Finalist: Chicago Tribune, by Joe Mahr, Joseph Ryan and Matthew Walberg
For their probe into government corruption in a Chicago suburb, using public records, human stories and shoe-leather reporting to lay out the consequences.
Nominated Work
February 9, 2014
Harvey’s violent crime and low arrest rates are unmatched in the region, a stain that can be traced from there all the way to D.C.
By Joe Mahr, Joseph Ryan and Matthew Walberg
A young rape victim tormented by the attacker the police wouldn't pick up. Heartbroken parents left to solve their children's slayings. Good Samaritans humiliated after catching a thief.
The numbers tell one story about Harvey: a suburb 20 miles south of the Loop that is unmatched in Chicagoland — even by the most dangerous urban neighborhoods — for its stark blend of violent crime levels and low arrest rates.
But the victims, and their survivors, tell even more vivid tales of getting little justice from Harvey's scandal-plagued Police Department and mostly shrugs from outside agencies unwilling to intercede.
"They say, 'Oh, that's Harvey,'" said Marsha Lee, whose son was fatally shot in Harvey. "Well, I don't understand how Harvey is allowed to operate."
A three-part Tribune investigation has traced some answers to decisions made in Chicago, Springfield and Washington.
Federal officials played a key role in helping the mayor stay in power even as he fought blame for the city's problems. Other federal officials documented widespread policing problems, then did little to force reform.
At the state level, officials let Harvey leaders break already tepid transparency and disclosure laws, while doing less to regulate cops than cosmetologists.
Critics say the result is a city where residents are victimized three times — by criminals, by dysfunctional policing and finally by outsiders turning a blind eye.
Over the next few days, the Tribune will show how dysfunctional the suburb has become and how the system aided and abetted its descent into arguably the most lawless community in the Chicago area.
February 8, 2014
By Joe Mahr, Joseph Ryan and Matthew Walberg
On an oil-stained blacktop beside a Harvey convenience store, someone shot and killed 20-year-old trade student Tommy Lee in his car.
Five years later, his parents still have the sedan, two bullet holes rusting in the hood and fender. They also have file folders documenting years of letdown in their pursuit of Tommy's killer.
Sitting around the kitchen table in a suburban split-level, they say Harvey police lied to them, yelled at them and made them feel like a bother. A state police agent who reviewed the case told the Tribune that Harvey's handling of the investigation was a "travesty."
And so Lee's parents wait for an arrest, like scores of other victims' families who say they've learned the hard way how difficult it is to get justice in Harvey.
"I'm the kind of person that I believe the police are here to serve and protect, and they really do try to help and they really do try to solve crimes," Marsha Lee said, pausing to collect her thoughts. "I had no idea."
The Lees' education came in a community that bucks encouraging national and regional crime trends.
Experts say it's not unusual for impoverished places to have more crime and tougher cases to solve. But the Tribune found that those two factors alone don't explain what has happened in Harvey, where the competence and integrity of the department frequently come under fire.
It's a suburb that commissioned an audit that ripped its Police Department's detective work, and then promoted the head of the detective bureau.
It's a community where officers can keep their guns and badges despite questionable conduct highlighted in scandal after scandal.
Harvey's leaders are regularly subpoenaed to testify in lawsuits accusing the department of wrongdoing. Some are filed by officers themselves, who allege misconduct by their bosses or complain of mistreatment.
The lawsuits drain millions of dollars from the pockets of taxpayers in one of the Chicago area's poorest communities.
While the impact is felt most acutely in Harvey, experts say there are hidden costs to the rest of the area's taxpayers — with boosted public spending on services like health care — while the suburb's lawlessness creates a general drag on the regional economy.
"I suffer from the crime problem in Harvey," said David Olson, a Loyola University Chicago criminal justice professor who lives in Cook County's northwest suburbs.
When asked about their crime-fighting efforts, Harvey officials pointed to their overall 2013 crime totals as being the lowest in 17 years. But the Tribune found that, given the suburb's population drop, Harvey's overall crime rate — crime per resident — remains higher than it was in 2002, the year before Mayor Eric Kellogg took office.
The Tribune found that the city's overall crime figures dropped mostly because of slides in property crime, particularly auto theft. In the categories that gauge violence — homicides, rapes, robberies and assaults — the most recent figures provided by Harvey show violent crime rose last year and was comparable to the year Kellogg took office, when he said crime had put the community in a "state of emergency."
Harvey officials, in an interview last year, blamed much of the crime on outsiders — such as parolees and sex offenders who moved into town. They also downplayed the significance of the suburb's low arrest numbers, arguing that officials focus on youth activities, jobs and neighborhood improvement to reduce crime.
"It is not just about locking everyone up. If that is what it is all about, something is wrong," said Denard Eaves, the acting police chief — a title he has held for six years.
