Payday for FirstElectricNewspaper

Don't miss the Northwest Herald article about the cost to the McHenry County Sheriff's Department (and the County and the taxpayers) for MCSD's thumbing its nose at the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, the Public Access Bureau of the Illinois Attorney General, and McHenry County's own Pete Gonigam, publisher of FirstElectricNewspaper.com

Of course, the proposed pay-out of more than $104,000 is only a small part of the total cost. Tens (possibly, hundreds) of thousands of dollars had to be spent by the County and the Sheriff's Department on legal fees and employee salaries, as MCSD did its little collective dance routine to avoid releasing the report that Gonigam wanted.

And what report did he want? You know the one. The one that Nygren told Don Leist to write. Oh, wait, I mean, Leist's investigative (ha-ha-ha) report of Zinke's disclosure to a political ally, the president of RITA Corporation, of a confidential DEA investigation into a drug shipment destined for delivery to RITA Corporation.

Did Don Leist make an independent, impartial, fair, unbiased investigation into Zinke's actions? Or did Nygren tell him what to do (after all, Leist did report to Nygren) and what result he expected to read in Leist's report?

Would "Dirty Keith", as he was popularly known on another area blog, do such a thing?

To help you decide, consider this. What sort of person would drive into a large shopping center parking lot, find a car parked way out at the edge of the parking lot, pull in alongside that car and glare at the driver for 30 seconds, and then drive away - - and then accuse the other driver of stalking him? It would take the brainpower of a mouse (or of a top cop in a sheriff's department) to figure that one out.

I called the Woodstock Police as Nygren was driving away. An officer responded. I asked him to write what we in Colorado had called an Information Report; i.e., to document what I was telling him, but I wasn't asking for any action. He said "OK" and was going to leave. I insisted that he give me a Report Number, which meant he had to get a Report Number and then file a report. (Now why would I have thought he might just drive away and do nothing, had I not insisted on the Report Number???)

I always wondered what happened after that at the Woodstock PD. Sure enough, the next week the Northwest Herald published a story about Nygren's accusation of my stalking him. I thought often about filing a FOIA request for documentation of just what happened after the officer turned in his report.

Congratulations to Pete Gonigam for staying the course.

But there is more to consider... Why didn't the new Sheriff in town on December 1, 2014 (that would be Bill Prim) study the matter carefully over a cup of coffee and release the report to Gonigam without further delay?

Has anything really changed at the McHenry County Sheriff's Department?

Too bad I didn't get elected in 2010. I can tell you that a lot of the garbage that happened would have been cleaned up a lot faster.