Woodstock City Council - tonight!

Tonight. 7:00PM. Woodstock City Hall.

If you are incensed over anything going on in the City of Woodstock, be at tonight's City Council meeting. The meeting will be called to order at 7:00PM.

The October monthly report of the Woodstock Police Department is included in the "packet" distributed electronically to the mayor and members of the City Council. The PD's report is not published online, meaning that taxpayers, voters and other interested parties must go either to City Hall or to the Woodstock Public Library to read it.

The disciplinary action pronounced on October 28 by the Board of Fire & Police Commission (BOFPC) in the matter of Sgt. Chip Amati's indiscretions earlier this year. This Board is not part of the police department; it is a City Board.

As of today the latest Minutes of BOFPC meetings shown online are from the September 12. But there was a Special Meeting of the BOFPC on October 28.

What is missing from the BOFPC webpage and tonight's City Council packet are the Minutes of the October 28, 2013, Special Meeting, during which the BOFPC considered actions of and discipline against Sgt. Chip Amati. That Board report ought to be in tonight's packet, but it's not. The City Manager needs to jump all over the Board for failing to submit its report. Somebody leaked Sgt. Amati's activity and the BOFPC decision to the Chicago Tribune, which got the jump on the Northwest Herald.

Presumably, the Mayor and City Council had already heard about the BOFPC decision. But where is the outrage? Did not one of them think this would be important to the residents of Woodstock? Important enough to release news about it to the public?

Will outrage be voiced at tonight's City Council meeting? Will the City Council sit still for the
lenient discipline and the failure of Chief Lowen to file criminal charges?

Has the Illinois State Police finished its investigation? Did it go to the McHenry County State's Attorney with a request for felony charges for Amati's alleged mis-use of the police LEADS system?

The public statement of the Chief of the Criminal Division of the McHenry County State's Attorney regarding the lack of prosecution is an embarrassment to law enforcement and that office. What was that statement? The Northwest Herald reported it as, "I felt, based upon character and attitude and his years of service that it wasn't appropriate to charge him. He's a human being, we all make mistakes and we're all fallible."

Really???

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)