Kellogg has complained that the suburb's problems are overblown by an unfair media and politicians looking to malign the suburb to make headlines.
But one of the critical politicians — Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart — said Harvey's problems go so deep that it raises a moral question of just how lawless a place can become before people elsewhere start to care.
"There are a lot of really good families that live out there," Dart said. "The notion that because of where they live, they get less police protection, substandard police protection, no police protection — that's appalling. Nobody in our county, frankly no one in our state, should accept that as being OK."
Harvey is not alone in complaints of shoddy police work or shaky leadership. Stories abound — from police departments in Robbins to Schaumburg — of recklessness and cluelessness that can be found, to certain degrees, in any profession.
But what separates Harvey from other areas — inside and outside Chicago — is the coinciding, glaring statistics.
Measuring crime can be tricky. Towns can define offenses differently or even fudge the numbers. The Tribune analyzed the best and most recently available data, compiled by state police.
Year after year, Harvey has reported the highest rate of violent crime of any suburb with more than 500 residents in the six-county region — a rate that approaches some of Chicago's most dangerous neighborhoods.
At the same time, the arrest rate has been lower than that of any other Chicagoland community battling significant violent crime, including Chicago's most troubled neighborhoods.
From 2007 through 2011, Harvey had 54 slayings, with 16 arrests. That's less than one arrest for every three cases.
During that period, Harvey recorded 2,446 other violent crimes, with 285 arrests, or nearly one for every nine cases.
Compare Harvey's numbers for that period with those of Wilmette, a wealthy north suburb with a violent crime rate that was nearly 50 times lower than Harvey's, and an arrest rate more than four times higher.
Or to middle-class west suburban Villa Park, with 13 times less violent crime and quadruple the arrest rate.
Or Chicago Heights, a high-poverty suburb like Harvey but with about half the violence rate and more than twice the arrest rate.
The statistics come to life on the streets of Harvey, even those not scarred by boarded-up houses and pothole-riddled streets.
On the blocks near Southwest Park, tidy split-levels anchor a neighborhood that's attracted newer two-story homes. Sculpted shrubs compete for attention amid neatly manicured lawns — and neighbors' worried tones about encroaching crime.
Craig Kimsey said he was robbed and pistol-whipped outside his childhood home in the neighborhood two years ago. Kimsey said he never heard anything from police about the case.
He doesn't live in Harvey anymore, but his mother does. Kimsey said he would never return to a town where police incompetence has become a running joke.
"We always say that Harvey never caught anybody," he said. "I honestly believe Harvey's a lost cause right now."
Just how bad Harvey policing had become was laid bare in a rare independent audit the suburb quietly commissioned two years ago.
As part of the audit, which was obtained by the Tribune, two retired state police officers dug through 14 homicide cases and found a litany of problems that could have helped killers remain free.
Some files listed potential suspects, with no record that anybody followed up on the leads.
Some had no record of anyone doing basic checks for witnesses — often key to identifying a suspect.
And some case files lacked even a standard incident report — the first step to documenting a crime.
The auditors were left with a damning conclusion: "It is clear that the department has not completed a thorough investigation on many of these cases."
None of those problems surprises Curtis Jackson Sr. His 20-year-old daughter, Tamela, was found stabbed more than 40 times in 2003, according to court records. Jackson said stress from the slaying of his daughter, who was set to start a job as a hairstylist, led him to quit his job at Ford.
He said detectives did so little to solve the case that he spent days and nights tracking suspects. Police had a decent fingerprint but needed to find a suspect to compare it with. Jackson said he eventually found one, but Harvey police ignored his tip.
Records show it took intervention by police elsewhere to crack the case two years later. By then, the assailant had struck again, beating and robbing a disabled man.
Jackson remains furious at what he considers inferior police work. He said the case could have been solved in weeks instead of years: "They did a pretty sloppy job. ... I asked questions. That's how I could give them this information about the guy who actually did it."
And that case counts for an arrest in Harvey's totals.
There are other families still awaiting justice, like the Lees. Thomas Lee, a retired manager with Sunoco, said he passed out fliers offering a $10,000 reward near the scene of his son's slaying, outside The Huddle convenience store. Instead of thanking him, Lee said, a detective told him that the reward was too small and that he should stay away from the scene.
Three years later, state police would take a look at the case and discover a key failure: Harvey had a witness who identified a prime suspect, but police never followed up.
"It was a solvable case," said retired state police Detective Tony Gentry, who handled that agency's review. "The Lee case was a travesty because everything could have been done right away."
Harvey police declined to discuss cases.
Others also felt their crime-fighting assistance wasn't welcome in Harvey.
The owners of a family business said they became victims of Harvey police in 2005 after seeing two thieves breaking into a car.
