Crime: August 2008 Archives

There must be sheriffs all over the United States cursing Mark Curran since Lake County's top cop checked himself into a suite at the county jail in downtown Waukegan. You know somebody's going to see the story about Lake County's sheriff and ask their sheriff: "When you going to jail?"

The Hound isn't sure what the sheriff will find on this week-long fact-finding mission about what it's like in jail and how the jail is run, but it sounds like he's going to be a regular inmate without one of those cellmates seen on "Prison Break" or "Oz". Yet, it certainly doesn't sound like a summer camp jaunt.

Inmates might be warned, though, that Curran could find the place too soft and start doing what Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff has done. Known as "America's toughest sheriff", Arpaiio has served inmates bologna sandwiches, limited meals to twice daily, banned coffee, smoking, porn magazines and weightlifting gear. You want TV in his jail? You get Animal Planet, Disney Channel, The Weather Channel, A&E, CNN and the local government access channel.

Inmates there wear black-and-white jail uniforms, get issued pink underwear and some are sent to tents. So inmates might want to be careful what they say.

The Hound understands one of the CDs Curran has in jail is "Live at Folsom" by Johnny Cash. What, no "Jailhouse Rock" by the King?

Looks like state Sen. Terry Link, D-Waukegan, is going to let his two petition-gathering associates twist slowing in the wind. Link is standing pat that he had "no involvement" in the gathering of tainted petitions and authorities back him up on that. But what's missing here?

Link's campaign workers, Kenneth Davison of Waukegan and Jerry Knight of Zion, were indicted this week on charges of perjury and forgery after the pair allegedly gathered petition signatures which included fake names and dead people. As Link says, "It's very unfortunate that this happened, but it was a mistake." Perhaps they might have accidentally copied signatures from candidate petitions from previous campaigns?

The senator, who also is Lake County Democratic Party chairman and Senate President Emil Jones' caucus leader in Springfield, is making this whole affair one of nugacity. Indeed, from Link's excuse he might not have been in the same state during the collection of signatures on his behalf by the petition-gathering duo.

Who hired these guys to collect signatures, not only for Link, but for several other Democratic candidates on the November ballot? Doesn't a petition circulator have to live in the district in which he is passing petitions? If Knight lives in Zion, he doesn't live in the 30th Senate District, which Link is defending against Republican Keith Gray, a Waukegan businessman and Mettawa resident, come November.

How much do petition collectors earn and how much did Link pay out to not only Knight and Davison, but the other 18 or so circulators the senator used to gather the more than 3,300 signatures he filed for re-election. Did they get paid extra for collecting for the other Democratic candidates?

One more observation from The Hound: If he's pretty lax when it comes to watching over his legal petitions, what other things in Springfield is Link lackadaisical about?

,