* By itself, this doesn’t mean a whole lot…

Two parolees, including one on electronic monitoring, have been charged with shooting a Harvey police officer, then holding six children and two women hostage over two days before they were arrested by a SWAT team.

David Jordan, of Dixmoor and Peter Williams, of Chicago, are each charged with attempted murder of a police officer, aggravated criminal sexual assault with a firearm, home invasion and aggravated kidnapping.[…]

Jordan was allowed to leave his “home base” in Dixmoor between 6:30 a.m. and 3 p.m., according to IDOC spokesman Tom Shaer. On Tuesday, Jordan left at 6:47 a.m. and returned at 11:12 p.m., Shaer said. He left again at 11:51 a.m. and never returned, he said. […]

IDOC doesn’t always send an apprehension team to arrest a parolee who’s missing, Shaer said. The department often tries phone calls, visits to known hangouts and contacts with informants, he said. Shaer wouldn’t say what steps IDOC took to determine Jordan’s whereabouts.

But when no contact was made in the seven hours after Jordan missed his 3 p.m. Tuesday deadline, the department issued a warrant for his arrest.

Even if the department had issued the arrest warrant immediately at 3 o’clock, the guy was already holding hostages, so it would’ve been meaningless.

* But you get the feeling by reading all the stories today that the reporters are definitely looking for something…

“Six attempts were made to locate him,” Shaer said. “(W)hen the last attempt turned up nothing further, a warrant was issued.” […]

Despite the newest crime Jordan is accused of committing, Shaer defended the parole system Thursday.

“There was no systemic failure in this case, and there is no systemic issue, overall, in IDOC parole,” he said.

* And…

But when Jordan didn’t return home by his 3 p.m. deadline, the Illinois Department of Corrections parole division tried without success to contact Jordan six times, a spokesman for the agency said.

After the sixth attempt to reach him had failed, the department generated an automatic arrest warrant that was distributed to law-enforcement agencies across the state at 10:22 p.m., agency spokesman Tom Schaer said.[…]

Schaer declined to divulge whether a specific time limit exists that would trigger an arrest warrant if a parolee on electronic-monitoring is missing.

“We are unable to tell you that time because it would jeopardize public safety,” Schaer told the Chicago Sun-Times. “It would tell parolees how and when we look for them. We prefer to keep them in the dark as much as possible.”

Was IDOC trying to contact him or locate him? We have two different stories. Calling his phone would be a lot different than sending folks out to look for him.

* And more than 7 hours elapsed before an “automatic” warrant was issued for Jordan? Has it always been standard IDOC practice to wait that long? And, if so, why?

I could see giving parolees a brief buffer beyond their time limit, just out of humaneness (things do happen in life), but this guy was a murderer who spent more than 20 years behind bars. Should parolees like this really be allowed more than 7 hours extra time before enforcement kicks in? Could this be some sort of data manipulation to reduce reported parolee recidivism? Is my tinfoil hat on too tight?

Whatever the case, as long as IDOC refuses to answer questions about its policy and if there have been any recent changes to that policy, some folks are gonna suspect the worst. And I don’t blame them. A horribly botched IDOC early release policy nearly cost Gov. Quinn the Democratic primary in 2010. I’m sure the guv doesn’t want a repeat. On the other hand, waiting 7 hours before issuing a warrant could turn out to be an even worse mistake.

*** UPDATE 1 *** I just got off the phone with IDOC’s Shaer. He says there has been “no change” in the warrants policy in 2013 or 2014. The department decided it was “calling back” lots of warrants in 2012 because they were finding the guys on their own by doing things like contacting sources, local law enforcement, family and friends, sending out their own recovery teams, etc.

Shaer said he understood my concern about waiting so long to issue a warrant, but repeated that “A warrant is separate and distinct from looking for the guy,” he said. It’s “the last straw.”

…Adding… Also from Shaer…

This Department cannot disclose methods, timing or other specifics of the search or warrant processes. To do so would jeopardize public safety by thus showing parolees how and when we do our job. Safety and security require they not be informed of such internal procedures.

As for Jordan, he had a “generally compliant” parole record for a year or so, according to Shaer. He missed one meeting with his parole officer due to illness, but Shaer says the record doesn’t explain if this was the officer’s illness or Jordan’s. He also had a clean prison record.

*** UPDATE 2 *** Jordan’s prison record wasn’t totally clean. He was given an extra four years for possessing a weapon in prison.