Two owners and an employee called 911 and chased down one thief, who fought back as Harvey police arrived. According to court records, officers let the thief go, handcuffed the owners and worker for allegedly battering the thief and marched them down the street as a crowd jeered the men. They were jailed for 34 hours, but battery charges against the three were later dropped.
The men sued, prompting the suburb to pay to settle the case. Tim McKernin, one of the owners who was jailed, said the family soon moved its exhibits business out of town, in part because it could no longer trust the police there.
"It was the most unbelievable thing that you could experience with law enforcement," McKernin said, the anger fresh in his voice years later. "There is no truth in Harvey. ... It is essentially lawless."
The cases involving the Jackson, Lee and McKernin families didn't garner many headlines. But one event did, throwing the spotlight briefly on incompetence in Harvey.
In 2007, county deputies and prosecutors took the highly unusual step of seizing from Harvey evidence that had long gone ignored, which allowed violent criminals to walk freefor years. They discovered that hundreds of evidence kits from rape cases had not been tested. Harvey officials pledged cooperation.
But the Tribune has found that, weeks after the seizure, a teenager reported being raped by an acquaintance, and her evidence wasn't tested for four years, according to court records. Only when it was finally tested was the rapist charged and eventually convicted.
In those four years, the victim recalled, she regularly saw her rapist at the bus terminal in town. She pointed him out to Harvey police, but they told her that nothing could be done, she said.
"Every time I saw him, my heart dropped," she told the Tribune. "It got to me, seeing that he was out walking freely and nothing was done."
In 2008, another teenage girl reported that a stranger abducted and raped her in an abandoned home near her school. She still remembers the man's distinctive four-colored, horizontal-striped shirt. She said she would have eagerly told police, who could have scoured the area, but she and her mother sat at the hospital for more than six hours waiting to talk to an officer who never showed up.
Only five days later, after the mother complained, did Harvey police take their statements, the mother said. They did send the teen's evidence for testing, but nearly six years later no one has been arrested.
The teen started to cry as she spoke of what she has lost since then: her senior year of high school, prom, emotional bonds with family and friends. She blames not just the rapist but also police treating her like a "nuisance."
"I just feel like I could have been so much further in life right now. Because of this situation, because of what they did, I feel just so held back," she said, her voice cracking.
Both young women are part of a broader pending lawsuit brought by alleged rape victims against Harvey. The suit was filed by attorney Yao Dinizulu, who said it could affect more than 700 victims from cases dating to 1997. The lawsuit is among scores filed by victims and suspects over the years, many of which Harvey has settled.
Records provided by Harvey show that the payments for verdicts, settlements and legal fees since 2006 involving improper policing approach $7 million. Only some of the cases include allegations of shoddy police work because, lawyers say, the law makes it hard for victims of crime to sue police departments for doing little to solve crimes.
Eaves, Harvey's acting chief, said in a statement that his department has made changes since the audit and does all it can to solve cases. He said sometimes there's not enough evidence to persuade prosecutors to charge someone, but detectives "continually strive to bring closure to each case."
"The department will continue to provide victims of crimes with thorough investigations," he said.
But the Lees said they've given up on Harvey solving their son's killing.
Marsha Lee recalls making phone calls, leaving voice mails, sending letters and making impromptu office visits across the area to try to interest county, state or federal authorities in the case. One pleading phone call — she's not sure to whom — finally did the trick, and state police agreed to take a look.
That's when Gentry began working the case. He recalled that there was such distrust of Harvey's police force that the state agency tried to redo every step before going to Harvey to get copies of the case file. Even then, Harvey did not provide everything. The detective found out about a DVD that Harvey had sent to prosecutors with an interview of a key witness at the scene who identified a suspect.
Gentry said his agency was close to making an arrest before he retired in 2011. But in the years since, no arrest has come. Marsha Lee said another state police agent has promised to keep working the case. State police said they've interviewed a "person of interest" and are trying to schedule more interviews.
Thomas Lee said he's skeptical that anyone will do anything. He's getting ready to sell Tommy's bullet-pocked 1996 Oldsmobile, its sentimental value waning.
For now, there is no justice for their son, a former high school football player from Blue Island who was taking classes to become a barber.
Instead the divorced couple are left with manila folders documenting all they tried to do to solve what they've been told was a botched robbery as their son was passing through Harvey.
In the folders is the only police report the parents say they ever got in the case, from Posen police. The 11 sentences in that report note that their son was shot in the abdomen in Harvey, passed out after his car crossed into Posen and ended up at a gas station. Harvey refused to give the parents copies of any of its records, saying the city doesn't have to because it's an ongoing investigation.
Also in the parents' folders are receipts for $1,600 spent on two billboards advertising a reward for tips in the case. The Lees aren't sure what Harvey did with the tips they passed along to police.
