This just in…
Tuesday, Dec 2, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller
* 12:18 pm - Wow. From the US Attorney…
A six-passenger, twin propeller engine aircraft flew on May 13 this year into west suburban DuPage Airport where three men awaited its arrival. Two of them – Ahyetoro A. Taylor and Raphael Manuel, both Cook County Sheriff’s Office Correctional Officers – accompanied an individual whom they believed brokered large-scale drug transactions but, in fact, was an undercover FBI agent. They boarded the aircraft, which was operated by two other undercover agents, and began counting packages of what was purported to be at least 80 kilograms of cocaine stashed inside four duffel bags. Taylor, Manuel and the undercover agent they accompanied removed the duffels from the plane and took them through the airport lobby to the trunk of the agent’s car in the parking lot. Taylor and Manuel, in a separate car, followed the agent to a nearby retail parking lot, where the agent parked and got into the officers’ vehicle. Together, the trio watched as yet another undercover agent arrived, removed the duffels from the trunk of the parked car, placed them in a Mercedes and drove away. The FBI agent posing as the drug broker then paid Taylor and Manuel $4,000 each - allegedly their most profitable payday in the corrupt relationship they began with the undercover agent at least a year earlier.
The undercover agent, while posing as an employee of a business in south suburban Harvey, was the hub in multiple spokes of police corruption in which Taylor and Manuel – often together with other officers they recruited – allegedly provided armed security for purported cocaine and heroin transactions throughout the south suburbs in 2007 and 2008. The investigation resulted in the unsealing today of federal charges against 17 defendants – 15 of them sworn law enforcement officers, including 10 Cook County Sheriff’s Office Correctional Officers , 4 Village of Harvey police officers and a Chicago police officer. The defendants allegedly accepted between $400 and $4,000 each on one or more occasions to serve as lookouts and be ready to intervene in the event real police or rival drug dealers attempted to interfere with any of a dozen different purported transfers of kilogram quantities of cocaine and heroin.
Today’s arrests and charges were announced by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They commended the assistance of the Cook County Sheriff’s Office in the investigation.
All 17 defendants were charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute kilogram quantities of cocaine and/or heroin in eight separate criminal complaints that were unsealed following arrests early today.
The full press release is here.
* 2:48 pm - From the Tribune…
Officers allegedly were paid up to $4,000 each as they served as lookouts and prepared to step in if law enforcement cracked down on the operations, authorities said. The undercover investigation run by the FBI allegedly saw officers protecting poker games and transporting cash.
Fourteen of the defendants were either arrested or surrendered today and are expected to make initial appearances in U.S. District Court this afternoon.
Two of the officers are accused of selling powder cocaine, and all are charged with conspiracy to possess and sell drugs.
An undercover agent acting as a drug dealer allegedly paid 16 of the defendants some $44,000 during the course of the investigation. In once incident, corrections officers Ahyetoro Taylor and Raphael Manuel met the undercover agent at the DuPage Airport, where they allegedly helped count what they believed were 80 kilograms of cocaine. The officers each were paid $4,000 for helping with the shipment.
Authorities said the undercover agent posed as an employee of a Harvey business that was not identified. It was described by authorities as the “hub in multiple spokes of police corruption” as Manuel and Taylor recruited officers to help them.
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Question of the day
Tuesday, Dec 2, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller
* You may have seen this…
Budget restraints have halted drug testing of applicants for child-welfare jobs at the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
Drug screening was required for anyone seeking positions at DCFS or its private contractors that deal directly with children or families.
* A longer AP story included this bit…
Other state agencies test for drugs. Prison-system and state police workers must be clean to get a job and then face random tests. State workers with access to nuclear facilities and people who want state jobs that require driving commercial vehicles such as trucks also must pass, officials said.
* The Question: When, if ever, should state employees be tested for drug use, including marijuana? Explain fully.
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Durbin backlash gaining strength
Tuesday, Dec 2, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Phil Kadner whacks Sen. Dick Durbin but good for asking that the president commute George Ryan’s prison sentence…
[Durbin] sides with Ryan’s pitiful wife, apparently forgetting the story of Tammy Raynor.
