A Reader's Opinion

I have received a number of telephone calls and pieces of mail regarding the Crystal Lake-area senior citizens who were arrested in March 2008, when McHenry County Sheriff’s deputies executed an arrest warrant for their son at this couple’s residence. All of the calls and letters have suggested that this couple should have “gone public” right away about the events at their home, injuries and how they felt about the actions of the deputies who were there.

Today I received the following letter, which I am going to publish in its entirety but without the sender’s name or identification.

“I read one of your blogs that said you were in touch with an older couple that may have had a confrontation with the police and were arrested. You wrote that their attorney did not want their story out before the conclusion of their criminal court case or at least not at this time. The impression I had from your blog was that there may have been some police misconduct toward the older couple. If that is correct their attorney’s position makes no sense. Their story should get out now to enlist public sentiment, and if they are older, and not in the best of health, their health could deteriorate more every day and the truth would never get out. With a federal civil rights violation their attorney could try and depose the participants, and finally put pressure on the State’s Attorney to dismiss the charges. Why take a chance on a guilty verdict in a criminal case which could jeopardize a civil case.

“I gave the above hypothetical situation to a couple of attorneys I know and none would have employed the older couple’s attorney’s strategy. In fact all said they would have immediately went on the offensive with a federal civil rights lawsuit and going to the State’s Attorney with everything they knew to get the charges dismissed. I don’t know if it is too late for this couple to change attorney’s, otherwise they may get screwed twice once by the police and once by their attorney.”

This incident happened in March 2008. Nothing has ever appeared in the Northwest Herald, the Daily Herald or the Chicago Tribune. Would this mean that no information was released by the Sheriff’s Department about the arrests of this couple or injuries that necessitated hospitalization and which have resulted in ongoing treatment to this day?

I said to one caller that cases are best tried in court, not in the newspapers. But maybe I’m wrong. If the public doesn’t know what is happening in the community with its law enforcement agencies, then it cannot take steps to create positive changes in those agencies.

Maybe there should be a scorecard on the website of the McHenry County Sheriff’s Department, listing all the lawsuits in which it is involved (with both the public and its own employees), the dollar amount of claims being made, and the actual and estimated legal costs to the Sheriff’s Department to defend itself and to appeal any cases that it loses.

Opinions, anyone?