And there's the letter that Marsha Lee wrote documenting the berating she said she received from a Harvey commander when she asked about her son's case.
She had planned to send it to the Harvey City Council but never did. She doubts anyone would care.
February 10, 2014
Lack of state regulation means towns monitor their own officers — and the south suburb’s troubled force shows the flaw in that policy
By Joe Mahr, Matthew Walberg and Joseph Ryan
On a patch of land near the Tri-State Tollway, trees were bulldozed so trucks could pile mounds of waste up to 22 feet high.
Within months, the brush and meadow gave way to dirt piles mixed with oil, broken bricks, asphalt, plastic tubes and concrete with protruding metal bars — all a block away from a strip of homes.
The state deemed the dump illegal. The landowner who let it happen was a Harvey police officer.
The same officer had already been found by a federal jury to have shot a teen in the back without cause and lied to cover it up.
Neither case led the state to yank the officer's gun and badge.
This is Illinois, where the state-imposed ethical standards for a cosmetologist are far higher than those for a cop.
A Tribune investigation found that police departments are largely left to police their own in what can be a Wild West of ethical lapses — unlike the high standards of some other states, or even the higher standards Illinois imposes on other professions. And that reality allows Illinois officers with questionable pasts to remain in what is supposed to be among the most trusted professions.
There are stories across the Chicago area of sketchy officers who somehow kept their police powers. But perhaps the clearest view of the breakdown of oversight — and its effects — can be seen in Harvey.
The Tribune reported Sunday on the south suburb becoming arguably the most lawless place in the area, with chronically high violent crime rates and few arrests, and about the people who suffer as a result.
In the latest investigation, the newspaper has found that state law allowed the department to keep officers whose work records are full of allegations of wrongdoing — incidents that could have gotten them disciplined by the state if they were accountants, physical therapists or dental hygienists.
In one example, a special state panel gave a bravery award to a Harvey officer two months after he was accused of slamming a pregnant teen to the ground so severely that she miscarried. A Cook County juvenile judge later found that the officer's explanation of what happened with the teen was not credible, according to court records. That didn't trigger a state review.
As for the officer who shot the teen and allowed the dump, he rose to become a veteran detective in Harvey, entrusted with investigating some of the worst crimes in one of the area's most violent communities. His bosses later disciplined him for mishandling cases, but he kept his badge.
Overseeing the detective at one point was a commander previously fired for misconduct, then rehired, only to be pushed out again after a judge forced him to reveal tattoos that suggested ties to a violent gang.
Replacing that commander was another cop who had been fired for misconduct, then rehired, then written up for sleeping in his patrol car, as well as for racing around town at double the speed limit without justification, records show.
In charge of them was a chief who once testified that he wasn't sure whether he drove home drunk from bowling one night but did remember that he was detained that night and then a fellow chief intervened to get him home with no charges.
Above them all was a mayor who used his clout to become a certified police officer. The state has allowed him to carry a gun and a badge even after he repeatedly invoked his right to remain silent when questioned about his alleged role in helping to arm a killer.
All of the allegations are contained in public records. Many are included in sworn statements.
But none of those allegations of misconduct can be considered by the state officials who can restrict police powers.
Some states employ hearing officers to separately investigate allegations of serious misconduct against police officers. Those regulators can kick officers out of the profession for acts determined to be highly immoral, regardless of whether criminal charges were filed or their local departments took action.
That's how Arizona's licensing body permanently removed an officer from policing for twice showing up to work drunk. And it's how a Missouri officer was put on probation after falsifying time cards at a side job.
Illinois has similar standards for other professions. Anyone from accountants to veterinarians can be sanctioned for noncriminal activity that involves "dishonorable, unethical or unprofessional conduct of a character likely to deceive, defraud, or harm the public." Some professions go even further — from barbers to dietitians — by simply requiring "moral character."
That wide latitude extends to actions outside the workplace. It's why recent state filings show a Bolingbrook cosmetologist lost her license for defaulting on student loans, and a Villa Park security guard's professional license was suspended for being a month behind on child support.
If that security guard had become a certified police officer, it wouldn't have mattered if he was a month behind on child support — or far longer.
As for police officers, Illinois regulators can ban them from policing only if they're convicted of felonies or certain serious misdemeanors, or if they are proven to have lied under oath in a homicide case.
Other allegations don't count. Those include allegations faced by Harvey's department leaders, who in the past decade have been accused in court records of condoning bribe-taking, being gang members, brutalizing prisoners and trumping up cases. And those allegations came just from other Harvey officers.
That list doesn't count the litany of allegations from others — in scores of court cases and police reports across the area — that range from officers beating girlfriends to faking time cards at side jobs.
