Boy’s pool stolen from his backyard

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Part of my job as police reporter for the SJ-R is to thumb through media copies of police reports each day, looking for serious and unusual crime. In July 2006 I found a theft report where the stolen item was a backyard swimming pool. I did a little investigating and learned the victim was a 9-year-old boy who’d saved up his money for months to buy that pool for him and his siblings to play in.

The story ran on a Saturday. I checked my work messages from home that morning, hoping that someone in town would want to help Marcus Fearson out by finding him a new pool. There were dozens of messages by day’s end. One man went to the store promptly at 9 a.m. and brought a brand new pool for Marcus and had already dropped it off.

The police, by the way, nabbed the thief three days later.

Nine months of saving thwarted / Thieves steal pool from 9-year-old
July 15, 2006

Nine-year-old Marcus Fearson saved his allowance for months to buy himself something special.

At first he had his eye on a video game system but, after talking it over with his mom, decided a swimming pool would be just the ticket – a little indulgence to help him, his brothers and his cousins wile away steamy summer afternoons.

So on July 3, Marcus and his mother, Tiffany Fearson, went to Kmart and bought a $120 metal-frame pool. It was blue, 12 feet wide and 30 inches deep and came with its own filter pump. Marcus paid for half, and his mother put in the other half, even though she is going through bankruptcy proceedings.

“That poor kid,” Tiffany Fearson said. “he saved a while for that money. He doesn’t get much of an allowance right now.”

Marcus, who has mild autism, and his two brothers, McCory and Mekhi, even got new swim gear to wear in the pool.

Now, the only evidence there ever was a pool at the Fearson home is a vague, 12-foot-wide circular imprint in the back yard. The pool wasn’t there even long enough for the grass to turn brown underneath.

Someone dismantled and stole the pool overnight Wednesday, apparently hauling it out through the privacy fence gate in the alley behind the home, which is in the 1200 block of East Capitol Avenue.

“He knows about saving money and getting what he wants,” Tiffany Fearson said Friday. “I matched him on it, and I feel terrible that it was stolen. He liked to maintain the pool. He used to help us clean it. I thought it was great he was learning some responsibility.”

Marcus said he liked splashing in the pool and misses it.

“It was fun swimming in it,” said Marcus, who will be in the fourth grade at Owen Marsh Elementary School this fall.

Two days before the pool was taken, someone stole the ladder off it. To add insult to injury, the thieves who took the pool didn’t even take all the parts necessary to rebuild it. They left behind one of the T-shaped parts that locks the frame in place.

“You’ve got to be a pretty low life to steal a kid’s pool,” said Marcus’ grandmother, Mary Fearson.

The family has lived in its home for two years.

Last year, the Fearsons’ inflatable pool twice was the victim of thieves and vandals. They got it back the first time, but someone later slashed it, rendering it useless.

That’s why they opted for a metal-frame pool this time, assuming that no one would be able to destroy it or take it.

“When the pool was stolen last year, the kids cried. They didn’t even cry this time, they’ve gotten so used to it,” Tiffany Fearson said. “It would have been a nice thing for them to jump into today, that’s for sure.”

Bullrunners speed by Springfield

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I was at lunch with fellow reporter Sarah Antonacci one afternoon in July 2006, when we started noticing a few cars with numbers on them speeding south on Interstate 55. We saw more of them whizz by and began hearing unusual animated state police chatter on the scanner. Then we realized most of the numbered cars were luxury sports cars.

We pulled over at the Taco Bell on Toronto Road after finding a Lotus parked in the lot. The driver came out of the restaurant and talked to me about what was going on. Turns out it was a cross-country rally for the rich and famous known as “Bullrun.”

Passing through / Rally routes rich and famous down I-55
July 25, 2006

Joe Talbot’s customized metallic blue Lotus looked a little out of place parked in the lot of Taco Bell on Toronto Road Monday afternoon.

After all, there aren’t many Lotuses in these parts. Same goes for Lamborghinis, Porsches and the multitude of other sports cars cruising down Interstate 55 Monday – a few of which reportedly were going faster than 100 mph, sometimes on the shoulders, and had state troopers scrambling to track them down.

Talbot’s was among the dozens of high-end luxury cars that raced through the Springfield area on Monday’s leg of Bullrun 2006, an invitation-only coast-to-coast rally that attracts the rich, the famous and a cast of “petrosexuals” – people obsessed with cars and motor sports.

Entry fees for the race are $14,000.

Among the celebrities reportedly participating in Bullrun this year are racer Mario Andretti, Olympic athlete Carl Lewis, actors Hayden Christensen, Corey Feldman and Corey Haim and possibly former Chicago Bulls forward Dennis Rodman.

Participants left Times Square in New York City on Saturday and expect to arrive in Los Angeles on Saturday. They reportedly stay in five-star hotels, and the event’s parties are “legendary,” according to the event’s Web site at www.bullrun.com.

“Bullrunners” make their way from one checkpoint to the next and don’t know their destinations until they are handed a card each morning when they depart. The card lists an address, a destination city and the number of miles to get there. The rest of the navigation is up to them.

Talbot, a commissioning editor with British television network ITV, stopped at Taco Bell for a quick bite, then hit the highway again. Destination: 1 Busch Plaza in St. Louis, also known as the Anheuser-Busch brewery.

“We try and drive responsibly,” said Talbot, who is from London. “Not that many of us know the speed limits. It varies from state to state. Occasionally, as many people do, we get a bit overexcited at times.”

Most of the participating cars were emblazoned with numbers on their sides and adorned with a variety of decals. Among the makes and models represented in this year’s rally are Lamborghini, Ferrari, Bentley, Mercedes, Corvette, Lotus, Porsche, Ford Mustang, Chrysler PT Cruiser, Range Rover and BMW. A 1954 Studebaker Commander and a 1980s-model Suzuki SUV are among others in the running.

Tom and Rita Naylor of Stratfordshire, England, were driving car No. 48, a Buick Lucerne – not the sexiest car in the rally but certainly a reliable way to get across the country. Tom, a retired truck driver, won $30 million in a lottery in 2001. His personal cars include three Jaguars, a Bentley and an Astin Martin.

“It’s a great deal of fun. It’s not a race, it’s a rally,” he said, as he and Rita stopped to fuel up at a gas station near Illinois 108 outside Carlinville.

Though he hadn’t been driving as fast as the other participants and was consistently coming in last, he did manage to get a ticket for going 80 mph in a 60 mph zone early in the trip. He’s not worried about the fines, though.

“It’s only money at the end of the day,” he said.

Many of the drivers outfitted their cars with such equipment as police scanners, CB radios and radar detectors and jammers. They made sure they had cash, identification, vehicle registration information and proof of their vehicle’s ownership.

Most of the cars had cameras and video equipment to document the race. Videographers were among the group, and some of their footage is going to air on Spike TV, one of them said.

Talbot said there even is a helicopter with special camera equipment following the race from above.

“It’s an eclectic mix of people – fast cars, old cars, slow cars,” Talbot said. He added: “The best part of the rally is that it’s not about the cars. It’s about the people in the cars. There’s a real camaraderie.”

Most of the drivers had been pulled over at least once during the drive, according to Web sites dedicated to tracking the rally. Talbot said he’d been pulled over several times already but said the police had been very nice.

He added that the Illinois leg of the rally was “really boring,” “very flat” and the “worst part” of the race so far. He gave the leg between New York and Toronto a rave review.

District 9 Illinois State Police began receiving complaints about speeding sports cars with numbers on the side about 1:30 p.m. They received reports of cars going as fast as 140 mph. Most, if not all, of the drivers were slowed dramatically when they reached the construction zone at the Lake Springfield bridges south of the city.

By late afternoon, troopers had stopped two of the Bullrunners and issued them citations. District 6 troopers north of District 9 reportedly pulled over six drivers, and District 18 troopers to the south were made aware of the rally heading their direction. At least one of their troopers worked from an overpass, using a Lidar device to catch speeders.

Capt. Tim Reents of District 18 pulled over car No. 66 for going 78 mph in a 65 mph zone near Illinois 108. The same car was pulled over earlier near Springfield for having no visible registration.

“We can’t allow people to have an open race on the interstate highways,” he said.

Police reopen 2002 death case

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Of all the unsolved murders in the area, this is the one I most wish police would solve. I think part of what bothers me about this case is that there doesn’t seem to be anyone fighting on Julia Testa’s behalf, rattle the police department’s cage or pounding the pavement themselves in an effort to find her killer.

No one even ran an obituary in the newspaper for her. I have no idea what she looked like, who her family is or what she did in life.

The case remains unsolved.

Police reopen ’02 death case / Initial investigation into woman’s probable homicide stalled
July 17, 2006

Springfield police have reopened their investigation into the 2002 death of a woman whose remains were found in her bed at a group home on MacArthur Boulevard.

Julia M. Testa, 39, was found Aug. 29, 2002, inside her room at 702 S. MacArthur Blvd. after a mental health worker went to check on her because she had missed several appointments.

While police investigated Testa’s death as a possible homicide after receiving autopsy results, the probe stalled for some reason.

Testa’s autopsy report shows she died of a stab-cutting wound on the front of her neck “and possibly additional blunt-force trauma.” The wound was to her larynx, not the veins or arteries of her neck, a detective testified at the coroner’s inquest Oct. 2, 2002.

However, evidence that typically would point to homicide was not present in Testa’s apartment.

The door to her top-floor apartment was locked from the inside with a double-cylinder deadbolt, and her key was found inside. Her pajama-clad body was in bed in a natural sleeping position with the covers up to her shoulders and a stuffed animal next to her.

Police found no murder weapon inside the third-floor apartment, which was in a group home for mentally ill people. Nothing was out of place inside the apartment, and her purse had not been rifled through. It did not appear that any type of struggle had taken place.

According to a transcript of the coroner’s inquest, Testa suffered from a bipolar condition and had a history of alcohol- and drug-related problems. Her mental health worker told police she had not seen Testa for at least three weeks.

The body was badly decomposed when it was found that summer afternoon, making it difficult to determine a precise time of death. She had no defensive wounds, and there was no sign that she had been sexually assaulted.

Detectives also could not determine a motive for Testa’s death.

“We are unable to determine that she had any problems with anyone, any suicidal tendencies or any problems with the apartment itself,” Sgt. Tim Young, a now-retired detective with the Springfield Police Department, testified at the inquest.

A member of the coroner’s jury asked Young if it was possible that the injury to Testa’s neck happened while she was out somewhere and she came home, went to bed and passed away.

“Yes, that is possible,” Young responded. “That type of injury to the larynx would not be an instantaneous death. There would not be a lot of blood. Usually people that inflict this type of injury do not discard the device that they used. She probably did not do this to herself.”

The coroner’s jury ruled Testa’s death a homicide, but its determinations do not legally require further investigation or criminal charges.

Police who returned to the apartment after the autopsy removed the carpet from Testa’s bedroom and the hallway to have it tested for blood trace evidence after they received the autopsy results. A police spokesman last week would not reveal the results of that testing or otherwise comment on specifics of the case, saying it is a pending investigation.

In January 2003, a police department spokesman responding to questions about why the department did not include Testa’s death in its murder statistics said police believed she died of natural causes.

“We’re currently treating this as a death investigation,” Ralph Caldwell, who now is assistant police chief, was quoted as saying. “We’re waiting for results from lab work and for follow-up investigations. We are not reporting this as a homicide at this time. We’re not hunting for anyone.”

Testa’s death was not included in the Springfield Police Department’s crime statistics at any point since 2002. However, that year’s stats will be amended this year to reflect that the death is being treated as a murder, Williamson said.

It is unclear what caused the apparent pause in the investigation, nor is it known why police recently chose to refocus on the case.

Lt. Doug Williamson, filling in as the department’s spokesman last week, said detectives have been assigned to the case.

“It’s being actively investigated. When officers and detectives went out after the autopsy, there were no signs that there was any foul play. After the autopsy it was determined that there was,” he said, noting that detectives and evidence technicians went to the house as soon as they determined Testa was an apparent murder victim.

“I do know that we are taking all the information that was collected and sent off and are refocusing on the investigation and it is being actively worked. Obviously, new cases that come in have the primary manpower resource.”

Like father, like daughter

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In June 2006 I was able to profile Gerry Castles and his daughter Rikki Castles-Zajicek, the Springfield Police Department’s first father-daughter cops. My favorite quote is when Gerry told me about seeing his daughter in her uniform for the first time and he flashed back to when she used to dress up in his uniform as a child.

The photo, taken by former SJ-R intern Dave Albers, is a favorite of mine, too. I love how Gerry is all buttoned up and seasoned-looking, and Rikki is young and fresh-faced.

Like father, like daughter / Two Springfield police officers form first pairing of its kind
June 18, 2006

Springfield police officer Gerry Castles was taken aback the first time he saw his daughter, Rikki, in a police uniform.

“It was as if, ‘Why are you playing dress-up in my uniform again?’” he recalled thinking when he saw her standing with other cadets at graduation from the police training academy. “There’s just an overwhelming sense of pride. It’s really crazy. It’s strange, and I like it.”

Gerry Castles and his 25-year-old daughter, Rikki Castles-Zajicek, have the distinction of being the first father-daughter officers with the Springfield Police Department. There have been numerous fathers, sons and brothers on the force at the same time, but this is the first time the department has had a father and daughter, according to police officials.

Police work runs in the Castles family – Rikki married Springfield police officer Tim Zajicek on June 26, she has a cousin who is an officer in Idaho, and Gerry’s great-great grandfather, H. Scott Castles, was Springfield police chief in the early 1900s.

Rikki, 25, a Lutheran High School graduate, earned an associate’s degree from Springfield College in Illinois and a bachelor’s in anthropology from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. She was going to pursue a master’s in teaching but changed her mind.

“I think growing up around it, I never thought I wanted to do (police work). There’d always be cops around our house, and I’d think, ‘Why would I want to do that?’ I wanted to do something different,” she said. “So it was a shock to me.”

Gerry, 49, a Springfield patrol officer for 12 years, works the midnight shift and is part of the department’s emergency response team and its honor-guard unit. He’s also a field-training officer.

