DH expands headline over Letter to Editor

The Daily Herald published a Letter to the Editor yesterday from Mark Gummerson (make that, R. Mark Gummerson!), raking me over the coals for my recent criticism of some of the court security officers at the McHenry County Government Center.

The Daily Herald provided this grandiose headline over Mark's letter: "Court security, like Nygren, does fine job". The only problem I have with the headline is that nowhere in Gummerson's letter did he say that Nygren does a fine job. From what hat did the DH editors pull that one? Gummerson wrote that Nygren had put a "fine team together". Howie Parth may have done part of it; Parth's predecessor probably had some hand in forming the current staff, too. The headline just doesn't match the letter.

I didn't know of Mark's letter until after tonight's candidates' forum at MCC. Upon arriving home I found an email with a link to an article on the Dirty Keith vs. Dirty Harry blog. That article, at http://dirtykeithvsdirtyharry.blogspot.com/2010/10/when-stupid-lawyer-does-stupid.html, titled "When a Stupid Lawyer does Stupid Things...Before he Thinks!!", discussed the submission to the Daily Herald.

I tried to post a comment on the Daily Herald, but it would not accept it, even though I shortened the length to well under the maximum number of characters. So I'll just post my comment here:

"Attorney Mark Gummerson failed to mention his close personal friendship with, and considerable financial support of, the current sheriff, which included special privileges in the Reserved parking section aon the east side of the courthouse. Of course, he'll vote for Nygren.

"To the point of his criticism of my comments, the court security staff is packed with retirees from departments. A better plan would be to let those men live on their retirement pensions and hire and train younger men and women who need jobs. I didn't say all CSOs are not capable of performing their duties, but some of them clearly would be physically unable to do so, if an altercation arose in a courtroom. In the courtrooms bailiffs (CSOs) are often inattentive and function more as "room monitors" (and often not even that). Their primary duty is often just announcing, "All rise. The court is in session." It's fine for Mark to respect them, but to expect them to protect him is another matter.

"Visit any courtroom and observe the CSOs. Decide for yourself. My opinion is based on observations in numerous courtrooms."