Morning Shorts
Friday, Jul 18, 2008 - Posted by Kevin Fanning
* Hospital thwarts police inquiries; violence festered in silence
Illinois’ largest psychiatric hospital left sexual predators unguarded despite allegations that at least 10 mentally disabled children were assaulted during the last three years.
The youngest victim was an 8-year-old state ward admitted for evaluation after expressing suicidal thoughts.
* Cook County fail?
Unnecessary deaths and amputation, grossly inadequate medical care and routine inmate beatings.
Those are some of the disturbing findings at the Cook County Jail after a 17-month civil review by the U.S. attorney’s office, which is considering criminal charges against some jail guards.
* Sun-Times: Jail horrors are a moral crime
Cook County Jail is a bleeding mess. That’s the only conclusion you can arrive at after reading a 98-page report from the U.S. Justice Department on conditions at the facility, the largest county jail in the country.
* Federal probe rips Cook County Jail
* Feds to County: Clean up the Jail
* U.S. blasts jail conditions
* Beatings at Cook County Jail
* Fitz on Cook County Jail
* Tenaska in Taylorville update
* Election commission is challenged to explain voting machine accuracy
The criticisms that have been leveled at the DuPage County Election Commission have had more to do with the appearance of impropriety. They’ve been about some members’ close personal relationships with both the manufacturer and distributor of the voting machines, for example, and the kind of cross fertilization that, frankly, is not unusual in “old boy” networks.
* Attorney General accuses Algonquin contractor of fraud
* Elegy for five fine suburban women
* Pontiac prison close officially suggested
That report noted a direct withdrawal of nearly $30 million in spendable income from the four-county region surrounding the prison where a vast majority of its 569 employees live. Indirect losses to Pontiac and other communities would be even greater.
“It would be devastating to businesses,” Rutherford said.
* Friday Beer Blogging: Curve Ball Edition
- trafficmatt - Friday, Jul 18, 08 @ 9:12 am:
I don’t live anywhere close to Pontiac or the Cook County jail, so I don’t have a horse in this fight.
Isn’t it ironic that on the same page that we are talking about closing the Pontiac prison, there are numerous articles about how poorly run the Cook County jail is?
Perhaps we are closing the wrong prison. (yes, I know one is state and the other is county).
Just struck me as funny.
- b-dogg - Friday, Jul 18, 08 @ 9:15 am:
until we empty our prisons of non-violent drug offenders, nothing will ever change. the answer is right in front of us, has been for ages, yet we as a society cannot or will not face the truth.
- Plutocrat03 - Friday, Jul 18, 08 @ 9:17 am:
There has been an awful lot of chest thumping about the treatment of combatants captured on the battlefield in the Middle East. Lots of talk about what America represents etc.
Let’s see if the same people cry out for better treatment of US residents, some of whom have not yet even been convicted of a crime.
If the reports are true, everyone in the chain of command needs to be taken to task. Remember that the City of Chicago is still dealing with the John Burge issues even today.
The perpetrators and participants in these crimes should be treated no better than the members of our military who were pilloried and reviled without the benefit of the legal process.
For a prize, can anyone guess the name of the man who was States Attorney for 7 years and managed to look the other way for his entire tenure? He failed to follow up on at least 55 charges of abuse.
- Cassandra - Friday, Jul 18, 08 @ 9:33 am:
We do have to wonder what DCFS was thinking when it placed an eight year old ward in this facility and whether the child’s parents participated knowledgeably in the decision. DCFS wardship does not necessarily mean termination of all parental rights although its strong bias towards removing the children of the minority poor likely means that parents get short shrift in these kinds of
decisions. Anyway, for an eight-year-old, surely there are more appropriate facilities than Riveredge, if hospitalizaiton was needed at all. I wonder if Riveredge’s owners make “campaign contributions.”
And let’s not be fooled by Emil/Blago appointee McEwen, the DCFS director who apparently escaped his media handlers and professed surprise that all this abuse was going on, including, apparently abuse of state wards for whose welfare he carries ultimate responsibility. McEwen’s child protection investigators were investigating individual incidents of child abuse at the facility and have been for years. Did he read the reports? Did anybody read the reports? As for those utilization reviews which mysteriously stopped occurring under EmilBlago…McEwen doesn’t seem to know much about those either. Does he know anything about what is going on in his agency? Where is the ACLU when we need them. .
Deplorable conditions at Cook County Jail, at the Juvenile Hall in Cook County, at the infamous Howe Developmental Center run by the equally infamous state Dept of Human Services, and, now at the privately run Riveredge which gets hundreds of millions of our state taxpayer dollars to care for
deeply troubled adults and children. Under the state’s one party rule by Chicago Machine Democrats, it’s all about “campaign contributions” and patronage. The quality of service provide by these well-funded institutions (the DCFS budget is close to $1.5 billion a year and they employ a large, well paid clinical staff which is supposed to oversee quality of care for children in DCFS care) is simply not a priority, despite Democrats’ outrageously inaccurate claims to be champions of our most defenseless citizens.
- criminal - Friday, Jul 18, 08 @ 10:40 am:
Does anyone know what bill the Gov signed before giving his “state police/national guard in chicago” presser?
- Captain America - Friday, Jul 18, 08 @ 10:47 am:
I was deeply disturbed by the Tribune’s expose about conditions at Riveredge Hospital yesterday. To me it demostrates tht the private secor is just as screwed up as the public sector - profiteering without providing safe and high quality serivces.
I haven’t had time to read the Cook County Jail story yet. All that I can say is that Sheriff Tom Dart really has a tough job. Dart’s an outstanding guy, I just hope that the Sheriff’s job and the implict difficulites therein don’t somehow end his political career prematurely.
Somewhere, I read that it was a stroke of good fortune that the elder Mayor Dealy did not get slated for Cook County Sheriff because historically one of the most corrupt organizations in a era of endemic political/governmental corruption. The Cook County Sheriff position has been the political graveyard for many an aspiring politician - O’Grady and Sheehan most recently. Personally, I never thought much of Elrod either - even though he became a judge after being Sheriff.
- jerry 101 - Friday, Jul 18, 08 @ 10:50 am:
The State should take over Cook County corrections. Too many problems for too long. Not that the State always does a great job, but this abuse is horrifying.
Humane treatment of anyone in government custody, whether a foreign national or a US Citizen should always be demanded.
And, Pontiac prison needs to be saved. There aren’t many good jobs left in that part of the state, and the Prison provides a lot of what’s left. It would be economically devastating for a lot of people to go through that.
- Amy - Friday, Jul 18, 08 @ 11:06 am:
too bad the Sheehan controlled office spent so much time fighting with the Devine controlled office over legal representation. the real work was making sure the Sheriff’s Office was run correctly. another embarassment in Illinois political world at the expense of an elected official who seems to be attacking the problem, although his mentor did not do much.