Harvey leaders have dismissed the vast majority of allegations as frivolous, and even critics of the department acknowledge that its ranks include good officers trying to do the right thing in tough conditions.
Yet in the past decade, the city has agreed to pay $1 million to settle a second case of a teen shot in the back. And $800,000 was set aside to deal with a lawsuit accusing officers of stopping EMTs from treating a dying teenage stabbing victim.
Harvey anticipates that it might spend $900,000 more to cover the lawsuit involving the pregnant 17-year-old who miscarried.
Kwamesha Sharp told the Tribune she was talking to a woman near a crime scene two years ago when Officer Richard Jones got angry that they didn't "shut up" and said the teen was under arrest. According to her lawsuit, he threw her to the ground, rolled her on her back and rammed his knee into her stomach, then later turned away an ambulance sent for her.
Sharp's lawsuit alleged that Jones had been told the girl was pregnant but that he said he didn't care.
Jones did not respond to the Tribune's questions. In court records, Jones said he arrested the teen for threatening him and kicking him in the legs and groin. The judge dismissed criminal charges against the teen last year after finding the officer wasn't credible, according to records.
That finding by the judge didn't trigger any state review of Jones' actions that day, just like the allegations in her lawsuit hadn't a year earlier. But, in between, the state did take an interest in Jones for a 2011 incident in which records say he shot a gunman threatening customers in a bar. A special committee that included officials from the state police, Chicago police and state training and standards board gave Jones one of 71 statewide bravery awards.
One national expert, St. Louis University law professor Roger Goldman, called Illinois' system of overseeing officers "terribly inadequate."
A national association of police regulators recommends that states be able to punish officers for acts of dishonesty or showing intentional or reckless disregard for others' rights — even if the conduct didn't lead to a criminal conviction.
Police unions have long been uneasy about heavy state oversight, saying good cops, by the nature of their jobs, face trumped-up complaints. But the head of Illinois' largest police union agrees that more should be done here.
Ted Street, president of the Illinois State Lodge of Fraternal Order of Police, has for years served on the state training and standards board. He said the board should have the power and staffing needed to investigate officers for extreme misconduct, even if that misconduct didn't lead to a conviction.
"There should be no compromise to having the best of the best," he said.
As it is, removing officers depends on the criminal justice system, which critics say is fraught with heavy caseloads and conflicts of interest that can allow suspect cops to escape convictions.
Early in Manual Escalante Sr.'s career, the Harvey officer shot a teenager and claimed the teen was pointing a gun. Cook County prosecutors deemed the 1997 shooting justified, even though some officers gave statements to investigators that raised questions about whether Escalante planted the gun. Then, in the ensuing criminal case against the recovering teen, prosecutors took an unusual tack and didn't call Escalante to testify, according to court records. The teen was found not guilty.
Records would suggest that prosecutors had good reason to keep Escalante off the witness stand.
The teen later sued Harvey, and in a civil case a federal jury ordered Escalante to pay $250,000 in punitive damages.
Three appellate court judges reviewed the civil case in 2007 and noted "major cracks in Escalante's version" — saying the unarmed teen "was framed" and calling it "a rather explosive case."
Escalante's own lawyers acknowledged in court records in 2002 that he could have been charged with filing a false police report, another felony.
Escalante was not charged with a crime.
As his shooting case was winding its way through federal court, state officials said in court records that they caught Escalante leasing the vacant field he owned to people who dumped 174,000 cubic yards of waste-mixed soil there without a permit, according to records.
The amount of illegally dumped waste far exceeded the threshold for someone to be charged with a felony under state law. Either the state's attorney or attorney general can prosecute such cases. But the law also allows either to sue illegal dumpers in civil court, which has a lower burden of proof, and that's what the attorney general's office did.
The attorney general's office told the Tribune that it didn't pursue the felony case because there wasn't sufficient evidence that Escalante knew illegal dumping was going on there, a quarter-mile from his home. In the civil case, Escalante agreed to a settlement in 2011 that stated he was among those who "caused and allowed" the dumping.
He paid a $2,000 fine, or 10 percent of what records said he collected by leasing the land to the dumpers.
By then he had risen through the ranks of Harvey police to become a senior investigator. Harvey's chief later testified in an unrelated case that he discovered Escalante was mishandling cases and suspended him for 30 days.
Escalante declined to discuss his past with the Tribune.
Also keeping their certification were two high-ranking Harvey officers who the Tribune found last year were getting paid for working off-duty security shifts at area school districts while clocked in as city police officers. Timecards showed that one, then-Cmdr. Roy Wells, had overlaps of at least a half-hour for 92 days between 2008 and 2013, equaling an extra five weeks of pay.
Wells told the Tribune that he did nothing wrong and that his timecard entries were likely mistakes. Timecard inconsistencies have fueled indictments of police officers elsewhere, from Louisiana to Indiana.