Raynor worked at a driver’s license facility under Ryan and saw the bribe-taking. When she protested, she was harassed. Her life was threatened. She was transferred.
But wherever she worked, she took notes on the corruption that she saw and stuffed them in the pockets of a multi-colored winter coat that she wore even in the summer.
At one point, Raynor claimed her mother passed Ryan’s wife a note, at a fundraising event, explaining the situation Raynor was in. Ryan’s wife, the woman Durbin feels so bad for today, said she never got the note.
I believe Raynor, whose testimony helped send Ryan to prison.
Durbin feels bad for Ryan. He feels bad for Ryan’s wife.
But he feels no sympathy for the honest people who live in this corruption-infested state.
I’m not surprised. You don’t get to be a U.S. senator from Illinois thinking about the little people.
* Mark Brown is outraged…
It’s hard to be against mercy. We all should strive to be merciful and compassionate.
But we also ought to have some standards as to when we show mercy, and the line doesn’t start with crooked politicians who fight, stall and postpone their convictions until they’re old enough to be considered more sympathetic.
Let me preface anything else I say with this: I’ve always liked Durbin. I respect him. I think he tries to be a decent public servant. But I think he’s so wrong on this one it’s ridiculous, as was his attempt at justifying his decision.
Basically, it all boils down to the fact he knows the Ryans personally and is therefore familiar with what a hardship the ex-governor’s prison sentence has been on Mrs. Ryan in particular.
He explained his decision in the context of spending his entire public life trying to correct government injustices of one sort or another that have been brought to his attention by members of the public. He chalked up the Ryan clemency bid as just one more example of that.
When pressed, though, Durbin said he couldn’t remember ever seeking clemency on behalf of anybody else. And he also backpedaled from the notion that Ryan was the victim of any injustice.
* The Sun-Times editorial board examines some problems with Durbin’s logic…
The senator’s notion of fairness is not informed by the facts in Ryan’s case.
If Ryan is released early, he will have spent less time in prison than two friends convicted in the case — Ryan’s aide, Scott Fawell, who did the dirty work, and businessman Lawrence Warner, who profited from the dirty deals.
Hardly fair or proportionate.
Often, special early release is reserved for the most penitent of prisoners. Ryan is the exact opposite. Years after his conviction, he has yet to apologize to the people of Illinois or, more specifically, to the Willis family, who lost six children in a fiery crash in 1994. Ryan’s corrupt secretary of state office gave a license to the unqualified truck driver involved in that crash.
Durbin said he hopes Ryan will apologize — when he gets out.
What a backward notion. And again, hardly fair.
Even if Ryan were to apologize while standing on the prison steps, we would have to question his sincerity. Ryan’s wife has said his conscience is clear.
* The Tribune editorial board published an open letter today to President Bush…
President Bush, you know George Ryan as an affable governor from your past. The people of Illinois know him as a criminal whose first-tier legal team couldn’t sway jurors from convicting him on 18 corruption counts.
We urge you, Mr. Bush, not to tell the preyed-upon people of Illinois that public corruption doesn’t matter.
We urge you to demonstrate that the difficult work of courts and jurors does matter.
We urge you not to free George Ryan.
* And the Daily Herald, like just about everybody else, brings up the dead Willis children…
George Ryan wants to spend time with his family. We think he should continue to reflect in prison on the fact that a bribery scandal in the secretary of state’s office he led resulted in the deaths of the six children of Rev. Scott and Janet Willis.
Our sympathies lie with them.
* Sneed is Sneed…
Sen. Dick Durbin, who asked President Bush for former Gov. George Ryan’s freedom Monday, feels he did so with approval.
• • The approval? Whenever Durbin faces a tough decision, he “thinks about what the late Sen. Paul Simon, a very compassionate man, would have done,” said a Sneed source.
• • The upshot: “Durbin believes Simon would have given a nod of approval to his action. Paul Simon is his North Star when it comes to politics,” the source added.
• • Backshot: In a rare expression of public compassion from a politician, Sen. Durbin gets Sneed’s award for bravery. It’s not easy knowing you’re going to be flooded with hate mail for doing what you think is the right thing. Sneed is told Sen. Durbin was inundated with negative messages the day after he announced he was thinking about asking President Bush to commute Ryan’s federal corruption sentence.