He carries a laminated wallet-size copy of Rikki’s birth certificate with her baby photo on it in his uniform pocket.

He said Rikki initially didn’t go around telling everyone she was interested in becoming a police officer.

“I think she’s a lot like I am – if I’m going to go for something, I don’t talk to anyone about it until it’s time,” he said. “I never in my wildest dreams thought she’d go for it. We used to sit around and tell stories about work, and she’d say, ‘Stop all this cop talk.’”

Rikki said her father was excited when she told him she decided to join the force. He called her once a week while she was at the training academy to see how things were going.

“He loves his job. It’s his life. Everything is police with him, which is good,” Rikki said. “We’re very close. We’re really alike in a lot of ways.

“You wouldn’t think it, but he’s a really sensitive guy. I really respect that. A lot of things he does I don’t agree with, but I really respect his personality and his sense of humor.”

Gerry said Rikki listens to all those “cop stories” now, and he’s looking forward to patrolling with her after she finishes her field training. He said Rikki has a lot of compassion, and that will make her a good officer.

Neither is worried about family ties getting in the way of doing a good job.

“I try to convey to her, ‘You’re going to have to stand on your own merits, and there are going to be some expectations there,’” Gerry said.

Rikki said she hopes her colleagues won’t think she got her job because of her dad.

“That was my worst fear when I took the job,” she said. “People think that I’m going to ride on my dad’s accomplishments. I don’t think that at all.”

Pit bull mauls second grader

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After learning that a Springfield girl had been mauled by a pit bull, SJ-R photographer Justin Fowler and I set out to find the girl and learn more about how the girl was doing and what happened. We found 8-year-old Leticia Starks at her home with her mother. Starks’ ear was visibly injured, and she was visibly out of sorts from the traumatic incident.

‘Traumatized’ / Stitches alone may not heal girl attacked by pit bull
May 11, 2006

Eight-year-old Leticia Starks is a shadow of her usually rambunctious self.

That’s to be expected, her mother said, considering the trauma the second-grader suffered Tuesday night when a pit bull attacked her, mauling both ears, her right arm and her upper back.

“It’s not good. I have to look at my baby and see the pain that she’s in,” said Mondai Myers. “To be honest, I wish it was me who was mauled. I’d trade places with her in a minute. My baby is very traumatized.”

Doctors stitched up the wounds, and Leticia is taking pain medication. She returned home early Wednesday after spending several hours at Memorial Medical Center.

Myers said she’s unsure when Leticia will return to her class at Matheny Elementary School. She’s also unsure if the girl’s badly mauled right ear can be rebuilt, or if the attack damaged her hearing.

What is certain is that her little girl is alive and the pit bull is dead.

No one has stepped forward to claim ownership of the dog, which was shot by a police officer after the attack. It had no collar or tags.

Leticia was playing outside her family’s home in the 2000 block of East Lawrence Avenue about 7 p.m. Tuesday when the light-brown pit bull with white paws and a dark pink nose – Leticia clearly remembers the color of the dog’s nose – wandered into the back yard.

The dog attacked the family’s 4-month-old pit bull, which was chained in the yard. The puppy survived, although one side of its face was swollen from the attack.

The other dog continued to the front yard, where it climbed onto the front porch and jumped at a stroller where Myers’ 6-month-old son was sitting. Leticia and her brothers and sisters were playing in the yard near the street when the pit bull ran up to them.

“I had just walked off the porch to go get something to eat. We got to the stop sign down there, and I got a call on my cell phone and all I could hear was screaming and crying,” Myers said. “I just hung up the phone and ran. I didn’t even ask what was wrong.”

When she got back to the yard, Myers found Leticia bleeding and injured. A neighbor had already phoned 911.

“All she kept saying was, ‘I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I want to go to school,’ ” Myers recalled.

Leticia was taken by ambulance to Memorial. She was able to go home about 2 a.m.

Some cartilage and part of her right ear lobe is gone. It took many stitches to close the wound, as well as the one on her left ear, which was not as badly mangled. She also has stitches in her arm and on her back.

Myers has a medical card but is unsure how much the bills will amount to. She and Leticia are going to see a plastic surgeon next week.

Leticia was quiet Wednesday, presumably from the medication and the trauma of what had happened. She broke into a smile only when her mother and siblings described how she is something of a daredevil and likes to climb to the top of one of the large trees in their yard.

Her 13-year-old sister, Tonie Vance, was watching the children outside at the time of the attack. She said that when she realized what was happening, she started ushering the other children to safety on the porch. She said Leticia didn’t immediately grasp the dangerousness of the situation.

“At first she was laughing because she thought the dog was playing. Then the dog jumped over her head, and then it came back around and grabbed her ear,” Vance said. “She ran, and I tried to hold the dog, but it broke loose.”

The dog went after Leticia once more before running away. Myers said her 12-year-old son and a friend ran after the dog with baseball bats.

Police and animal control officers combed the area looking for the dog, eventually finding it at Wheeler and Capitol avenues, where an officer shot it. The wounded pit bull continued running and stopped in an alley off McCreery Avenue just north of the intersection with Cook Street, where it collapsed and died.

Myers said she learned from animal control Wednesday that the dog did not have rabies.

“I thank God that dog did not have rabies,” she said. “I’m not angry at any person because I don’t know whose dog it was. I’m just angry that it happened to my baby.”

Sgt. Pat Ross, spokesman for the Springfield Police Department, said authorities have been asking residents in the area if they know who owned the dog but have had no success. Myers and her children said they had never seen the dog before.

“We would hope whoever the owner of the dog is would come forward,” Ross said.

City police lose their ‘matriarch’ with a heart of gold

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It gave me great joy to be able to write a touching and well-received farewell piece about Springfield police officer Brenda Thompson, who died unexpectedly in April 2006.

City police lose one of their best-known / Death ends Brenda Thompson’s long career
April 6, 2006

Springfield police officer Brenda Thompson, a highly regarded member of the force for 27 years, died late Tuesday at St. John’s Hospital after a series of medical complications, friends and family members said.

Thompson, who turned 50 last month, had the highest seniority of any officer in the Springfield Police Department, based on the number of years she worked there.

She joined the force in February 1979 and worked as: a patrol officer; a Drug Awareness and Resistance Education, or DARE officer; Crime Stoppers coordinator from 1994 to 1999; crime prevention officer; and organizer of the department’s Neighborhood Watch and Beat Cop programs. She also worked in the narcotics section, was a field training officer and was a member of the department’s honor guard.

“She was kind of the matriarch of our department. What a wonderful woman,” said Sgt. Pat Ross, who knew Thompson for years.

“You can’t explain or put into words how much an individual like Brenda is going to be missed. I was asked how do you replace a Brenda Thompson. Well, you don’t. She was probably the most widely liked person down here. She just had a heart of gold. She was an outstanding officer and had inside of her all the things that keep us human.”

Thompson had been hospitalized for the past 21/2 weeks. She apparently developed some kind of blood disease around Christmas Eve, her life partner Laine Tadlock said, and a surgeon removed her spleen March 16. After that, she developed a staph infection and respiratory problems before going into full cardiac arrest March 20, Tadlock said. Thompson had been in a coma ever since.

“She was bigger than life. Loved everybody,” Tadlock said through tears. “Never had a bad day. Never met a stranger. Would give you the shirt off her back and be happy to do it and ask you if you needed anything else. She didn’t care whether you had a dime in your pocket or a million dollars, she treated you all the same.”

Tadlock, who was with Thompson for 16 years, said she was a fun, vibrant person who loved her family and her job and would spontaneously burst into song and dance.

“Even when she was sick and on the stretcher going to surgery. She was so looking forward to having her spleen out. She was on the stretcher and going, ‘Woo-hoo! Let’s get this over with so I can get on with my life,’” Tadlock recalled.

“She came out of surgery, and while in recovery, there was a guy next to her who was giving the nurses fits and trying to climb out of the bed. She was lying there and said, ‘Don’t make me come over there,’ and telling the nurses, ‘I’ll be right there to help you.’

“When I was waiting for her in her room when she came back from recovery, you could hear her in the hallway all the way back to her room talking and carrying on.”

Thompson was eligible for retirement but loved her job so much she wanted to stay on at least three more years. She always had a tale to tell about work.

“She’d come home and tell stories about stuff. She was going to write a book. She even had the title – ‘A Day in Blue.’ It was going to be all of her stories about being on the police force,” Tadlock said.

Kevin Keen, a retired Springfield police sergeant who was Thompson’s supervisor in the crime prevention unit, said she was instrumental in improving the Neighborhood Watch program and getting more residents involved in it.

“Anybody who knew Brenda knew of her outgoing personality. She had a bubbly attitude and could make anybody smile on their worst day. Armed with that enthusiasm, she was able to get anybody who might not want to be involved in the program interested. Many parts of town that didn’t have it before now have it because of her enthusiasm,” he said.

Thompson, who lived in a log home on six acres, loved animals and gardening and recently had begun dabbling in welding art. She also had the ability to pick up nearly any musical instrument – including the piano, banjo, violin, guitar and dulcimer – and play it by ear. She was adept at construction and carpentry work and loved children.

“She was a big kid herself,” Tadlock said.

Thompson donated her kidneys and pancreas, and her family requested that her kidneys to go children if possible.

Thompson’s friends are invited to a remembrance reception from 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday at Staab-Polk Funeral Home in Chatham. Her wishes were for a gathering for family and friends to look at photographs, share their favorite or “most annoying” memories of her and talk about all the fun they all had, Tadlock said.

In lieu of flowers, her family is requesting that donations be made to the Animal Protective League because her cat, Wally, was adopted from there and because she loved all animals.

“Wally would sleep right next to her every night with his head on her hand, and they’d have breakfast every morning together before she left for work,” Tadlock said.

“I’m going to miss her presence. She often said that people would talk to her about having everlasting life. She would say, ‘But I have heaven on earth, heaven is right here.’”

Child scalding leads to mother’s arrest

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I was a relatively new mom when this story unfolded, and it had a profound effect on me. My son was almost the same age as the tiny victim in this incident, and I could not imagine ever harming my son’s little body. I remember going to the ladies room and crying in the middle of the reporting process — both out of sympathy for the boy and anger toward the mother.

Child abuse prevention is an issue that became more important to me the more I reported on abuse cases, especially after I had children of my own.

Toddler scalded; mother arrested / Boy allegedly put in hot water after soiling his diaper
April 1, 2006

A Springfield woman was jailed Friday after she allegedly punished her 15-month-old son by scalding him in the bathtub with hot water, causing second- and first-degree burns, police and prosecutors said.

The burns were severe enough that some of the baby’s damaged skin fell off when he was lifted out of the bathtub by a witness, police said.

Brea N. Reese, 20, of the 1700 block of East Clay Street is charged with one count of aggravated battery to a child. Reese also goes by the alias Sherika M. Smith, according to jail officials.

The boy is being treated in the burn unit at Memorial Medical Center for deep second-degree burns on his feet, legs and bottom and first-degree burns on his lower back. Police said the injuries are not believed to be life-threatening, though he is expected to be hospitalized for several days.

Police were sent to St. John’s Hospital shortly after 1 a.m. Friday, after medical personnel notified them that a possibly abused child had been brought in for medical attention. Officers arrived as the child was being transferred by ambulance to Memorial.

A woman who was at the house at the time of the alleged abuse took the baby to the hospital. Police said Reese fled after the incident but showed up at the hospital later in the morning.

Police said the child soiled his diaper, which apparently infuriated Reese, who also is mother to a 3-week-old baby and a 2-year-old child.

Reese allegedly took the baby into the bathroom at her home on Clay Street, shut the door, ran scalding hot water and put the baby in the tub. There were three other adults in the house at the time, two of whom live there. The child’s father apparently was not there at the time.

One of the adults in the house told police she heard Reese slapping the child and went to the bathroom door and pounded on it, demanding to be let in because she could hear the baby screaming.

Reese allegedly walked out of the bathroom and left the house. The woman who pounded on the door went into the bathroom, picked the boy up out of the tub and noticed skin hanging from his legs and bottom. She drove the baby to the hospital for help.

Authorities began searching for Reese, who eventually showed up at St. John’s, where she was arrested and taken to the police department to be interviewed.

Springfield police spokesman Sgt. Pat Ross said there was no indication in any of the police reports that Reese was intoxicated or impaired at the time of the alleged incident.

A physician at the hospital told police that burns of the nature the boy suffered would require water temperatures to be anywhere from 115 to 130 degrees.

Police took custody of Reese’s other children, and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services was notified.

“Our investigators will be assisting in the investigation with DCFS,” Ross said.

Aggravated battery to a child is a Class X felony punishable by six to 30 years in prison.

Associate Circuit Judge John Mehlick set Reese’s bond at $100,000 and appointed a public defender to represent her.

Assistant state’s attorney Randy Blue asked that bond be set at $250,000, saying that Reese had an argument with her boyfriend before going home and putting her child into the tub. Assistant public defender Bill Conroy asked that bond be set at $50,000.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 20.

A search of Sangamon County Circuit Court records shows that Reese was on probation for shoplifting. She has no other criminal record.
Mother had lost boy before / Evidence of neglect in case of child scalded last month
April 8, 2006
Byline: DEAN OLSEN and JAYETTE BOLINSKI STAFF WRITERS

At least six months before a Springfield toddler allegedly was scalded by his mother, Illinois’ child-welfare agency temporarily took him from her because of suspicions he was being neglected.

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services removed Demetrius Taylor in September after finding credible evidence that his mother, Brea N. Reese, had neglected him, DCFS spokeswoman Kim McMorris said this week.

The now 16-month-old boy, who was burned by hot water last week, remained in foster care until February, when a local judge ordered him returned to his mother, McMorris said.

Reese, 20, was offered and received “supportive services” – including several visits by a caseworker – once Demetrius was back at home, McMorris said.

“There was no indication that anything was wrong in the home,” McMorris said. “At that time, things appeared to be fine.”

Demetrius was released Thursday from Memorial Medical Center. He had been scalded about midnight March 30 in a bathtub at a home in the 1700 block of East Clay Street.

He initially was taken to St. John’s Hospital about 1 a.m. March 31. Hospital officials notified authorities, and Reese was arrested.