Harvey police said they told Cook County prosecutors about the allegations in April. Nine months later, prosecutors did not respond to questions about what they've done. Harvey officials declined to comment. Wells' attorney, in a letter, said an investigator in the prosecutor's office told him the case was closed with no charges.
Wells used his attorney's letter to get a new job as a deputy chief in Robbins, another department struggling with scandals.
Robbins' chief, Mitchell Davis, said he hired Wells after calling that investigator in the prosecutor's office. Davis said the investigator wouldn't say for sure the case was closed, but the chief said he believed prosecutors would have given him "a head's up" if "there was something I really needed to know."
Wells, two weeks into his new job, told the Tribune "we should leave the past in the past."
"I moved on, and right now my career is going great," he said.
Without certain criminal convictions or an unprecedented finding that someone lied in a murder trial, the only power to remove such officers from policing lies with those who run local departments. And in Harvey, according to court testimony, the department has been run by a hands-on mayor who is also a certified police officer and who has faced his own misconduct allegations.
Mayor Eric Kellogg, once he was elected in 2003, got his city to OK his training to become a police officer.
The law didn't allow Kellogg to work for his own department. So he was named a part-time officer at nearby Dixmoor at a time when it was run by a political ally of Kellogg's. And Dixmoor has never initiated an internal investigation of Officer Kellogg, let alone sought to remove him from its police roster.
That's despite an allegation that Kellogg, as mayor, ordered a gun confiscated by Harvey police to be returned to a family friend. That family friend, a convicted felon, was found guilty of killing another man six months later in nearby South Holland.
Prosecutors convicted the Harvey officer who actually returned the gun, and that officer lost his state certification. The officer, however, testified that he did it on Kellogg's orders.
Prosecutors never charged Kellogg. The mayor initially denied any involvement and has since refused to answer questions about the incident in court proceedings, citing a constitutional right to avoid saying anything that might incriminate him. Police officers can be compelled to answer such a question in an administrative proceeding, but Dixmoor never initiated one.
Nor did Kellogg face an internal investigation in Dixmoor after a man alleged that Kellogg ordered the man's false arrest in Harvey as payback for stealing the mayor's cocaine. The mayor said the allegation was fiction — and he was never charged. But Harvey agreed to pay $1.4 million to settle the man's civil lawsuit, after spending $500,000 to defend the city and Kellogg, saying settlement was the most cost-efficient move for taxpayers.
Kellogg did not respond to the Tribune's questions about his case.
Kellogg's administration has used its discretion to get rid of or keep cops with politicalties to the mayor who faced a host of allegations.
The department suspended one commander, Merritt Gentry, after a judge forced Gentry to reveal a tattoo in court strikingly similar to one used by a street gang. That was after Gentry had admitted to lying in a way that made it harder to prosecute a member of that particular gang for shooting another Harvey police officer.
But the mayor did nothing to strip police powers given by Harvey to Wallace "Mustapha" Farrakhan after the Sun-Times last year reported that Farrakhan hadn't worked a police shift in four years, and instead used a Harvey-issued police car to provide unofficial motorcades for his father, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The Tribune has since found that Wallace Farrakhan registered to vote in the 2007 race in Harvey, at the address of the home owned by the mayor's brother, despite owning a home with his wife for two decades in Crete.
And the mayor allowed back in another political supporter, Darnell Keel, even though Keel faced multiple rounds of serious allegations.
Keel, fired by Harvey's previous mayor, was put in charge of patrol officers by Kellogg. Within months of the rehiring, an internal affairs commander in Harvey complained in a memo that Keel had committed "illegal activity," including beating suspects, trumping up a case and telling officers it was OK to take bribes from suspects.
It took three more years — and several more scandals — for Harvey to put Keel on leave. He was still paid his salary — and even given $7,000 to settle a separate legal claim against Harvey — until the suburb placed him back on the force as a patrol officer, where records show he remains even after his teenage son crashed Keel's department-issued vehicle.
Keel did not respond to a letter from the Tribune.
The mayor declined to discuss specific cases. Acting Chief Denard Eaves said the department takes discipline seriously and has undertaken "a complete overhaul of the police testing process that has recruited the best and the brightest officers."
Overseeing that hiring is the mayor's brother, a retired plumber. Records show he got the full-time job as personnel officer, with full police powers, even though he didn't pass a civil service hiring test until four years into the job.
His state certification has never been in jeopardy. Neither has Keel's.
Escalante lost his certification, but only because he left the profession after a hip injury, according to records. Walking with a cane recently, the 49-year-old told the Tribune that he may try to rejoin the profession if his health improves.
"I'll see how I come out of this," he said.
If he does, as far as the state is concerned, he can be hired by any department in Illinois.
