if not for the record showing the disposition of those items — cannot be answered with a report about a trash pull. It either produces the report, or it produces a certificate, or it produces an explanation. Any of the three would settle the question this page leaves open.

The second is the seizure inventory. The laboratory reports reference agency items by number, and the numbers run to at least #20. A request for the UPSET or sheriff’s office property and evidence inventory for UPT 19-24, or for the prosecutor’s file index for the case, would show what the numbers refer to and how many items exist. That is the document that would reconcile 26.4 grams with the four ounces in the press.

The third is the waiver ruling. The request asked for a decision under MCL 15.234 and did not receive one. A one-paragraph follow-up asking only for a written decision on the waiver — granted or denied, with the reason — should produce either a decision or a statement that none was made. Either answer is informative, and a denial would at least be appealable.

Until one of those produces a document, the record stands as it is: a timely, free, well-certified response that produced four genuine laboratory reports about a trash pull and a traffic stop, in answer to a request about a bar raid, with the largest measured quantity in the file — 26.4 grams — left unmentioned in the cover letter and the fourth man in the investigation named only in a laboratory report the sentencing file never mentions.

Documents

These are redacted copies prepared for publication. Requester names, home addresses, personal phone numbers, and email addresses have been removed. Unredacted originals are not hosted on the public web server.

Determination letter, October 8, 2025 The three-page letter granting the laboratory-report portion of the request, listing the four MSP reports by record number, and denying the chain-of-custody and transmittal-correspondence portions with two signed certificates of nonexistence. Requester name and address removed. Notice of Denial and FOIA appeal form, October 8, 2025 Two pages: the Notice of Denial of FOIA Request for 25-234, dated 10/08/2025 and marked received by email and fax, and the county FOIA appeal form. Requester name, street, city, state, zip, email and phone removed. MCL 15.240 excerpt and county FOIA policy page Three pages of the enclosures: the statutory excerpt on appeal rights and judicial review, reproduced twice, and the Delta County page pointing to its FOIA written policies, guidelines and forms. Original request, fax receipt and email exchange Four pages: the Zimbra fax receipts showing the request arrived October 1, 2025 at 5:20 p.m., the October 1, 2025 request letter with its three numbered parts and its MCL 15.234 waiver request, and the October 2, 2025 email exchange in which county staff asked the requester to confirm a delivery address he had left off the form. Requester name, address, email, phone and fax identifiers removed. Responsive records: four MSP Forensic Laboratory reports, MQ 24-101 Eleven pages: the Forensic Advantage Discovery Packet cover sheets and the four Marquette Forensic Laboratory reports, Records 1 through 4. Record 1 identifies cocaine residue on a plastic bag corner from a January 31, 2024 trash pull and names Johnson and Way as suspects; Record 2 is the latent print examination of the same item; Records 3 and 4 identify cocaine, including 26.4 grams on Item #20, from an April 30, 2024 traffic stop. No requester information appears in this set and it is published unaltered.