She was charged with one count of felony aggravated battery to a child and was being held Friday in the Sangamon County Jail on $100,000 bond. She has been appointed a public defender.

Her son was transferred later March 31 from St. John’s to Memorial’s burn unit, which treated him for deep second-degree burns on his feet, legs and bottom, and first-degree burns on his lower back.

Reese’s two other children – a 3-week-old daughter and a 2-year-old daughter – were temporarily placed with relatives “because of the risk of harm,” McMorris said.

DCFS officials wouldn’t say where Demetrius is now, but Monique Reese – Brea Reese’s mother – said the boy had been placed in the home of his father’s cousin, who also is caring for Brea Reese’s other two children, Demetriona and De’Nasia.

Monique Reese, 37, a landscape worker and divorced Springfield mother of three, said she doesn’t believe the allegations against her daughter. She said the scalding probably was an accident involving a busy, single mother who may have been dealing with postpartum depression.

“My daughter’s not a monster,” Monique Reese said. “My daughter’s a loving mother and very good with her kids. It’s not up to anybody to judge but God.”

Police said the alleged abuse happened when Brea Reese, apparently angry that Demetrius had soiled a diaper, took him into the bathroom, shut the door, ran scalding hot water and put him in the tub.

The baby’s father was not in the home at the time, police said, but three other adults were. One got Demetrius out of the tub and took him to St. John’s after Brea Reese walked out of the house.

Reese, an unwed, unemployed mother who dropped out of Southeast High School her sophomore year, was staying with her children at the home of a friend at the time, said Vernice Miller, 39, of Springfield.

Miller, a nurse’s aide, said the East Clay Street home is owned by Miller’s fiance, Memory Bailey. Reese and her children were living there temporarily with Miller’s 20-year-old daughter and 22-year-old son.

Reese “said she was getting stressed out with three kids,” Miller said.

Reese appeared to be more agitated when she cared for Demetrius, Miller said. But Reese’s mother and Reese’s boyfriend, whose name is also Demetrius Taylor, said that wasn’t the case.

Taylor, 23, who said he is unemployed and the father of all three of Brea Reese’s children, said he doesn’t believe Reese intentionally hurt his son.

“I don’t blame nobody. Mistakes happen,” he said, though he added that he blames himself “a little” for the incident because he wasn’t there to help Reese with child care that night. The couple don’t live together, although they have in the past, he said.

Reese’s mother said she raised her own children without much involvement from their two fathers and doubted that poverty had anything to do with her grandson’s injuries.

But The Children’s Defense Fund, a child-advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., says research indicates that children in poor families are 22 times more likely to be abused or neglected – in part because of the stress that poverty creates.

Children with teen parents – especially poor, unwed parents – face an even higher risk of being abused because of the burdens on those single parents, according to Mark Testa, director of the University of Illinois’ Children and Family Research Center.

“It creates a very difficult situation for the caregiver,” he said. “It results in a multiplier effect.”

More than 93 percent of births to Sangamon County teens in 2003 took place out of wedlock, and about 40 percent of all births to Sangamon residents each year occur out of wedlock, according to the latest statistics available.

DCFS previously removed young Demetrius Taylor in September because he was failing to gain weight, according to his father. The elder Taylor said DCFS officials at the time contended that he and Reese weren’t capable of caring for the boy.

DCFS officials wouldn’t discuss the details of why they removed the boy last year.

Demetrius’ father noted that his son had to undergo treatment in St. Louis and Springfield when he was born with intestines outside his body – a condition successfully treated with surgery.

Monique Reese, said she has visited her daughter in jail, where she is being kept under constant supervision in an area reserved for prisoners at risk of harming themselves or committing suicide.

“She’s crying a lot and worried about her kids,” Monique Reese said. “She’s taking it hard. We’re all taking it hard.”

‘A dark cloud’ over police

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Fellow SJ-R reporter Sarah Antonacci and I worked together on this piece about problems within the Springfield Police Department’s Major Case Unit and more specifically with former detectives Paul Carpenter and Jim Graham, whose methods had been called into question by local attorneys, a judge and a fellow detective.

This award-winning piece brought together all the issues with Major Case and helped readers understand what was at stake.

Detectives said to be loose with procedures / Allegations against Major Case Unit detail numerous investigation violations
Jan. 22, 2006

Allegations against the Springfield Police Department’s now-disbanded Major Case Unit apparently revolve around suspicions that unit detectives violated department procedures and legal requirements in connection with search warrants, suspect interviews and court testimony.

In one case, a panel of federal appellate judges said they believed detectives had not told the truth when testifying against an alleged drug dealer. Their actions, the judges said in a written opinion, cast “a dark cloud” over the conduct of all police officers.

Illinois State Police investigators for months have been looking into allegations against the unit, as well as reviewing some of its investigations and the unit’s policies.

The state police probe originally was expected to lead to, if anything, internal departmental discipline of any officers found to have acted improperly. However, sources inside and outside the Springfield Police Department now say the investigation could culminate in criminal charges against some city officers.

The Major Case Unit was disbanded as of Jan. 1 by Police Chief Don Kliment. Kliment said the move was meant to relieve overworked detectives and had nothing to do with the investigation.

Two detectives formerly with the unit, Paul Carpenter and Jim Graham, have been placed on administrative leave while the investigation continues. They have not been formally accused of any wrongdoing, and city officers have said that being put on administrative leave is not necessarily an indication of guilt. Carpenter declined to comment on this story without authorization from the police department, which was denied. Graham could not be reached.

According to documents obtained by The State Journal-Register, a local judge, a Springfield attorney, a private investigator and a former drug investigator, in addition to the federal appellate court opinion, have called into question the unit’s investigative techniques and the integrity of some of its detectives.

Many of the problems apparently have to do with procedures used for obtaining search warrants. Several defense attorneys said privately they are taking additional measures to make sure cases against people they’re representing were built legitimately.

In some instances, cases have been thrown out against apparently guilty people because of allegedly improper behavior by detectives. In others, including the trial of a man for a 1994 murder, detectives have been accused of going too far to attempt to convict people who may have been innocent of the crimes they were suspected of.

Many of the allegations stem from incidents that preceded Mayor Tim Davlin’s appointment of Kliment as police chief in June 2003. Kliment said he asked for the state police investigation after learning of the allegations.

“The matter’s still under investigation by the Illinois State Police,” Kliment said Saturday night. We asked for their assistance, and we’re not going to have a comment until the investigation is concluded.”

Ernie Slottag, Davlin’s spokesman, said the mayor is aware of the investigation.

“The state police are looking into this, and we’re looking forward to seeing what their findings are,” he said. “I don’t know what the allegations are. It’s really an internal issue, a personnel issue. The thinking was the state police could be more objective at looking into this, and we welcome their findings.”

***

Former associate judge Stuart Shiffman apparently was one of the first to document concerns about city detectives. After reading a newspaper article in February 2001 about the dismissal of drug charges against two men because of problems with an affidavit for a search warrant, Shiffman wrote a memo to Chief Judge Leo Zappa and all other Sangamon County judges.

The case involved Phillip C. Thomas, whose truck containing 20 pounds of marijuana was stopped and searched by detectives in September 1999. Thomas was sentenced to eight months in prison and served about four months at the Vienna Correctional Center before his conviction was nullified, and he was released.

Officials at the time said a detective failed to follow proper procedures in identifying a confidential source in an affidavit for a search warrant. Charges against a second man arrested in the same investigation also were dropped.

Bill Pittman, who commanded the Springfield Police Department’s investigations division at the time, said then that city internal affairs investigators were looking into the incident. The department was reviewing other cases to make sure similar problems hadn’t happened before, Pittman said.

In his memo, Shiffman said he had learned that, on at least two other occasions, cases investigated by two Major Case Unit detectives were dismissed when information they provided later proved to be false.

“What may be at issue here is the integrity of an important judicial function, the review and issuance of search warrants,” Shiffman wrote. “I believe that the entire judiciary of this County is entitled to be certain that this process is not tainted by false and misleading statements by police officers.”

Shiffman retired from the local bench last week.

On Friday, Shiffman said he met in 2001 with then-Chief John Harris, Pittman and circuit judges Leo Zappa and Patrick Kelley. He characterized the meeting as a “dog and pony show” and said he felt the punishment for the officers should be more than internal.

“I expressed concern and felt it needed to be addressed otherwise, not necessarily that they be held accountable criminally. But I don’t think an officer who furnishes false information in an affidavit and someone goes to prison even for five minutes, I don’t think the officer should be working any longer. Apparently Harris and the others didn’t have the same concern,” he said.

Not long after that meeting, Shiffman said, he was excluded from most criminal cases.

“Their response, in a way, was to lock me out of the system. I didn’t handle many criminal cases after that. I would do a search warrant on occasion when it was my rotation. They felt there were plenty of other judges who would sign a warrant.

“I noticed a marked change from then on. It was easier to cut me out of the system rather than do something with the officer.”

***

In April 2005, Springfield attorney Bruce Locher filed an internal affairs complaint against Carpenter, Graham and another major case detective, Stephen Welsh, accusing them of misconduct while investigating three 1999 drug cases involving his clients.

In each of the cases, Locher said, revelations of the questionable information led to charges being dropped and a conviction being overturned.

One case involved Huey Whitley, who was arrested in 1999 after police raided his Springfield hotel room during a drug investigation. Locher did not represent Whitley, but did represent Marcellus Mitchum, who also was arrested during the raid.

Mitchum’s case was dismissed after the court found inconsistencies with police officers’ testimony. Whitley was convicted in federal court, but appealed after Mitchum’s case was thrown out. Whitley’s conviction eventually was overturned.

The situation began when a woman was pulled over after leaving the Stevenson Inn, 2860 Stevenson Drive, and was found with baggies of marijuana in her vehicle. The woman told police she did not get the marijuana from Mitchum or Whitley at the hotel and that she had it with her before she went to the hotel, according to the opinion.

However, an affidavit used to obtain warrants to carry out the raid said Carpenter had told Welsh that the woman got the marijuana at the hotel room. Welsh, under questioning during a suppression hearing, contradicted the information set forth in his warrant affidavit, saying he did not recall who gave him that information, according to the appellate court’s decision.

“None of the officers involved admitted to a clear recollection of who told what to whom,” the appellate opinion states. Welsh, the panel said, gave “less than truthful testimony concerning aspects of his participation in the searches at issue.”

No phone listing could be found for Welsh.

Another question centered on whether police legally searched a motel room. Officers obtained a warrant for one room, but when they carried out the warrant, they learned Whitley and Mitchum were in two rooms. They did not have a search warrant for Mitchum’s room.

According to the opinion, Welsh and another detective testified during Mitchum’s case that they knocked on Mitchum’s door and he let them in. Mitchum denied that, the appellate opinion said – he claimed that he was sleeping when the officers arrived, and they entered without his permission.

It later was revealed that hotel management copied the room’s key card for police and that the computerized timing system in the door showed that a key card had been inserted into Mitchum’s door at the time the search took place.

In its written opinion, a three-judge panel from the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago harshly criticized the investigators’ conduct.

“Regrettably, conduct of this type by one or two officers casts a dark cloud over the thousands of dedicated law enforcement personnel working at the local state and federal levels to protect and safeguard the rights of all citizens guaranteed in the United States Constitution,” said the opinion, written by Judge John Coffey. “We refuse to excuse and accept questionable conduct of this nature.”

***

Also in question is the Major Case Unit’s use of what police call “trash rip” operations, in which detectives search a suspect’s garbage once it’s discarded or put out for pickup. No warrant is needed for a “trash rip,” as long as officers follow legal standards for what is considered discarded.

However, drug charges against Reco L. Faine, who also was represented by Locher, were dismissed in 1999 when prosecutors learned a search warrant was obtained under questionable circumstances.

Testimony indicated Graham, Carpenter and Welsh had gone through garbage cans they said Faine put out for pickup and found evidence connecting him to drug possession. That information allowed the officers to obtain a search warrant for Faine’s home, where they allegedly found cocaine inside.

The problem, Locher said, was that Faine did not put his trash out at the curb – he had an arrangement with a trash hauler under which Faine would carry his trash out only when the hauler arrived at his house each week.

Faine was indicted on federal drug charges, but the charges were dropped once assistant U.S. attorney David Risley learned about Faine’s garbage pickup arrangement, Locher said.

The third case cited in Locher’s internal affairs complaint involved another allegation of detectives obtaining a search warrant with suspect information garnered during a traffic stop. The charges were dropped, and the arrest was expunged from his client’s record.

Locher wrote then-Mayor Karen Hasara in May 2001, urging her office to investigate. He said he never received a reply. Locher said he has not heard anything further about the internal affairs complaint he filed in April, but said he believes “it’s about time” for the state police probe.

“I brought these actions to the attention of the city several years ago,” he said. “That Seventh Circuit decision really, I think, speaks to the problems in the Springfield city police department.”

***

Private investigator Bill Clutter filed a complaint against Carpenter and Graham in the Tonia Smith murder investigation.

Smith was killed on New Year’s Day 1994. In 2002, authorities used DNA evidence to link Anthony Grimm to the crime. A jury acquitted Grimm last year.

Clutter accused the detectives of withholding interview reports that may have helped the defense and intimidating a witness.

According to Clutter’s complaint, Graham had a file folder on his lap when he was asked during the trial if he had interviewed a witness, Curtis Bradford. Grimm had said Bradford could support his alibi for the night of the murder.

Graham told defense attorney Craig Reiser he had interviewed Bradford, but that he didn’t have a report indicating he had done so. Graham was asked what was in the folder. Graham allegedly replied that it was his “personal” folder.

Zappa, who was presiding over Grimm’s trial, asked that the file be opened. Inside was a written report Graham had prepared of his Aug. 20, 2002, interview with Bradford.

Failing to disclose reports to the defense violates Illinois law and U.S. Supreme Court rules.

Zappa agreed with prosecutors that police had not willfully concealed the reports, but he said at the time that law enforcement agencies need to come up with better safeguards to prevent evidence from slipping through the cracks.

Clutter also said that a man, age 14 at the time of the killing, who said that he believed he might have seen Smith abducted the night she was murdered ended up being hauled in by city police, even though he was a defense witness.