Tribune reporter Steve Schmadeke contributed.
February 11, 2014
By Joseph Ryan, Joe Mahr and Matthew Walberg
The glossy campaign fliers arrived in time to help Harvey's besieged mayor.
Eric Kellogg's police department was mired in scandal, reports of violent crime were rising and challengers were calling him corrupt.
But the fliers showed a different picture: Kellogg smiling with officers and shoveling dirt at groundbreaking ceremonies, as well as skewed statistics declaring that Harvey was on the mend.
The rescue came from an odd backer, the Tribune has learned: an undercover FBIagent.
The agent had been placed in a local strip club to investigate corruption. And for reasons federal officials won't discuss, records show the agent formed a special politicalcommittee and primed it with about $140,000. The committee then flooded the crucial 2007 mayoral race with money that helped Kellogg to victory, even as federal agents were probing the mayor's police department.
The FBI's involvement — uncovered in this Tribune investigation — set the stage for a series of actions by state and federal agencies that preserved the status quo and masked problems in Harvey.
The Tribune documented earlier this week how Harvey has the stark combination of high violent crime and few arrests — with police officers facing a smorgasbord of allegations that often go unchecked.
The latest investigation has found that outside agencies ignored and enabled Harvey's leaders in ways that may have made things worse. The revelations are based on a review of numerous civil and criminal court cases as well as local, state and federal records.
After the undercover federal agent aided Kellogg's campaign, another powerful federal agency came in to document systemic problems in his police department — only to leave without forcing reforms.
And all along, state officials have neglected to take key steps to stop the city and Kellogg from repeatedly breaking disclosure laws, helping the mayor maintain power with money from secret backers while also obscuring the city's dire financial state.
Residents have been left with a town where the violent crime rate is higher than it was during Kellogg's first full year in office a decade ago. And, based on the records that the Tribune has seen, the suburb appears hard-pressed to improve crime-fighting. It is nearly insolvent, owing millions of dollars that it has no clear way to pay back after insider dealshelped drain city accounts.
Kellogg gained a following in Harvey as a football coach who spoke of beating the odds in the hardscrabble town, coming from a poor, large family to attend college and go into public office.
Starting at the Harvey Park District, he rose through the ranks before running for mayor, making impassioned speeches denouncing his hometown's crime, corruption and racism. By 2003 he had unseated the incumbent, riding a groundswell of calls for reform.
But by the end of his first term, opponents said he was becoming part of the problem.
Kellogg, who came to office promising "A New Harvey Rising," surrounded himself with relatives. He put his brother, a full-time plumber, in charge of a new police initiative. He named his sister as his main assistant, and for city attorney he chose his newly licensed niece. He said the hires saved the town money.
Kellogg also brought back police officers who supported his campaign after being cast out by the previous administration over allegations of wrongdoing. He said the officers had been wrongly maligned.
Some of those police hires eventually came under fire again, this time in lawsuits that accused them of having gang ties, brutalizing citizens and fumbling cases.
As his first term was coming to a close, Kellogg was hit with headlines that said his police didn't solve any homicides in 2005, and the numbers hadn't improved much in 2006. City Council members revolted, asking in vain for state police to audit the local force.
Soon state and county investigators marched into police headquarters and seized records and evidence related to dozens of unsolved crimes. By then, Harvey's violent crime rate had jumped 30 percent over Kellogg's first full year in office.
Amid all that, Kellogg asked voters for a second term.
Five challengers vied to defeat him at the polls, but their efforts were countered by a new man in town.
As Election Day approached in spring 2007, a new political committee came to life: The Harvey Good Government Group 2007.
State records show the committee was created by a man named Carlos Vargas, using an address that traced to a fifth-floor condo overlooking the relatively safe suburb of Oak Lawn. Vargas' occupation is listed on state records as "construction consultant," and he is reported as the source for $141,300 lent to the committee.
Court records would later reveal that Vargas was an undercover FBI agent with about a dozen assignments under his belt, working national security, public corruption and organized crime cases — though few knew that at the time. Vargas isn't the agent's real name.
His cover: the new manager helping remodel the Skybox strip club on Halsted Street. The club was owned by Michael Wellek, who became an FBI informant at some point after IRS agents seized $12 million in cash from a warehouse he controlled in 2003, according to court records.
The Vargas-tied committee reported about $130,000 in spending on election-related activities like printing, newspaper ads, cable TV time, get-out-the-vote efforts and polling. Of the total, the committee reported spending $17,000 on postage and mailing.
Federal authorities declined to tell the Tribune where the money came from, although they said it wasn't government money.
The Tribune found three fliers from the mayoral campaign that supported Kellogg and bear the name of the Vargas-tied committee: "Paid for by Harvey Good Government Group 2007."
