It's a wonderful life

Ever see the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life"? Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore. 1946

Well, it's a wonderful life right here in McHenry County. Keith Nygren, Andy Zinke. 2011. Florida. Panama Canal. Washington, D.C. in the Spring. What could be better?

How can you top $12,000/month salary and not having to work? Pretty nice, eh? Live rent-free for three months. Be gone a week or so. Come back to town and work three days - Thursday, Friday, Monday. Sign a bunch of papers. Charge up the cell phone. And then maybe head on off to Florida and do a little sight-seeing through the Panama Canal before coming back to good, ol' McHenry County.

What a time of year to be homeless. I hear there is a park in Crystal Lake where a tent can be pitched.

Oh, about the Washington, D.C. end of things. CALEA is located in Gainesville. That's Virginia, not Florida. Gainesville is 21 miles southwest of Dulles International Airport. Word is that several supervisors will be there to receive the certification award from CALEA. Are two already there? Did two othes leave yesterday? Is the Undersheriff leaving Friday?

Who's in charge of the Sheriff's Department, when everybody is gone? Is it a good idea for the Sheriff and so many command personnel to all be gone at the same time?

Is that plan of absence from a large department part of CALEA's endorsed procedures?

Wouldn't it have been cheaper to fly one (1) of CALEA's administrators in for the afternoon, serve up some cake and coffee, and send him back home that night?

CALEA - status?

Recently I suggested to a reporter at the Northwest Herald that the newspaper investigate how many calls were placed to the McHenry County Sheriff's Department on Monday, December 13, when the CALEA inspectors were there to examine the Department for its application for accreditation?

Not only was there no article at the time, but there has been no article since.

The information about the number of calls and, possibly, the topics of the calls, should be available by FOIA. A Department telephone number was publicized.

There was one major problem, though. Members of the public were invited to comment on how MCSD was doing in regard to CALEA. The problem? How would members of the public know how the Department was doing. CALEA standards have never been publicized.

Recently, news has emerged via a hearing in a Rockford Federal court that that an issue involving racial profiling did, indeed, exist at the Sheriff's Department, contrary to denials of Sheriff Nygren. It turns out that there was a second set of records, for tickets that were issued but never reported to IDOT. Lots of them.

When a deputy (or more than one deputy) makes many traffic stops and records the race of a Hispanic driver as Caucasian (white), isn't that going to tilt statistics submitted to IDOT about the race of the driver stopped?

Do you suppose there is a CALEA standard that reads, "Record the driver's race correctly"?

It's not rocket science!

Public comment to CALEA invited

Care to put in your 2-cents' worth regarding Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) and the McHenry County Sheriff's Department?

Accreditation evaluators are due at MCSD on December 11.

Members of the public can telephone in their comments by calling 815-334-4298 between 2:00-4:00PM on December 13.

Or you can go in person on December 13 at 5:30PM to the Sheriff’s Department Training Room at McHenry County Government Center, 2200 N. Seminary Ave., Woodstock.

Employees also are invited to comment. That ought to be good for their job security!

Comments at the session or by phone are limited to five minutes and must address the Sheriff’s Department’s ability to comply with CALEA standards", according to a December 1st article in the Northwest Herald.

If that's the case, you might as well save your breath. How can a member of the public know anything about the "ability" of the Sheriff's Department to comply with CALEA standards?

The answer is that, Yes, it has the ability to comply. The question is, does it have the integrity or the willingness to comply? And just what are the standards as set out by the Sheriff's Department?

If you don't know that, it's pretty darned hard to comment on the Department's ability to comply.