Clutter said in the complaint that the man, who testified reluctantly, was confronted by Graham and Carpenter and told that the detectives had told the men the witness named as Smith’s abductors what the witness had said and that those men would be in the courtroom when he testified.

***

An additional case investigators may be looking at involves a man with a history of church burglaries whom detectives wanted to talk to during their investigation of the beating of the Rev. Eugene Costa in Douglas Park in December 2004.

The man, Thomas Munoz of Divernon, filed suit in federal court, accusing Graham of violating his civil rights by having him arrested for allegedly trying to burglarize the St. Jude Parish rectory in Rochester. Munoz is representing himself in the case, which is still pending.

Springfield police arrested Munoz to question him about an alleged Dec. 18 break-in attempt at the Rochester church. Detectives also wanted to know if Munoz knew anything about the Costa beating.

Investigators determined Munoz had no connection to the attack on Costa, but they did file the attempted burglary charge, which put Munoz in violation of his parole on a previous church burglary conviction. He was returned to state prison, but was released when the attempted burglary charge was dismissed in March.

Two youths – neither of whom had any connection to Munoz – later admitted beating Costa.

Munoz claims in his suit that the warrant for his arrest was issued as a result of false testimony by Graham that Munoz had tried to enter the rectory “when no such incident even occurred at that location.”

A Rochester police report attached to Munoz’s suit indicates a member of the congregation saw Munoz try to open the front door to the parish reception hall, then try to open the front door to the rectory. When he was unable to open either door, he walked to the side of the residence and tried to open a side door.

The parishioner asked if he could help, and Munoz said he was looking for the Rev. William Carpenter to give him a Christmas decoration. He retrieved the decoration from his vehicle, gave it to the parishioner and left.

The parishioner, an employee of the state Department of Corrections, “felt that Munoz’s mannerisms were suspicious and consistent with someone who was not being truthful,” according to the police report.

***

On Jan. 3, Ron Vose, a veteran Springfield police officer and drug investigator, submitted his resignation, citing fear of retaliation for blowing the whistle on what he described as misconduct by other officers. Vose’s last day on the job was Thursday. He has retained Springfield attorney Howard Feldman, presumably to file a lawsuit against the city, though his resignation letter included no explicit threat of legal action.

Vose’s concerns also center on the Major Case Unit. He said in his letter of resignation that he had complained to his supervisors as early as June 2004. According to the letter, he informed superiors, including Kliment, of potential police misconduct, though the letter does not specify what his concerns were.

He wrote that he believes his superiors told the officers in question about his concerns, causing “a very hostile work environment and led to an altercation between one of the officers and me during November 2004.”

Vose and his attorney drafted a 20-page memo, alleging both administrative and criminal violations, and submitted it to Kliment on March 2, 2005. He later met with Davlin to make sure the mayor was aware of the situation, Vose wrote in his letter. Several days later, he said, found empty boxes with his name on them outside his office door.

Not long after that, Vose was transferred from supervising the department’s drug unit to second-shift street patrol, a move he believes was meant to teach him a lesson for trying to expose misconduct.

Human cargo

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Interstate 55 is a pipeline for many things, including smuggled illegal immigrants.

In monitoring jail booking sheets and federal court filings in 2005, I began to realize state troopers conducting traffic stops along the interstate near Springfield were finding a startling number of illegal aliens traveling in appalling conditions. Affidavits accompanying the federal charges told the stories.

humancargo

Human cargo / Smugglers use I-55 as pipeline to Chicago for illegal immigrants
Nov. 13, 2005

Picture this.

A Chevrolet Suburban hits the highway with 17 people piled inside. Most of the seats have been removed to allow more people to be crammed in.

No one is wearing seat belts, and the passengers – mostly Mexican citizens – are forced to squat below window level so no other motorists can see them.

The driver refuses to stop for bathroom breaks, so passengers must urinate in milk jugs or plastic windshield-fluid containers. If their bodily needs are any worse than that, they’re out of luck.

There might be one stop for food during the 1,800-mile smuggling trip, depending on the driver’s mood. He will remain at the wheel from Phoenix to the passengers’ destinations without napping. If he finally gets sleepy enough, he might ask another passenger to drive for a while. Neither has a valid driver’s license, nor does either have much of a grasp of the English language.

Think it’s a scene from the American Southwest? Think again. Illegal aliens are being smuggled through central Illinois every day, and the overloaded vehicles they’re riding in are a potential threat to motorists’ safety, officials say.

Interstate 55 is a popular route for transporting undocumented Mexican and Central American citizens from “load houses” in Phoenix to Chicago and various other destinations in the eastern United States.

During routine traffic stops in Sangamon, Logan, Macoupin and Montgomery counties between January 2004 and October 2005, Illinois State Police and immigration officials encountered more than 330 illegal aliens, according to numbers from the federal courts and officials with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“As far as I’m concerned, all the cases are mind-boggling. Human beings being treated as cargo is just beyond me or anybody else,” said Greg Archambeault, resident agent in charge of the Springfield ICE office.

“It’s so degrading to these people. I know they’re paying a smuggler to bring them up to the United States, but I don’t think they know what they’re getting into when they get into the back of a van with 16 other people, and they’re not allowed to stop to use the restroom or get food.”

Human smuggling organizations rake in $10 billion in profits every year, according to ICE estimates.

“The people that are being smuggled really are treated like commodities,” said Gail Montenegro, spokeswoman for the Chicago ICE office. “It’s just a business to the smugglers. They really don’t care about human safety at all.”

Federal court filings show that drivers caught locally smuggling aliens, an aggravated felony, have been sentenced to an average of 13 months in prison followed by two to three years of supervised release. After they serve their time, they typically are deported.

The victims are not charged with a crime. They usually are sent to a local jail until they can be sent back home.

In each of the recent documented smuggling cases, the passengers or their families paid a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars to be driven to various destinations, mostly Chicago. Some, however, were going as far as North Carolina, Washington, D.C., and New York. The passengers often are expected to pay additional money once they reach their destinations.

The drivers usually are part of larger organizations that smuggle people through Mexico, over the border and into Arizona or California. Nearly every illegal passenger that’s been stopped during the past two years met up with the drivers at various load houses – usually a house, apartment or motel – in Phoenix.

Discovering a vehicle jammed full of hungry, frightened illegal aliens is nothing new for District 9 Illinois State Police. Master Sgt. Marke Bobbitt, a trooper for more than 20 years, has encountered smuggling vehicles on numerous occasions. The illegals usually are “very pleasant and very passive” despite the conditions, he said.

“When you stop them, any way imaginable of seeing people in the vehicle, you’ll see it. They’ll be squatting, lying down, underneath people’s feet. Usually the vehicles are way overloaded. That’s why when they’re in an accident, there are so many injuries, because there are so many people in there,” he said.

“We’ve seen women who’ve defecated in their pants, and it’s stained through because they won’t stop and let them out. You really feel bad for these people, because they want to get to the place where they have an opportunity to get the American dream, but to get there they’re having to endure these types of things … ”

Among the recent traffic stops that thwarted smuggling trips:

* Sept. 22. A trooper stopped a Ford van with Arizona plates near Lincoln for improper lane usage. Inside were 17 illegals.

The driver’s area was separated from the cargo area by a steel mesh divider, and a bench seat had been placed loosely at the rear of the cargo area. On the dashboard was a list with the passengers’ names, the amounts of money they owed, their destinations and points of contact to collect fees owed. The list indicated a woman already had been delivered to St. Louis and that passenger had owed $700.

Documents in the van indicated it had been driven approximately 65,000 miles during the previous 10 weeks. The passengers told authorities they had paid various smugglers in Phoenix, and several were going to pay additional money after arriving in Chicago, Texas, Alabama, Florida, Indiana and Maryland. The driver had a counterfeit Social Security card and a fake Mexican driver’s license. He was to be paid $1,000 upon returning to Phoenix after delivering all the passengers.

* June 22. A trooper came upon a Dodge Caravan with Wisconsin plates that had broken down along southbound Sixth Street near the Interstate 72 on-ramp. Inside were 11 illegals. The driver told authorities he had made arrangements with a smuggler in Arizona to drive the 10 passengers to New York City. The smuggler gave him a fake Mexican driver’s license and $500 for gasoline and food, the man said.

The passengers told authorities they paid smuggling fees ranging from $1,000 to $9,000 to be taken from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and Ecuador through Mexico, across the border and to various U.S. destinations.

* May 19. A trooper stopped a pickup truck for going 70 mph on I-55 near Litchfield. Inside were 16 illegals. They said they had paid smugglers in Phoenix between $1,600 and $2,000 to be taken across the border and driven to Chicago and other locations. They said the driver stopped for food three times and only once for a bathroom break at a rest area. He told them to go to the restroom in pairs so they would not stand out. During the rest of the trip, he instructed them to use a jug, which originally contained window-washing fluid, as a urinal.

* March 15. A trooper stopped a minivan on I-55 near Williamsville for improper lane usage. Inside were 14 illegals. The two drivers told authorities they were going from Atlanta to North Carolina. However, the passengers said they were picked up at a load house in Phoenix. They said they paid varying amounts to smugglers in Phoenix and were going to pay additional money after finding work in Chicago.

* March 18. A trooper stopped a Chevrolet Suburban for improper lane usage and a defective windshield on I-55 at Toronto Road. Inside were 17 illegals seated on the floor and in the rear cargo area, and there were plastic jugs of urine inside. The passengers said the men were not allowed to get out of the van to use the bathroom during the 33-hour trip. The women were allowed to stop only once.

One driver told police he paid smugglers $2,200 to be transported from the border to Chicago via Phoenix, and that the smuggler provided the truck and a cell phone so he could make arrangements to have it picked up after getting to Chicago. The other driver said he crossed the border with four friends and they got lost in the desert for three days, where they met a group of 10. That group’s guide offered to smuggle him to Chicago for $1,000.

The passengers said they crossed the border together and paid various amounts of money to smugglers in Phoenix, and were going to pay more to the drivers when they got to their destinations. They were guided across the border by smugglers and taken to a load house in Phoenix.

Archambeault said there is no end in sight in terms of the number of smuggling loads coming through central Illinois. Illegal aliens are treated as a commodity who will go back to the same smuggling organization and pay more money to be taken across the border again, he said.

Bobbitt agreed.

“I think people would probably be very surprised if they knew the numbers of people we’re stopping. If I wanted to, I could stop illegals every night,” he said.

“In this day and age, you do not know who you’re encountering out there. Is it something where they’re looking for a better life and more opportunities? Or is it someone intending to do harm to the country? It’s an important issue, and it’s something Congress and the president will have to work out as far as what the policy will be.”

Fleet weak – SPD mechanics on the job

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spdfleet2

One behind-the-scenes aspects of the Springfield Police Department is its mechanics. A police official back in 2005 suggested I do a story on the state of the department’s patrol cars. Floors were rusting out, engines had a huge number of miles on them and interiors were falling apart.

In tough economic times, replacing police patrol cars is nearly impossible for local governments. Springfield was supposed to have a five-year plan for rotating cars in and out, but it had not adhered to the plan. At the time of this story, the department had not gotten new patrol cars in five years.

I spent an afternoon at the department’s garage and was struck by how hard the mechanics work and how creative they could be with replacing parts and making do with what was on hand.

Fleet weak / Police mechanics forced to improvise to keep aging cars on road
Oct. 3, 2005

If you can imagine a flock of buzzards picking at a pile of bones, then it’s not much of a stretch to visualize what the Springfield Police Department’s mechanics do every day.

A row of seven retired Chevrolet Caprices and Ford Crown Victorias are lined up in a corner of the garage property on Singer Avenue. They’re squad cars that, just since June, have been deemed no longer safe for officers to drive, primarily because of rust problems.

They will be joined by five more by March, mechanics estimate.

The cars are dead in terms of their usefulness to patrol officers. They have rusty floorboards and body mounts, leaky trunks and failing engines. Their job now is to provide a pool of parts – everything from engines, doors and steering columns right down to light bulbs, radio knobs and seats – for mechanics who are doing all they can to keep the department’s fleet of aging patrol cars running in the safest, yet most economical, manner possible.

“It’s like a small little scrap yard back there some days,” said Dave Lawler, assistant superintendent for fleet maintenance at the police department. “We try and cut down on the expense as far as trying to buy new parts to put in old cars. We estimate a savings of $1,500 to $2,000 each month by using used parts.”

The Springfield Police Department has 250 vehicles in its inventory, of which 94 (38 percent) have more than 90,000 miles. Most of those – 68, to be exact – have more than 100,000 miles.

The fleet is aging quickly; 157 of the vehicles are models from 1994 to 1999. And as the cars continue to age, the pool of available used parts continues to shrink because those that are still out there, whether they’re part of the department’s fleet or sitting in a scrap yard someplace, are wearing out or getting wrecked at the same rate.

“We’re to the point where we’ve been keeping a lot of these cars alive through cannibalized parts,” said deputy chief Pat Fogleman, who heads the department’s administrative services division. “The problem is, our supply of cannibalized parts is drying up fast.”

The problem is going to worsen unless the city can come up with enough money to enable the department to begin buying 50 to 60 new cars each year and rotating the same number out of use. The department just received 10 new 2006 Crown Victorias at a final cost of $24,635 each after being equipped with lights, sirens, antennas and other necessities.

Previous five-year plans for the department have called for replacing patrol cars every four years, which is an accepted standard among police agencies and mechanics.

The last time the department got a significant number of new vehicles was in 2000, when the city bought 45 cars.

The department has numerous Crown Victorias, many of which have a problem with rusty frames. Their Chevrolets from 1994 have problems with rusty floorboards and body mounts. During the current budget year alone, the department has had to retire 10 cars because of rusty frames, Fogleman said.

In June, an officer was driving a 1996 Crown Victoria patrol car with 101,000 miles on it when the ball joint flew off. The officer lost control and hit a utility pole. He wasn’t injured, but officials are concerned about the possibilities.

“That’s the guys’ office for eight hours a day. If you were in a beater car with knobs breaking off, a radio that doesn’t work, maybe the window rolls down, maybe it doesn’t…” Fogleman said. “I think the guys understand times are tough. I don’t think a lot of people understand the abuse these vehicles go through.”