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* During the closing arguments of the corruption trial of Mayor Daley’s patronage chief Bob Sorich, a federal prosecutor promised the jury that there would soon be more heads on the wall…
“For those who are there and are responsible for this scheme, there’s another day,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Philip Guentert told jurors in 2006, during closing arguments. “City Hall is chock-full of the schemers.”
That was way back in July of 2006, and as the Tribune notes today, prosecutors have since been almost completely silent…
Since then, only former Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Al Sanchez, accused of being a co-schemer, and an assistant have been charged in the probe.
Federal prosecutors rarely announce publicly when secret grand-jury investigations have ended. But in a telling sign that the hiring investigation appears over, lawyers for the Daley administration say they last heard from U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald’s office on this issue in April 2007, a month after Sanchez was indicted.
Some bigtime folks with close ties to Mayor Daley were implicated during Sorich’s trial…
Evidence at Sorich’s trial indicated that former top Daley aides Timothy Degnan, Victor Reyes and John Doerrer may have participated in the fraudulent hiring scheme, according to a government filing.
And prosecutors have been a bit chummy with Daley of late…
At the funeral of Chicago Police Detective Joseph Airhart last month, Fitzgerald and Robert Grant, the head of the FBI’s Chicago office, were seen chatting with Daley for at least 20 minutes. And during the summer, Daley spoke at the FBI’s 100th anniversary celebration at Navy Pier. After the speech, Grant and Daley posed for photographs.
* I don’t think I’m the only one who has wondered what happened with this probe. Sorich was convicted on July 6th, 2006. That very same day, George W. Bush showed up in Chicago to have dinner with Mayor Daley on the president’s 60th birthday, which seemed kinda odd at the time.
Too tinfoil hatty? I dunno.
* Meanwhile, the Daily Herald obtained some documents via the Freedom of Information Act about how former Illinois Tollway chief Brian McPartlin recused himself from awarding a contract to McDonough Associates a few days after he spoke to the company about a job. McPartlin now wants a waiver from the state ethics laws to go to work for the company. Here’s a partial timeline, but you should definitely go read the whole thing…
On June 19, McPartlin informed Illinois State Toll Highway Authority Chairman John Mitola, he was looking for a job in the private sector. With three kids approaching college age, it was crucial to “make this career move to afford them the opportunity of a college education,” his letter says. His salary was $189,000 a year.
A month passed and McPartlin executed a $592,000 contract with McDonough July 17, according to his Sept. 8 petition to the ethics commission. The firm has done more than $30 million of work for the tollway.
Two weeks later, McPartlin talked to McDonough about setting up a meeting with top executive Feroz Nathani, his petition states.
“I am well aware of the restrictions on my employment activities and the prohibition of participating in any work involving the tollway by McDonough,” McPartlin wrote to commission Executive Director Chad Fornoff.
“I do not participate personally or substantially in the decision to award contracts, nor do I, or have I, influenced any decision to award contracts. However, I am one of three individuals at the tollway (including Catuara and Mitola) authorized to execute any contract approved by the board.”
Attorney General Lisa Madigan has asked the state Ethics Commission to delay approving the waiver while she looks into the matter. That seems prudent.
*** UPDATE 1 *** From the Tribune…
Federal agents were making arrests in south suburban Harvey this morning in connection with an investigation of police corruption, authorities said. A spokesman with the Chicago office of the FBI confirmed an operation was under way and said details would be coming.
From the US Attorney’s office…
Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, and Robert D. Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will hold a press conference at 2:00 p.m. today, Tuesday December 2, 2008, to announce a significant law enforcement operation involving alleged police corruption in the south suburbs. The press conference will be held in the U.S. Attorney’s Press Conference Room on the 11th floor, north end, of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, 219 South Dearborn St., Chicago.
Full details of today’s operation, including criminal charges and a detailed press release, are expected to be distributed after noon today, and the press conference room will be open to members of the media at 1 p.m. Approximately a dozen defendants being arrested today will have their initial court appearances beginning at 3 p.m. today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Mason in Courtroom 2214 in the Dirksen Federal Courthouse.
