NWH denies comments to jail breach story

As of this writing the Northwest Herald is not allowing comments to its story about the security breach at the McHenry County Jail. Why not???

The Northwest Herald is a newspaper. It should act like one. It should not be controlled by the McHenry County Sheriff 's Department (MCSD), Sheriff Nygren or anyone else at MCSD or by the Good Old Boys' network in McHenry County that wants to keep the power at MCSD.

The Northwest Herald story contained numerous errors, starting with misleading readers as to the date of the security breach. The correct date was December 21.

The story is off the "front page" now. To find it, click on the Search symbol at the upper right of the homepage, enter JAIL and click on Search. Or just click here.

The Northwest Herald allowed comments when its online story was first published on January 3. In that article, the incident date was given as "About 6 p.m. Saturday". To readers that would mean December 28. No, it happened on December 21.

When errors began to pointed out in the Comments, the story was updated and the Comment Box was removed.

I invite McHenry County jailers to contact me by email, mail or phone with more information about what really happened. Your colleagues know that I do not reveal sources.

Should I go ahead and publish the names of the male inmate who got into the womens' section? of the female inmate he visited? of the guard who didn't secure the door? of the guards to whom inmates reported the intrusion? of the guard who was supposed to be monitoring the closed-circuit TV? of the jail supervising sergeant? and why the story was squelched?

If there were an honest command at the McHenry County Sheriff's Department, the security failure would have been announced the same day in a press release to all media, including the electronic media (McHenry County Blog, FirstElectricNewspaper, Woodstock Advocate, Patch and others).

Instead, the command at MCSD tried to keep it quiet. That never works, but they are slow learners.

It might also be interesting to readers and residents how many times guards reported that the door did not close and latch properly and that it needed to be repaired.

The Northwest Herald story included, "The door should not have been used but for emergencies, Sheriff Keith Nygren said. In order for the door to lock, it had to be slammed or rechecked to ensure it was secured. The officer did not do so." How long did Nygren and Zinke know that the door needed repair?