Patrol cars frequently are left idling while officers respond to calls or block off traffic, primarily because the lights and other equipment would quickly drain the batteries if the engines were turned off. An hour of idling is the equivalent of 33 miles of wear on a car, Lawler said.

Officers also often rapidly accelerate from a dead stop and/or quickly brake while speeding to a call. The equipment they carry on their belts – guns, handcuffs, pepper spray – has been known to rip the seat fabric.

The cars are driven every day in all kinds of weather. Water gets thrown up onto the underside of the cars, causing them to rust through and allowing water to seep into the trunks.

In at least one case, the front floorboard of a car rusted completely through, exposing carpet to the catalytic converter and melting the carpet.

Some squad cars use large amounts of oil between oil changes. One car used 33 quarts of oil, not counting oil changes, during a six-month period. Others were recorded as using 17, 22 and 23 additional quarts, respectively, during the same time frame.

Some cars – 25 of them, shared by all three shifts – are used as take-home vehicles, and some argue that mileage on those cars could be curtailed if officers weren’t allowed to drive them off duty. Fogleman said quite the opposite is true – take-home cars aren’t driven nearly as much as those used round-the-clock.

“The off-duty mileage really is a small part of the whole mileage thing,” he said. “We have found that the cars are much better maintained and last longer because ‘It’s mine, I can be held accountable for it.’ If you drive a fleet car, you park it at the end of the shift, and you don’t really care.”

Lawler said the best thing that could happen is the city would get in the habit of purchasing a group of new cars every year.

“Fifty cars right now would be a big help,” he said.

In the meantime, the department’s mechanics – perhaps “magicians” is a better description – will forge on. They will continue stockpiling used speedometer clusters, brackets, outside mirrors and flywheels. They will prepare for the next time they’re forced to fabricate a floorboard or trunk out of an old street sign. And they will remember that there likely will come another day when they must completely overhaul a patrol car with new doors, a new engine and a new rear axle.

“We have people who are willing to understand the importance of the savings,” Lawler said. “They’ve gone the extra mile in getting the cars back out on the road. We’ve done a lot of different things to try to save as much as we can.”

The Century Club – 100 mph drivers explain why they do it

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This was one of my favorite research projects at the newspaper.

Robert Pope, a former managing editor at The State Journal-Register, read an article someplace about people who drive faster than 100 mph. He wanted to find out if there were locals who’d done it and ask them why.

The trick was finding them. I looked through circuit court records, but speeding tickets aren’t documented according to speed. One day I was on a ride-alone with a traffic deputy for the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office, and the subject came up. He explained to me under what traffic law a 100-mph ticket would be issued (speeding 40+ mph over the limit). Now I had a starting point.

The folks at the Sangamon County circuit clerk’s office were kind enough to give me a workspace in their office, and I started combing through the ticket files. I made notes on a yellow legal pad as I went along. Voila! I had a story.

From there I tracked down locals who’d been ticketed for driving more than 100 mph, and the result was a unique story about the so-called “Century Club.”

Century club / Since 2003, 124 motorists in Sangamon County have been ticketed for driving more than 100 mph
Aug. 1, 2005

Jason Shephard doesn’t have a pilot’s license. But, man, can he fly.

Shephard, 21, drives a silver 1997 Chevrolet Corvette he’s had since April 2004.

He didn’t really set out to buy a Corvette, a car some associate with “old guys,” but the price was right, so he took it home. To curb those “old guy” assumptions, he got personalized plates that say “NOTDADZ.”

The kid’s got a sense of humor.

The Illinois State Police trooper who clocked him going 128 miles per hour on Interstate 55 just south of Springfield last fall had a sense of humor, too, later telling Shephard he should have asked to see his pilot’s license.

“When he stopped me, he said, ‘Do you know how fast you were going?’ I was hoping he got me after I slowed down, so I said, ‘Probably 90?’ He just laughed and said, ‘Try 128,’” Shephard recalled. “He could have arrested me right there. I really thought I was going to jail that night.”

Shephard, who was too embarrassed to mention the ticket to his friends and family at the time, is a reluctant member of what some call the “century club,” drivers who are cited for going faster than 100 mph.

Between 2003 and the beginning of July this year, 124 motorists were ticketed in Sangamon County for going 100 mph or faster, according to a review of tickets filed with the county circuit clerk. The clerk’s office, in all, processed 133,573 traffic tickets during that time.

Neither the circuit clerk nor local police agencies track how many drivers are cited for going 100 mph or faster. Speeding tickets entered in the court computer system indicate the increments of speed over the posted limit – driving 1 to 10 mph over the limit, 11 to 14 over, 15 to 20 over and so on. Drivers ticketed for going 100 mph or faster fall into the categories of either 31-plus or 40-plus over the limit, depending on where they were caught.

Among the review’s findings:

* Of the 124 “century club” tickets, 34 were written for driving 100 mph, nine were for 101 mph and 19 were for 102 mph. The rest were for driving 103 mph or faster, of which seven were issued to drivers speeding 110 mph or faster.

* Seventy-four percent of the drivers were men.

* The tickets show that 79 percent of those cited did not live in the area. Many were from Chicago, St. Louis or out of state.

* The average age of the 100 mph-plus motorist was about 26. The oldest driver cited was a 62-year-old Chicago woman in a maroon Lincoln who was ticketed for going 100 mph after she passed a state trooper on I-55 north of Sherman at 7:30 a.m. The youngest was a 14-year-old Chatham girl stopped by a Chatham officer for going 100 mph on Illinois 4 at the Interstate 72 overpass at 3:15 a.m.

* The majority of the stops, 91 percent, took place on interstates 55 or 72. Of those, 24 percent were between I-55 mile markers 104 and 110. The Sherman exit is at mile marker 105, and the Williamsville exit is at 109. The interstate becomes three lanes just north of Sherman.

* Thirteen percent were between I-55 mile markers 87 and 93. An exit for East Lake Shore Drive is at mile marker 88, and the South Sixth Street exit is at mile marker 92. And 10 percent of the stops were on I-72 between mile markers 107 and 115. An exit for Riverton is at mile marker 108 and one for Buffalo-Mechanicsburg is at 114.

* Predictably, state troopers made most of the traffic stops, 100 of them to be exact. The Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office made 17. The rest were made by officers from Chatham, Divernon, Illiopolis, Southern View, Jerome and the Secretary of State Police.

* The stops took place all times of the day. Forty-five were during what is considered a typical police agency’s third shift, between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.; 42 were between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m.; and 35 were between 3 and 11 p.m. The times of two of the stops could not be determined.

* The average vehicle age was a 1999 model. Colors varied: 20 black, 19 white, 18 silver, 15 red, 10 blue, 10 maroon, nine green and seven gray. The rest were other colors.

* Tickets indicate vehicle manufacturers but not necessarily the models. Of those that were stopped, 16 were Chevrolets and 15 were Fords. Most other makes were represented, as well as one Maserati and at least two motorcycles.

Shephard, of Springfield, ended up at the top of the list in terms of speed. At 128 mph, he was driving the fastest when stopped, followed by motorists going 124, 121, 118 and three who were stopped for going 110 mph. The rest were between 108 and 100 mph.

“I never drive like that going through town or when other people are around because you never know what people are going to do. I just happened to be messing around that night and a cop was there,” Shephard said.

He recalled it was an unusually nice November night. Ordinarily, he puts his Corvette away for the winter, but he decided to drive it that night because the weather was so pleasant.

Nobody was on the interstate between Toronto Road and Sixth Street, and he thought maybe he could get home a little faster. By the time he saw the trooper parked in the median, it was too late. He hit the brakes and pulled over as soon as he saw the cop pull out.

A judge eventually fined him $500.

“I definitely don’t speed around town anymore,” he said, explaining that he sometimes drag races the Corvette at Gateway International Raceway near St. Louis to quench his need for speed.

James McKinney, 16, found himself grounded, car-less and face to face with a judge this spring after he was caught driving 108 mph on I-55.

McKinney drives a black 1993 Chevrolet Caprice Classic with a plush burgundy interior and a fancy custom wood steering wheel.

Early March 27, he and two friends decided to drive out to a teen hangout on Toronto Road to see what was going on. They didn’t stay long before turning around to get back on the interstate to return to town.

Three teenagers. Springtime. The open road. A sweet car with a V-8 engine. It wasn’t long before McKinney was cruising well over the 65 mph speed limit. A Sangamon County deputy clocked him on the radar doing 108 and pulled him over.

“I’ve slowed down since then,” McKinney said, recalling that the deputy didn’t say anything to him when he walked up to the car – just looked at him and shook his head.

“After he gave me the ticket, he was cool and started talking about my car,” he said. “That car rides so smooth on the interstate, you don’t even know you’re going that fast.”

His mother wasn’t quite as cool about the situation, he admitted. She grounded him for two weeks, took his car keys away and drove the Caprice herself; McKinney can’t stand other people driving his car.

His initial fine was $1,000, he said. The judge ordered him to read “Then Darkness Fled: The Liberating Wisdom of Booker T. Washington” and pay $150 instead. McKinney said he read the book but couldn’t pay the fine, so the judge gave him 30 hours of community service and two years’ probation.

District 9 state police trooper Vince Fisher, who also is a safety education officer, said driving more than 40 mph over the speed limit is a Class A misdemeanor, meaning that, depending on the circumstances, an officer can arrest drivers going that fast and take them to jail.

Fisher has seen pictures of cars that wrecked going 100 mph.

“They’re not even hardly recognizable as cars. It just looks like somebody took it and smashed it up into a little ball,” he said. “Usually the cars come apart and everything else does, too, including the people inside the car. Your chances of survival are real slim because you’ve got such dynamics involved. It creates thousands and thousands of pounds of force.”

Black and blue: The history of black Springfield police officers

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My editor in 2005 asked me to research and write about the history of black officers in the Springfield Police Department. The assignment stemmed from ongoing claims of racial discrimination and bias within the department and the civil lawsuits stemming from those allegations.

I spent no less than six months researching the topic. I pored through reels of microfilm of old city newspapers, picked up books on the history of the city, spent hours at the Sangamon Valley Collection and interviewed several retired and current black officers.

Black and Blue / African-American officers struggling with racial divisions in the Springfield Police Department is nothing new.
Sept. 4, 2005

Ask Harry Draper about his 25 years with the Springfield Police Department, and he’ll regale you for hours with tales of solved murder cases, department politics and officer shenanigans.

He’ll reach into his front pants pocket and show you the badge he still carries around, even though he’s been retired since 1981.

His eyes get a little misty when he recalls the day in 1963 when he was the only black officer chosen to guard Martin Luther King Jr., who spoke at an AFL-CIO convention at the Illinois State Armory.

But not all of Draper’s memories are fond ones. When he joined the police force, even though the modern civil rights movement was gaining momentum, racism was overt and accepted among Springfield officers. Many black officers agree that the discrimination they experienced was far worse among their colleagues than anything they came across in the community.

At one time, black officers patrolled only in black areas of town and on the old “Levee,” the city’s red-light district downtown, and they did so on foot. Black detectives worked only on cases involving black suspects or victims. Promotions were few and far between.

Continue reading →

Little lion lost

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This is one of my favorite stories ever. We’d just had Steve Buttry at The State Journal-Register to talk to reporters about writing. Two things I took away from the session were reminders to write good stories and that it’s OK to write short.

Within a few days I spotted an odd classified ad in the paper. A parent was looking for her child’s stuffed lion, which had been lost in Washington Park and was desperately missed. I called up the number listed in the ad and drove over to the Thuma home to find out more about Leo and how he came to be lost.

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I wanted to write it in the style of a fairy-tale without overdoing it. This was the result:

little lion LOST … / …and found in Washington Park
May 7, 2005

Leo never intended to tumble out of a little girl’s stroller and onto the Washington Park jogging path when no one was paying attention.

And he certainly didn’t expect to spend the night in one of the park’s trees. But that was where he found himself Wednesday.

It wasn’t the first time the little stuffed toy lion – yellow, pink-tongued and matted from all the love and affection a little boy can offer – had become separated from his loved ones. There also was the sporting goods store and the gym.

His family always would come back for him. But this time, he was alone there on the path as his caretakers jogged off into the distance. In the words of another, more famous stuffed animal, “Oh, bother.”

It wasn’t long before someone else came along, spotted Leo, plucked him from the ground and carefully set him in a nearby tree, where he would be safe until his owners returned for him.

You see, Leo belongs to Noah Thuma, a fair-haired boy who likes purple Popsicles and goes to kindergarten at Owen Marsh School. And while Noah is at school, Leo keeps company with Noah’s little sister, Emily, who turns 1 today.

Six-year-old Noah received Leo as a gift when he was born, and the two became inseparable friends when Noah was about 18 months old, his mother Angie explained.

“If you know Noah, you know Leo,” she said.

Noah takes Leo when he plays with his little brother, Max, when he goes on trips to see his grandpa and when he goes to sleep at night. Leo even accompanied Noah on his first day of school.

“My first day of kindergarten I was a little shy, so I took him to school and stored him in my backpack,” Noah said. “I still get to use him for bedtime, and I love him so much.”

Emily loves Leo, too. No one in the Thuma family is exactly sure what the stuffed lion’s allure is, but all the children are drawn to him.

And that’s why Leo was in the stroller with Emily on that fateful Wednesday morning. She was sleeping, so Angie is not sure how or when Leo managed to tumble out.

When the jog was over and Angie realized Leo was missing, her heart sank. She made two trips back through Washington Park, searching for he stuffed lion. She checked with the park police. Her friend also went back through the park looking.

No Leo.

Angie knew Noah would be devastated. She went to the The State Journal-Register and placed a classified ad, assuming it was a long shot that the right person would see her plea.

“HELP!!! Lost in Wash. Prk 5/4. Stuffed animal (lion). Vry worn, but vry loved/missed. Answers to LEO. Family friend for 6 yrs. We are lost w/out him. If you find, please call … ”

That afternoon, she dreaded picking up Noah from school and breaking the news. Little Max did it for her.