*** UPDATE 2 *** From the AP…
A federal judge in Chicago has set a Jan. 6 sentencing for political fundraiser Tony Rezko, who helped bankroll the campaigns of Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Barack Obama.
Defense attorney Joseph Duffy says Rezko just “wants to get on with his life.” Duffy made his comments while leaving court Tuesday after Judge Amy St. Eve set the date.
Duffy, however, left open the question of whether Rezko is still cooperating with the government’s investigation of corruption in the Blagojevich administration.
* Semi-related…
* Conflict of interest: Four Illinois Supreme Court justices have been asked to withdraw from hearing an appeal of a legal-malpractice case against Corboy & Demetrio, one of the nation’s top personal-injury firms, because the justices have gotten political contributions from the Chicago firm’s attorneys.
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Morning Shorts
Tuesday, Dec 2, 2008 - Posted by Kevin Fanning
* State shortchanged hurt workers for 30 years
The state unit that handles compensation claims for injured workers has concluded that Illinois short-changed at least some beneficiaries and their heirs, and that it did so for as long as a stunning 30 years.
Neither the Workers’ Compensation Commission nor anyone else in state government is yet saying how much the snafu might cost Illinois employers, who will have to make up any shortfall. But the money apparently is owed, and industry sources say the final tab could top $100 million.
* ISU execs disappointed by budget cuts
* Giannoulias Calls Out Governor on Abandoned Pension Plan
The cost of this corruption can be measured in the millions of dollars in unnecessary costs that the state pension systems have paid over the past five years so that corrupt political insiders could protect their criminal behavior.
* Consolidation concerns
* Birkett testing the waters for a 2010 state run
But for what office?
“I’m not ruling anything out at this point. I came very close to winning that race in 2002. Lisa Madigan was a strong opponent, backed by her father’s organization,” Birkett said, referring to Illinois Democratic Party Chairman Mike Madigan, who also is the House speaker.
Here’s my interpretation: If Lisa runs for governor, Joe would go for attorney general. If she seeks re-election or runs for a different office, Birkett would run for governor.
* Joe Birkett explores another run for statewide office
* Alvarez sworn in as state’s attorney
* New process installed will move to cut deal with CN”>for evaluating judges
The Judicial Performance Evaluation Program that had been voluntary for more than 900 judges who preside over Illinois courts became mandatory Monday with the Illinois Supreme Court’s announcement of new initiatives to improve judicial performance.
The new measures mandate that all judges undergo an intense evaluation consisting of a review of their opinions and performance by attorneys and court personnel at least once during their terms.
* 16th Circuit’s 1st black chief judge sworn in
* $150 million casino and hotel opens in Rock Island
* Calumet City Not Giving Up Casino Hopes
* Illinois bets on recycling programs
The Illinois Recycling Grant Program is doling out $760,000 throughout the Chicago area during what is traditionally the most wasteful time of the year—the holiday gift-giving season.
The money will allow some communities to expand curbside recycling programs and other cities and private businesses to hire additional workers and address electronic waste.
Programs receiving grants include:
* City reaches deal to lease parking meters
* Daley Plaza Tree To Light Up Downtown Chicago
* Most Chicago Police Squad Cars May Soon Be SUVs
* Political columnist is one of three vying to lead Paul Simon Public Policy Institute
David Yepsen, a political columnist for the Des Moines Register, said the institute could be used as a means to explore national issues, like combating racial prejudice, studying women in politics, government spending and debt, health care in rural America and campaign finance reform.
* Frankfort will move to cut deal with CN
* Suburbs face a storm of service cuts
“What you’ll see is … local government is usually one of the first industries to feel the pinch,” said Dave Bennett of the Metropolitan Mayors Caucus. “And then it’s always among the last to feel the recovery as well.”
* Buffalo Grove stays the course on budget
* Amnesty offered for red-light, parking tickets
People with Chicago parking or red-light tickets who take advantage of an amnesty that began today could save money and avoid the possibility of getting “booted” next month.
Half of the penalty for late payments on the 3.5 million outstanding tickets issued before 2007 will be waived for those who pay under the amnesty that ends Feb. 14, city Revenue Department Director Bea Reyna-Hickey said today.
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Morning video
Tuesday, Dec 2, 2008 - Posted by Rich Miller
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