“I’ve got some bad news. We lost Leo,” Max blurted out.

Noah took it better than Angie expected, but that night, when it was time to go to bed, he began worrying. Where is Leo? Will someone find him? What if he fell into the sewer? Is he cold? What if someone took him home and gave him germs?

At school Thursday, Noah’s teacher noticed he seemed troubled. When she asked if anything was wrong, he told her: Leo’s gone.

But little did Noah know that at about 10:30 that morning, a woman called his mom with welcome news. She had seen Leo in the park and knew where he could be found.

The woman had read the classified ad and recalled seeing the beloved toy in a tree where Williams Boulevard enters the park.

Angie immediately went to the park and drove around looking but couldn’t immediately find Leo. Finally, with Max in tow and Emily in the stroller, she got out and scoured the trees until she spotted the little lion.

When she picked Noah up at school that day, Max happily told Noah, “I’ve got some good news … ”

And so, the little lion, who has a battered brown wooden nose and who’s had his tongue sewed back on four times, was reunited with his best pal.

Homeless man dies in tragic fire

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In 2005 I wrote about Eddie Hanson, a local homeless man who died in a fire. He and another homeless man were inside a vacant house on the city’s north end looking for food. Eddie lit a fire so they could see. The fire got out of control, and Eddie was overcome and died. The other man escaped.

Authorities seek fire victim’s family / Identified as 41-year-old homeless man
June 9, 2005

Authorities need help finding the family of a homeless man who died Tuesday night when fire tore through the abandoned house in which he’d been squatting.

People who knew him said Edward R. Hanson, 41, worked day- labor jobs but did not talk about his family, according to Sangamon County Coroner Susan Boone.

Officials have determined that he was born in Hawaii and are contacting people in that state with the same last name.

One Web-based people finder shows 126 people in Hawaii with the last name of Hanson, while another shows more than 200.

“It’s only right and proper (that we try to find his family),” Boone said following Wednesday morning’s autopsy, which showed Hanson died of smoke inhalation and burns.

“We are going to pursue as much as we can. It’s almost like looking for a needle in a haystack with that many people by that name in Hawaii. Where do you start? We’re going to try, and anybody here who knows anything about his family, it would be helpful.”

Hanson’s body was found in a bedroom of an abandoned house at 1826 N. 11th St. after it caught fire about 9:45 p.m. Tuesday. The cause and origin of the fire was still being investigated Wednesday afternoon, according to Bob Reside, spokesman for the Springfield Fire Department.

Hanson had no driver’s license or other form of ID on him. Authorities obtained a tentative identification and were able to combine that with his fingerprints to confirm his identity. They took photographs of him to homeless shelters Wednesday morning trying to get information about his background and possible next of kin.

“Every lead we’ve had indicated that he had family, but he didn’t want to talk about his family,” Boone said. “People who did know him and the places where he worked, people did not know of his family. But we were told that he actually was a … good worker and a nice person.”

Dispatchers began getting phone calls about 9:50 p.m. Tuesday reporting the fire. When firefighters arrived, they found the house ablaze with flames showing from all the windows and openings in the building.

The house is tucked away on a short dead-end section of 11th Street. It has a large front setback, while all the neighboring homes sit closer to the street. The front yard is overgrown, and fencing surrounds the property. A railroad track runs behind the home.

Firefighters found the interior walls were brick covered with plaster, indicating it might have been a particularly old house, Reside said.

According to neighbors, the elderly man who formerly lived in the house had health problems and entered a nursing home earlier this year. Most of his belongings, including clothing, were still in the house.

It is unclear why family or friends of the previous resident had not cleaned out the house or taken care of it. Brent Lucas, who has lived next door for more than four years, said he complained to the city health department about two weeks ago after noticing animals, such as opossums, mice and cats, coming and going through a window of the abandoned house.

He also saw two homeless men enter the house Sunday and told them they shouldn’t be staying there. He said he believes a bank took ownership of the house at some point.

“I was going to call them (the health department) again, and then this happened,” Lucas said. “This could have all been avoided.”

City records indicate building officials inspected the house March 15, and notices prohibiting occupancy were posted.

Firefighters got the fire under control within about 20 minutes Tuesday night.

Firefighters found Hanson’s body when they went back inside to check the structure.

Utilities had been turned off, so investigators do not believe gas or electricity was to blame for the fire.

Hanson’s body was not found in the room where the fire apparently began, Reside said, but he declined to elaborate.

“We’re still looking into what caused it. Obviously, it’s suspicious in nature, but was it accidental or on purpose, we don’t know,” he said.

Hanson had several run-ins with law enforcement, according to Sangamon County court records. He had been arrested at least 14 times for trespassing.

In 1997, he was found unconscious, bloody and badly beaten inside his motel room at the Bel-Aire Motel, 2636 S. Sixth St. He was rushed to Memorial Medical Center with what was considered a life-threatening head wound. Police never revealed a motive for the attack.

In June 2004, The State Journal-Register reported that police had sprayed Hanson with pepper spray after he became belligerent toward officers investigating a report of a suspicious person in an alley in the 1300 block of South Eighth Street. Police found three homeless men drinking in the alley. Hanson allegedly walked up and began yelling obscenities at the officers and then refused to comply with their commands.

Friends of homeless man lost to fire say he wouldn’t accept help
 June 10, 2005

Eddie Hanson wouldn’t accept help from anyone and rarely spoke about his childhood or family, those who knew him said Thursday.

And while no one disputes he had a bad addiction to alcohol, they are quick to say he was a nice person who once put the only money to his name – the two pennies he had in a pocket – in a church collection plate.

Hanson, 41, died Tuesday night when fire tore through the abandoned house he had been staying in at 1826 N. 11th St.

Springfield Fire Department spokesman Bob Reside said in a statement Thursday evening that investigators have made a preliminary determination of the cause of the fire. Their findings will be disclosed today, Reside said.

Employees at the Sangamon County coroner’s office were working diligently Thursday to locate Hanson’s next of kin, but were having little luck.

“I tried to get help for him a long time ago. Now I want to make sure he gets a proper burial,” said Mike Hubbard, who knew Hanson for years. The two shared a house on West Reynolds Street for some time after Hubbard went through a divorce.

Hubbard couldn’t explain why Hanson was homeless.

“He was just like that,” he said. “His dad owned a hotel in Honolulu. I even tried to get him to see if we could contact his mom or dad a month or two ago, when I talked to him. I was going to try to get him some public aid help or Social Security disability, but he didn’t want to. He was like a brother to me.”

Hubbard said he believes Hanson’s mother lived in Texas at one time, but Hanson rarely spoke of her or other family members.

Hanson did stay at the Helping Hands homeless shelter from time to time, according to one woman who said he occasionally would drink coffee with her and a few others early in the mornings before they all went their separate ways for the day.

He’d been in the Sangamon County Jail as recently as May 11, when he was discharged after being jailed overnight for disorderly conduct.

Hanson had had several run-ins with police and was arrested at least 14 times for trespassing, which is what he was doing when the abandoned house on 11th Street caught fire about 9:45 p.m. Tuesday.

City officials inspected the house March 15 and posted notices prohibiting occupancy. But Hanson and other homeless people regularly came and went from the building, which still contained the former resident’s clothes, medical equipment and other belongings.

The resident, an elderly man, entered a nursing home in Petersburg several months ago because of failing health, neighbors said.

Neighbors reported seeing animals going in and out of windows at the abandoned house, which has an overgrown yard and a large setback from 11th Street. A railroad track runs behind the building.

In May 1997, Hanson was found unconscious, bloody and badly beaten inside his motel room at the Bel-Aire Motel, 2636 S. Sixth St. He was rushed to Memorial Medical Center with what was considered a life-threatening head wound. Police never revealed a motive for the attack.

Hanson, who moved to Springfield about 1994, at one time was a carnival worker, but he was a roofer at the time of the 1997 attack, according to Hubbard.

“I tried to have him get hold of his family and he wouldn’t do it. I tried to get him help because he got beat so bad in that hotel. He was in bad shape,” he said, adding that he believes Hanson recently had been running with a bad crowd of people. “It’s just sad.”

Ralph McCarty, an associate pastor at Christian Assembly Church, 2105 Reservoir St., became acquainted with Hanson several months ago, when Hanson began showing up for Sunday evening worship services and spending the night behind the church.

McCarty, who put out a pillow and blanket for Hanson to sleep on, said Hanson once explained that he liked to sleep there because no one bothered him.

He said Hanson always was alert during church services and paid attention to what was going on around him.

“He was not one of those people who came in to see what they could rack up,” he said, adding that Hanson from time to time would offer change for the church collection plate.

Hanson would not talk about his childhood with McCarty, but did mention that his parents had divorced when they lived in Hawaii and that he, his mother and his brother then moved to Texas.

McCarty said he tried to get Hanson an apartment, but a lot of people wouldn’t rent to him because of his drinking.

“He was really a good guy. He had a serious problem with drinking. I think he needed medical attention for his alcohol problem. I was thankful we had some time to spend talking. But as a homeless person, he never asked for nothing,” McCarty said. “Truly, in my heart, I believe he wanted to change, but just couldn’t.”

Janette Boedigheimer, a deputy Sangamon County coroner, said the coroner’s staff has been doing a lot of footwork in trying to locate Hanson’s family. They did learn Hanson’s parents’ names.

“We do have a couple of leads, but we don’t have anything confirmed yet,” she said. “We’re getting bits and pieces from different people. I’ve called some other agencies and gotten some things from them. We’re trying to look at the big picture, and trying to narrow it down. We’re hoping to find somebody who can lead us to the family somehow.”

Fire victim set blaze himself / Needed light to search for food in abandoned house
 June 11, 2005

The homeless man who died in a house fire Tuesday night set the fire himself in an attempt to create light so he and another man could search for food, investigators said Friday.

Meanwhile, city homeless shelter officials expressed frustration Friday that they were unable to do more to prevent such a tragedy from happening.

Springfield Fire Department investigators said the second homeless man came forward to tell them what caused the blaze that ultimately killed Edward R. Hanson, 41. That man, who has not been named, could be charged with trespassing but has not been arrested.

The two entered the abandoned house at 1826 N. 11th St. and were looking for canned goods about 9:45 p.m. The second man went into the kitchen, and Hanson went into a front bedroom, presumably to see what he could find there.

The front room was the location of the only possible exit, investigators said.

Hanson started a small fire to create light to see by, but it quickly grew, investigators said. The second man saw the fire getting out of control and ran past the flames and out of the house. Hanson tried to get out through a bedroom window, but was unable to escape before being overcome by smoke.

The second man told investigators he could hear Hanson screaming for help, but was unable to assist him.

Firefighters arrived to find flames shooting out all the windows and openings of the house, which city building inspectors posted with occupancy-prohibited signs after a March 15 inspection.

After extinguishing the fire, firefighters checking the structure found Hanson’s body in the bedroom. Sangamon County Coroner Susan Boone pronounced him dead at 10:22 p.m. An autopsy Wednesday showed he died of smoke inhalation and burns.

It was not immediately known if Hanson, who reportedly had an alcohol addiction, was intoxicated at the time of the fire.

Acquaintances of Hanson said he moved to Springfield about 1994. On Friday, the coroner’s office still was trying to locate his next of kin to notify them of Hanson’s death. It is believed he was born in Hawaii and moved to Texas with his mother and brother after his parents divorced.

Hanson worked day-labor jobs, occasionally stayed at the Helping Hands shelter and recently had been attending services at the Christian Assembly Church on Reservoir Street.

The house on 11th Street was abandoned several months ago when the owner, John Lyons, entered a nursing home, according to_ neighbors. John and Mary Lyons are listed in Sangamon County tax records as the owners. It is unknown why family or friends had not cleaned out the house or removed belongings.

The house, which was destroyed in the fire, had a fair market value of $22,254, according to the county tax rolls.

Rita Monkman-Tarr, executive director of Contact Ministries, said she had a physical reaction when she heard Hanson was the victim of the blaze.

“I had tears in my eyes and a pain in my gut. It hurt bad – in part because I knew Eddie and also because we weren’t able to stop something like this from happening,” she said.

Monkman-Tarr also is chairwoman of the mayor’s task force on homelessness. The task force was formed following the January 2004 death of 41-year-old Michael Moffett, a homeless Chicago man who had been released from prison about a month before he was found frozen to death at the Clear Lake Avenue overpass.

Moffett, who suffered from mental illness, apparently chose not to seek help from the local shelters. But after his death, local officials opened an overflow shelter in the basement of Contact Ministries to accommodate more homeless people during the winter.

Hanson, unlike Moffett, did seek shelter in the overflow facility, but beyond that would not accept help. He was considered chronically homeless.

“If you have any compassion in your heart, this is going to affect you,” Monkman-Tarr said.

She said the board of directors of Contact Ministries decided Thursday to host an overflow shelter in the basement again this winter. Otherwise, she said, officials and volunteers hope to work with other social service agencies to help homeless people get help for such problems as addiction and mental illness.

“We need to keep working with them to get the treatment they need, but we also have to be realistic to the understanding that we cannot make anyone accept treatment or decide to go through that,” she said.

Monkman-Tarr recalled running into Hanson during the city’s first homeless count the summer of 2003. She said he was “out of his head” and intoxicated. Volunteers talked to him and gave him a care package. Police officers expressed frustration about how little they could do when they encounter individuals like Hanson who are drunk and homeless, but not causing any trouble.

“They didn’t want to arrest him because they knew that wasn’t really the answer to the problem. There was no detox available. There wasn’t anything they could do with him,” she said.

Police later that night wound up arresting Hanson after he started throwing rocks at cars.

“He was a good guy. I think that every one of these people are good people, but when alcohol and other substances get hold of them, they aren’t necessarily the same people that they are when they’re not under that influence,” Monkman-Tarr said.

Planning under way for fire victim’s burial
 June 17, 2005

Officials on Thursday were beginning to plan a funeral service for a homeless man who died last week in a house fire.

Sangamon County coroner’s office employees have been unable to find anyone related to Edward R. “Eddie” Hanson to notify them of his death.

Coroner Susan Boone and Rita Monkman-Tarr, executive director of Contact Ministries, are working to put together a service for Hanson, who apparently had many friends in Springfield.

Hanson, 41, died June 7 when fire destroyed an abandoned house at 1826 N. 11th St. Hanson and another homeless man were inside about 9:45 p.m. searching for canned food. Hanson set a small fire in a front room of the house, near the only exit, so the men could see.

The blaze quickly spread. The other man ran past the flames and out the door, but Hanson was unable to escape. He died of smoke inhalation and burns.

Boone said her office has followed up on every possible lead to try to find his next-of-kin.

“We went on the Internet and got people with the same last names and called those names. We called places where he had worked, and we contacted people he had put down on his application,” she said, noting that Hanson didn’t often identify emergency contacts on his job applications.

“One person I contacted said she really didn’t know him, and it made her sad that he put her down. She said she wished she had known him and had been able to help him. That’s the kind of stuff we ran into.”

A local funeral home has agreed to provide a site for a service, and Hanson’s remains probably will be cremated and then buried in a local cemetery, Boone said. Officials still are ironing out the details, such as finding a pastor to perform the service.

Monkman-Tarr said she ran into Boone at a function Wednesday and asked if she’d had any luck finding Hanson’s family. She said she told Boone she wanted to help make sure he got a proper funeral.

“I told her that I was sure there were other individuals in the community who would want to be there, that he’d been here quite a period of time and had made friends and there would be other individuals who would want to be a part of this,” she said.

Hanson had lived in Springfield since about 1994, according to friends. They said he rarely spoke of his family but mentioned on occasion that he was born in Hawaii and he and his brother moved with their mother to Texas following a divorce.

Hanson had been a carnival worker and a roofer. He also worked day-labor jobs in Springfield.

He had been in jail on numerous occasions but recently had begun attending worship services at Christian Assembly Church, 2105 Reservoir St. He occasionally spent the night behind the church building where no one would bother him.

The coroner’s office sometimes has to bury individuals who die here with no one to claim their remains. Boone said she’s had more cases of unclaimed bodies in the past three years or so than she’s ever seen.

“We don’t have a potters’ field, and I have to take this money out of my budget to pay for it,” she said. “Thank goodness for these wonderful funeral directors. I just ask them and they just come forward and will even do a funeral service for us. I have had a bunch of those things happening lately.

“It’s really sad, especially when there is absolutely no family.”

Brother of homeless man killed in fire located
June 23, 2005A brother of Eddie Hanson, the homeless man who died in a house fire June 7, has been located and plans to attend his funeral at 11 a.m. today at Kirlin-Egan and Butler Funeral Home, 900 S. Sixth St.

Burial will follow at Oak Hill Cemetery.

Officials began planning a service late last week as the likelihood of finding Hanson’s next-of-kin diminished and several people who knew him said they wanted him to have a proper burial.

Hanson, 41, had no identification on him when his body was found inside the burning abandoned house at 1826 N. 11th St. He was homeless and, although he had many acquaintances in Springfield, rarely spoke about his family or his childhood, they said.

Several people who knew him came forward with suggestions about how officials might be able to find family members to notify them of his death, but those tips did not pan out.

Sangamon County Coroner Susan Boone said she called a man in Texas Tuesday afternoon, thinking it was a long shot that he would be a relative. The man, Kerry Hanson, returned her call that night and identified himself as Eddie Hanson’s brother.

“I left a message on his machine, and he called back,” she said Wednesday. “I told him everything that was going on and what the community was doing for Eddie.”

Kerry Hanson is expected to be at the funeral today, Boone said. Eddie Hanson apparently had siblings scattered across the country, and his mother is living, but he did not regularly keep in touch with any of them, she added.

Hanson and another homeless man were searching for food about 9:45 p.m., when Hanson set a small fire in a front room of the house, near the only exit, so they could see.

The fire quickly spread. The other man ran past the flames and out the door, but Hanson was unable to escape. He died of smoke inhalation and burns.
Two dozen attend services for man who died in fire
June 24, 2005

About two dozen people, including two younger brothers, gathered Thursday to pay respects to Eddie Hanson, the homeless Springfield man who died in a house fire this month.

John Hanson thanked those who helped Eddie, who for the most part was estranged from his family, and urged support of the efforts of social service agencies such as Contact Ministries.

“I’m glad the community is reaching out to the homeless and underprivileged,” said John Hanson, who lives in Mississippi.

He learned of his brother’s death from the coroner’s office Tuesday evening and traveled to Springfield with another brother, Kerry Hanson, for the funeral.

Officials had difficulty locating Hanson’s family because he rarely spoke of them to acquaintances in Springfield. He had no identification on him when he was found, and he did not use family members as emergency contacts on job applications and other forms.

“(Eddie) searched for happiness and meaning in the bottom of a bottle many times, and I know many of you tried to help him. I appreciate that,” John Hanson told the gathering. “The truth is, you won’t find meaning there.”

John Hanson provided answers to many of the questions people had about Eddie’s background and the possible reasons why he became homeless.

He was born in 1964 in Honolulu and had six brothers and a sister. His mother still is living. Around 1971, his mother remarried and the family moved to Dallas, which is where the children grew up for the most part.

Their stepfather left when Eddie was around 10, and “that would not have been the first abandonment he experienced,” John Hanson said.

“Unfortunately, that story plays out all across the country. The names change and the places change, but the story is the same,” he added.

Eddie Hanson got into drugs and alcohol as a teenager and made some poor choices, his brother said. At 16, he joined a traveling carnival and worked up and down the East Coast, losing touch with his family for several years.

John Hanson remembered Eddie popping in at a relative’s house one time, and then he didn’t see him again for about 20 years. “I know in my heart the boy that he was died many years ago. And the man that he became I don’t know,” he said. “I know there were probably a thousand times we wondered where he was and what he was up to.”

He said he was glad to know Eddie had developed some meaningful relationships in Springfield, and he was happy to hear people describe Eddie as a giving person.

“He gets that from my mother. He always reminded me of my mother a lot. When I hear those things about him, I think of her,” he said.

Mike Hubbard, who was roommates with Eddie Hanson at one time, said Eddie was like a brother to him.

“We had a lot of good times together. He was a very caring person. I tried to get him help, but he never would listen,” Hubbard said. “Then I moved out of my house, and he moved out onto the streets.”

Hanson’s remains were cremated and buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. Someone donated a headstone for his gravesite, and several businesses, organizations and individuals sent flowers to Kirlin-Egan and Butler Funeral Home for the service.

Hanson, 41, died when fire destroyed an abandoned house at 1826 N. 11th St. He and another homeless man were inside about 9:45 p.m. searching for canned food. Hanson set a small fire in a front room of the house, near the only exit, so the men could see.

As the blaze spread, the other man ran past the flames and out the door, but Hanson was unable to escape. He died of smoke inhalation and burns.

City refuses to disclose hiring data

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In 2004, the city of Springfield claimed to be making strides in hiring more minority employees; however, it refused to provide the documentation to back up the claim, even though it was submitted to a governmental agency.

When the city did finally release the reports, they were heavily redacted — in spite of a state attorney general’s directive that the reports are considered public record. I wrote a series of stories about the issue and attempts to obtain the documents through FOIA.

City declines to reveal gender, racial data / County judge to decide if reasoning is right
Sept. 3, 2004

The city of Springfield has declined to make public data it compiles every other year for the federal government about the gender and racial makeup of the city workforce, saying it amounts to confidential personnel information.

It will be up to a Sangamon County judge to decide if that reasoning is right.

City attorney Jenifer Johnson and Mayor Tim Davlin refused to disclose the data, which was requested Aug. 23 by the legal assistant to Benton attorney Courtney Cox, who represents black police officers suing the city for racial discrimination.

The assistant, Judy Carson, filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking “copies of all documents in the possession of the City of Springfield which reflect the race, gender and/or national origin of current and/or past employees … including all EEO reports, Labor Force Analysis and EEO Utilization Analysis for each period for which such records have been kept.”

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission oversees a variety of employer surveys. Cities with more than 100 employees are required to submit on odd numbered years information about workforce composition, including a breakout of gender, race and ethnicity.

The data is plugged into each of several occupational categories, including officials and administrators, professionals, technicians, protective service, paraprofessional, administrative support, skilled/craft and service/maintenance. Every employee has to be counted in one of those categories. The EEOC then compiles that information into different reports that it distributes.

Johnson declined Carson’s request on Aug. 25, citing 5ILCS140/7(1)(b)(ii) of the state FOIA regulations. That particular section exempts “personnel files and personal information maintained with respect to employees, appointees or elected officials of any public body or applicants for those positions.”

Carson appealed the denial to Davlin a day later. The FOIA indicates appeals must be submitted to the head of the public body that denied the request – in this case, the mayor.

Davlin sent a letter to Carson Wednesday, denying the appeal.

“Your request was denied because it pertained to personnel information with respect to current or past employees of the city. A public body has the right to deny a FOIA request for this reason, and it appears the statute was properly followed in denying your request,” the letter reads.

Cox has responded by filing suit in Sangamon County Circuit Court, which is the next step in the appeals process. The suit asks for the city to supply the documents requested, as well as reimbursement for costs and attorney’s fees.

Johnson was unavailable for comment Thursday. City spokesman Ernie Slottag, contacted at home Thursday evening, explained the reasoning behind declining to release the data.

“The information that makes up the EEO reports comes from personnel records, and because the personnel records are confidential and exempt, our legal counsel has determined that reports generated from these exempt records are also exempt,” he said, adding that he believes there is case law supporting the city.

Cox said he would not have filed the suit if he didn’t feel the data was public information.

“Clearly, if I was asking for a person’s private personnel records, those would definitely be excluded. These are not personnel records by any stretch of the imagination. They are documents filed with the federal government, and that other communities release without any question,” he said.

Jennifer Kaplan, an EEOC spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., said the commission does not release cities’ reports. Whether a municipality is required to make its reports public would be up to local sunshine laws, she said.

Cox apparently is not the only one seeking the data. Members of the mayor’s Race Relations Task Force had requested it previously and also were denied.

However, at a special meeting Thursday, the city did provide the information to the task force. Reporters from The State Journal-Register and the Illinois Times, as well as a citizen attending the meeting, were asked to leave the room so the task force could be given the information.

The panel cited discussion of personnel matters in closing the meeting to the public, but two of its members expressed concern about how the matter was being handled.

“I’m intrigued because for years now we have discussed numbers relative to the police and fire departments. If those are OK, then why are the other numbers not?” asked task force member Dan Stout.

Another member, Bob Blackwell, indicated the group would try not to close the meeting any longer than necessary “because we are not real comfortable with having to ask you all to leave.”
City will release data on work force / Race, gender figures have been withheld
Sept. 16, 2004

Previously withheld data about the race and gender makeup of Springfield’s city work force will be released by the end of the week, city attorney Jenifer Johnson said Wednesday.

The city is releasing the information compiled for the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission at the direction of aldermen, not because of pressure from the news media or a lawsuit filed by an attorney who represents Springfield’s black police officers, she added.

Assistant Illinois attorney general Terry Mutchler contacted Johnson on Wednesday to say the agency considers the EEOC data public record and to discuss a northern Illinois appellate court ruling Johnson has cited in declining to release it.

Johnson has argued that making the information public could violate some employees’ right to privacy.

According to a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, Mutchler sent the city a letter saying that the EEOC filings should be released and noting that the city had agreed to do that. The letter was faxed and mailed to the city Wednesday.

The city, however, will release the data in a repackaged format; an employee breakdown by job category will not be included so as not to reveal any personal information. Johnson said she will create a form that contains the data, which is based on the city’s most recent EEOC filing.

She said the form she will release is consistent with what the city’s position has been all along. She said she and Mutchler agreed that what the city intends to release is OK.

“That’s all along why the city has objected to releasing the document in whole, because there is personally identifiable information. I understand no one has asked for names – the document doesn’t have names – but based on the breakdown by job category, it’s easy to personally identify employees,” Johnson said, adding that she is comfortable with the legal advice she and her assistants have rendered on the issue.

“The city certainly has no objection to releasing the general statistical information. Our concern all along has been protecting the privacy of our employees, which the case law indicates we should do.”

Johnson and Mayor Tim Davlin have declined to release the actual EEOC filing, saying it reveals personal information about city employees, particularly those who work in one-person offices.

Melissa Merz, spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, confirmed Wednesday that the agency considers release of the EEOC report a matter of public information.

“It is our view that the information being sought in this instance is public record. The FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request sought gender and racial statistics that the city is required to keep. It is not an invasion of personal privacy to release that statistical information,” she said.

“It could be an invasion of personal privacy to release personal identifiers, such as name and race together; however, the report is public record, and the statistical information should be released.”

The State Journal-Register, after learning earlier this month that city officials did not intend to release the data, contacted the attorney general’s office to find out whether the EEOC filing is considered public information. The newspaper has filed a Freedom of Information request for the data.

A legal assistant to Courtney Cox, the southern Illinois attorney who is representing a group of black police officers who are suing the city for racial discrimination, also asked for the information in a FOI request.

Johnson denied the request. It was appealed to Davlin, who also denied it. Cox then filed suit in Sangamon County Circuit Court. The case is pending.

Cox could not be reached for comment Wednesday evening.

Johnson, in declining to release the data, cited a 1990 ruling, known as CBS v. Cecil Partee. The ruling noted that providing the names and races together of governmental employees could constitute an invasion of privacy. CBS had sought information including names and races of all Cook County assistant state’s attorneys, as well as names, positions, dates of hire and salaries for a host of other employees.

The ruling does not preclude municipalities from releasing EEOC filings, only race and names together. In some cases, officials legally can release the forms and black out any sensitive information.

At the Sept. 7 Springfield City Council meeting, aldermen asked that the information be released.

The attorney general oversees enforcement of the state’s Freedom of Information Act, which requires certain types of public records be accessible to provide “full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts and policies of those representing them.”

The act allows for some exemptions, such as personnel files, personal information, documents revealing the identity of people who file complaints, information that deprives a person of a fair trial or impartial hearing and records that could endanger the safety of police officers.
Hiring report to be heavily edited / State AG’s office tells city it’s all public information
Sept. 17, 2004

The city of Springfield plans to release two documents today regarding the race and gender makeup of its work force – a heavily edited copy of its most recent EEOC report and a summary of its contents.

An attorney who requested the data isn’t satisfied, though, saying he’d rather see the entire report “than what they want to create to pass out.”

Releasing the 33-page federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filing, even with much of the information blacked out, marks the second change in two days in the city’s position that it would not make the report public. Officials have said it contains confidential personnel information.

The Illinois attorney general’s office, which oversees enforcement of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, maintains the document is public information and urged the city to release it, according to a letter assistant attorney general Terry Mutchler sent the city on Wednesday.

The report includes a breakdown of the city’s work force by job category, salary range, race and gender. It contains only aggregate data, not employees’ names or other identifiers.

However, city attorney Jenifer Johnson said Thursday that releasing the complete EEOC report would allow someone to cross-reference it with other information the city makes public and potentially identify the race of some employees. According to the Freedom of Information Act, the names, positions, salaries and dates of hire of governmental employees are public information.

Allowing the public to see the structure of the document will enable people to understand the specific nature of the information the city is required to provide, as well as why it could potentially violate employees’ privacy, Johnson said.

She created a summary of the race and gender information contained in the report, and that will accompany the EEOC filing when it is released today. The summary will not include an employee breakdown by job category.

“The fact that this (EEOC) document doesn’t have names specifically attached to it to me is really irrelevant considering how substantially these categories are broken down, because anyone who cared would be able to match that up in many, many cases,” Johnson said.

State law does not require the city to create a summary of the information, but Johnson said she did it to satisfy questions about the race and gender makeup of the city’s work force. Aldermen at the Sept. 7 city council meeting requested that such a summary be prepared.

The EEOC information became an issue recently after Johnson and Mayor Tim Davlin declined to release it to the attorney representing Springfield’s black police officers in a discrimination lawsuit against the city.

The attorney, Courtney Cox, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents, but Johnson and Davlin rejected it.

Cox has since filed suit against the city, and that case is pending. The State Journal-Register also has filed a FOI request for the information.

Johnson cited a 1990 Illinois appellate court case as support for her decision to deny release of the EEOC reports. In that case, known as CBS v. Cecil Partee, the court said that providing the names and races together of governmental employees could constitute an invasion of privacy. CBS had sought information, including names and races of all Cook County assistant state’s attorneys, as well as names, positions, dates of hire and salaries for a host of other employees.

However, the ruling indicates the state’s attorney’s office did release its EEOC filings to CBS, and the court took no exception to that.

Neither Cox nor the newspaper has asked the city to reveal names of city employees together with their races.

The State Journal-Register, after learning earlier this month that city officials did not intend to release the data, asked the attorney general’s office whether the EEOC filing is public information.

Mutchler’s letter to the city says that “aggregate numbers without containing personal identifying information for each employee generally would not constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. Moreover, a public body is required under the Act to separate the exempt from the non-exempt information and disclose the non-exempt information, in this case, names, if they are specifically coupled with race identifiers.”

The letter also indicates the Cook County case is not applicable in this situation.

Mutchler said Johnson called her Thursday to ask for additional advice regarding whether the original EEOC document needed to be provided with the summary. Johnson later sent Mutchler a letter indicating the city’s 2003 EEOC document contains personally identifying information and that under her reading of the Cook County case, the information is exempt from disclosure. It also says the city will release the report after redacting all identifying information, “which unfortunately is almost the entire document.”

Davlin has said he feared that an employee might sue the city for releasing the report and that he hoped someone would take the city to court so a judge could say definitively whether the filings should be made public.

Cox said Thursday that he believes the city is still hiding information.

“Instead of turning (the EEOC report) over, now they want to create their own forms,” he said. “I think it’s more reliable to see what they’ve turned in and told the federal government than what they want to create to pass out. I want to look at what they’re going to present, but I doubt it will persuade me not to pursue the Freedom of Information suit to obtain the actual original documents.”

Ward 1 Ald. Frank Edwards, who has pushed for the report’s release, said he, too, is disappointed with the Davlin administration.

“They said we were going to do things different and we were going to be open and we were going to be this and we were going to be that. It looks like the same old deal to me,” he said. “The people of the community have the right to know what their government is doing. These behind-closed-doors, backroom dealings – no wonder we’re getting sued all the time.”

7.1% minorities in city jobs / Compared with 20% of Springfield’s population

Sept. 18, 2004

Minorities are underrepresented in the city of Springfield’s work force, according to data released Friday.

Non-whites make up 7.1 percent of the overall work force, while they account for about 20 percent of Springfield’s population, according to 2000 Census figures.

The head of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People called the numbers “an embarrassment,” while the chairman of the mayor’s own race relations task force criticized the city for its lack of openness in the matter.

After initially refusing to release the information, the city provided The State Journal-Register with a summary of its 2003 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission EEO-4 filing, along with a heavily edited copy of the actual report.

The newspaper asked for the data in a Freedom of Information Act request on Sept. 7, the same day aldermen requested that it be made public.

The summary, put together by city attorney Jenifer Johnson, is a spreadsheet of repackaged information from the report. It includes EEOC “job functions” but gives no indication of the departments employees work in; the number of employees in each job function; and a breakout of the number of white men and women, black men and women and men and women from “other” ethnic groups who work in each job function.

The 33-page EEOC report, which the city must file every other year, was based on employees of the city between July 2002 and June 2003. Mayor Tim Davlin took office in April 2003.

Johnson said she blacked out any information on the report she believed would allow the public to identify individual employees. In refusing to release the entire contents, city officials said doing so could violate workers’ right to privacy, because anyone who viewed it might be able to determine a particular employee’s race.

But not only does the EEOC filing not include names for the city’s 1,586 employees, there is no explanation of the racial categories jobs into which jobs are slotted. The report identifies workers by general “job categories” – administration, professionals, technicians, protective services, paraprofessional, administrative support, skilled craft and service/maintenance. It includes eight salary ranges within each category and then lists the number of men or women in racial categories identified only as “B” through “K.”

Minorities are concentrated in relatively few jobs, based on the city’s data. The highest percentage, 30.9, work in “public welfare” jobs.

City officials, contacted through a spokeswoman late Friday afternoon, just after the report was released, refused to provide further explanation of what is considered a “public welfare” job, saying that could violate employees’ privacy. The city has no public welfare department.

The city’s data shows 15.4 percent of minorities work in “financial administration” positions, 14.3 work in “other” jobs, and 11.5 work in jobs pertaining to “streets and highways.”

Baker Siddiquee, chairman of the Mayor’s Task Force on Race Relations, said the committee has been asking the city for the EEOC data for about six months. At the group’s Sept. 2 meeting, they were allowed to view a summary of the data, broken down by department, but were not allowed to keep it, make notes or copy it.

He said the group has become increasingly frustrated by the city’s reluctance to share the information. Members sought the data so they could begin talking to various departments with good minority-hire numbers to find out what they are doing to diversify and share that information with other departments.

“Our group openly expressed they are not happy (with the lack of information from the city),” Siddiquee said. “I think that for us, we’re puzzled because we’re already discussing the low representation in two departments – police and fire – so what difference does it make if there are two or three other departments on the same list?…

“Openness is critical. If we are to have any impact as the mayor’s task force, the first thing is information and openness. We are advisory to the mayor. If we cannot reach the administration and provide our advice, then what is the role of this so-called task force?”

Rudy Davenport, president of the Springfield branch of the NAACP, described the city’s minority employment numbers as “dismal.”

“The black total is only 6.8 percent in the entire city (work force). Actually, we are at about 13 percent of the population, so you can see the city really hasn’t made a great deal of progress. They haven’t made any, really,” said Davenport, who noted that he and the NAACP have never had access to racial and gender data for all city employees.

“Certainly, I can see why they would not want it released. It’s an embarrassment to the city. It’s an embarrassment that we allow things to get to the state where this is reflected as such. It really does not bode well, I would think, for the city as far as being the land of Lincoln and the image we want to project.”

Davenport said NAACP members have discussed the city’s reluctance to release the data and believe it reflects poorly on the administration, especially once the Illinois attorney general’s office confirmed the data could be released. He said members became suspicious of the city’s motives.

Ward 1 Ald. Frank Edwards said the numbers indicate the city has too few minority employees. He asked why other city departments have not been pressed to hire minorities, while a great deal of emphasis has been placed on police and fire department hiring.

“All these politicians and all these people who’ve been pushing the numbers on the police and fire department, I think they’ve got a lot to explain because all these exempt jobs and all these other jobs that are non-testing positions haven’t been filled with minorities and women,” he said.

“I’ve always said our (fire) department should reflect he makeup of our community. I think that should hold true for all departments at the city.”

According to the city’s summary, the “fire” job function – presumably firefighters – has the least number of minorities at 2.2 percent.

Courtney Cox, the attorney representing several black police officers in a discrimination lawsuit against the city, sought the EEOC data in a FOIA request that was rejected by the city. He has since filed suit for the information. He said Thursday he didn’t believe the city’s summary would be adequate for his purposes and said he would rather see the entire unedited EEOC report “than what they want to create to pass out.”

The Illinois attorney general’s office, which oversees enforcement of the state FOI Act, maintains the EEOC filings are public information and urged the city to release them, according to a letter assistant attorney general Terry Mutchler sent the city earlier this week.

Davlin has said he fears an employee might sue the city for releasing the report and that he hopes someone will take the city to court so a judge can rule whether the filings should be made public.

In a statement the city released Friday afternoon, Johnson reiterated the data was being released only because aldermen requested it.

“This in no way changes our position that requests for a specific breakdown of positions not be allowed under FOIA,” she said. “We stand by our earlier determination and are anxiously awaiting further clarification from the courts.”

Davlin mum on number of minority hires / Mayor fears threat of lawsuit
Sept. 22, 2004

Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin was unable to say how many minorities he’s hired since taking office last year, but he believes his numbers are considerably higher than those of previous administrations.

Davlin, following Tuesday’s Springfield City Council meeting, indicated he was reluctant to put in writing how many non-whites he has hired out of fear of being sued.

“That’s my only concern,” he said, “not to please the press, but to make sure the city of Springfield does not have a lawsuit where we pay out a monetary claim to anyone, because we do not have the money.”

The Davlin administration on Friday – after being prodded by the press, aldermen and others – released a summary that shows the city has a 7.1 percent minority hire rate. The summary was based on information compiled for a mandatory federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission report the city filed in 2003.

Davlin said the minority hire numbers should be compared to the number of non-whites in Springfield’s work force, not the city’s minority population as a whole.

City officials and local leaders in the past have talked about having the city government’s work force reflect the makeup of the community, which is 20 percent minorities, according to 2000 Census data.

Davlin instead cited a 2004 report compiled by the Illinois Department of Labor that shows Springfield’s “total civilian work force” in 2002 included 7,809 minorities. That’s 7.2 percent of the available labor force, according to the report.

He said comparing the city’s minority hire numbers to the labor report data is more appropriate than comparing the numbers to the city’s total minority population.

“To say that our goal is 20 percent because that’s the population, that would far exceed anything that the labor statistics would ever say is possible,” he said, adding that removing police and fire positions from the equation shows the city has an 8.6 percent minority hire rate.

The mayor said he met Monday with representatives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to make sure “they understood the numbers and make sure that we know how to compare things.”

“It just shows that when you release raw numbers, it doesn’t mean anything. You’ve got to be able to understand what those numbers are,” he said.

The 33-page EEOC report, which the city must file every other year, was based on employees of the city between July 2002 and June 2003. Davlin took office in April 2003.

He said his administration is working hard to recruit more minorities to work for the city.

“I think we’re doing things that have never been done previously. We’re committing police officers to be full-time recruiters, taking someone off the streets where we now have to make up for that in other ways,” he said. “The recruiting we’re doing at the fire department and everything we’ve done in conjunction with the NAACP and the Urban League … I think it’s important to note that we’re doing everything we possibly can and things that have never been done in previous administrations.”

Davlin also deflected the notion that some community members believe his administration has something to hide, given its reluctance to release the minority data.

“So far, to date, I’ve never had one person complain to me that we’re trying to hide anything. I think what I hear are positive things, that what I’m trying to do is protect the city of Springfield from future lawsuits,” he said. “My job is to protect the city of Springfield, and sometimes you’ve just got to take a little heat in doing that.”

Davlin also took a swipe at Ward 1 Ald. Frank Edwards, who has criticized him for not hiring enough minorities. Davlin called Edwards’ statements “hypocritical,” saying he hired 20 white male firefighters during his tenure as fire chief between March 2001 and October 2002.

“He’s the one who’s actually responsible for these low numbers … and never doing anything at all, never putting a firefighter out recruiting and putting resources in a different area. Yet he’s the hypocrite saying we’re doing such a bad thing,” Davlin said.

“I inherited those numbers under this administration. But how hypocritical can you be when the numbers are his responsibility?”

Edwards said he was the first fire chief to put together a recruitment team made up of minorities, women and white firefighters and that he put the current fire department recruiter, Mark Dyment, in that position. He said he took several other steps to recruit minority firefighter candidates to the department, and noted that the fire chief does not hire firefighters, it’s human resources and the mayor who do.

“I think, as usual, the mayor’s talking out of one side of his mouth politically and doesn’t know what he’s talking about out the other side of his mouth,” Edwards said.

“If the mayor really wants to talk about his record, let’s talk about who he has hired and who he has let go. If you just look at the small cadre of people he’s hired, you’ll find a great disparity,”

In other business Tuesday, aldermen approved spending $2,000 for the public health department to rent the Prairie Capital Convention Center on Oct. 23 for a “drive-through flu shot clinic.”

Anyone seeking a flu vaccination will be able to drive through the center and receive a shot without leaving their vehicle. The clinic will take place between 8:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., and health department officials expect to give out at least 500 vaccinations. Health department director Ray Cooke said he has never heard of another public health department conducting such a clinic.

The council also OK’d several appointments to the city’s Historic Sites Commission. Davlin reappointed Nancy Evans, Patricia Doyle and Ron Ladley to the commission, along with new appointees Stephen D. Myers, Robert J. Barker and Thomas J. Cullen.