The fliers contain material that appears to mirror Kellogg's campaign, including a roster of his good deeds and photographs from city events. One touted Kellogg's economic development initiatives, though his signature achievement — redeveloping the long-shut Dixie Square Mall — was floundering. Another said the mayor balanced the budget, though the records would later show multimillion-dollar deficits.
And another flier said the mayor helped reduce crime, though statistics showed violent crime at its highest level since he first took office.
The committee's spending amounted to far more than what Kellogg's challengers reported spending, combined, and twice as much as Kellogg's campaign reported spending.
"If I had that kind of money, I would have had a shot," said challenger Thomas Dantzler, a former alderman.
Kellogg emerged from the six-person race with a winning 43 percent of the vote.
The Tribune asked the FBI and the U.S. attorney's office to explain their actions in the 2007 race. Both instead issued a joint statement saying, in part, that "undercover operations are a critical tool in rooting out public corruption."
Vargas' undercover work at the club was one part of a multiphase, multiyear investigation of politicians and police officers, according to FBI testimony in a later drug trial.
It is not unusual for undercover federal agents to make campaign contributions or to set up fake businesses that do real business as part of sting operations. The FBI and the U.S. attorney's office, in their statement, said they followed all protocols. But the FBI has so far refused to release records in the case that could illuminate who approved the campaign efforts and why.
Vargas' role as an undercover agent at the Skybox became public the year after Kellogg was re-elected, after the agent concluded his work luring local officers to act as security on fake drug deals. Fifteen officers were charged, including Harvey cops, among them Archie Stallworth.
Stallworth was caught telling Vargas that Harvey was a great place for large drug transactions because "if anything goin' down, we gonna know about it." Stallworth, since convicted, maintains he was only hoping to take down Vargas the drug dealer.
Stallworth was close to Kellogg. At Stallworth's 2009 trial, an FBI agent said investigators asked Stallworth to cooperate against Kellogg. He later told the Tribune he declined.
Trial evidence also showed that a year after the election, Vargas boasted to Stallworth about working with city officials to land a coveted casino license for the suburb.
"The mayor knows, the aldermen are in," Vargas said, according to a transcript of a recorded conversation. "It's gonna be huge."
Harvey didn't get the license from the state — Des Plaines did.
Kellogg declined to be interviewed or answer questions about the 2007 election and Vargas' role in it.
Feds walk away
After Kellogg's re-election, the headlines on Harvey's problem Police Department prompted a visit from the FBI's sister agency: the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
The division has immense power through the federal courts to demand that problem departments shape up, which it has done across the country, including forcing departments in Highland Park and Mount Prospect in 2000 to ensure that they weren't unfairly targeting minorities for traffic tickets. More recently, the division forced police in Missoula, Mont., to ensure that they properly handled rape investigations.
But the division didn't look at Harvey's notoriously shoddy rape investigations, instead focusing on police brutality. It spent three years — from December 2008 to January 2012 — reviewing Harvey's haphazardly kept records and noted "serious concerns" that officers routinely roughed up residents. It declared the department "devoid of supervisory oversight and accountability."
But Justice officials did nothing to force Harvey to change.
Instead, the town was given "recommendations," such as rewriting its policies and procedures. Harvey officials said at the time that they would make the changes.
Justice Department officials declined to explain their decision to the Tribune. Nebraska criminologist Sam Walker, a national expert on police accountability who once served as a consultant to the civil rights division, said he was surprised by the decision. He said federal officials had plenty of evidence of widespread problems in Harvey to push for the appointment of an outside monitor.
"It's a little surprising given how utterly dysfunctional the department appears," Walker said.
At the same time that Justice officials did not force reform, state officials were failing to enforce a key law that would have exposed how the city's finances had started to spiral out of control.
Illinois law requires cities and villages to hire licensed auditors to go through their books and release an annual report that sheds light on their financial state. It's meant to ensure public finances are readily known and aboveboard.
Harvey stopped producing the audits in Kellogg's second term, saying they were too expensive.
During the information blackout, the Tribune has found through records, the city borrowed millions while failing to set aside millions more for legally required public safety pension payments.
Harvey also obtained water from the city of Chicago on credit, sold it to residents and other suburbs, then stiffed Chicago on multimillion-dollar bills, according to court records.
The suburb, meanwhile, was underfunding police, to the point that detectives were forced for years to juggle three-digit caseloads without regular Internet access. Yet all the while, officials let loose on development gambles, including an insider deal that went bust.
The depths of the downward spiral shouldn't have been secret. By law, the state comptroller is supposed to force towns to file the audits Harvey was refusing to compile. The comptroller can even hire an auditing firm to go to a town, scour the books and then charge the town for the work.
But the state comptroller didn't do that in Harvey, instead routinely asking the city, to no avail, to comply with the law.
So when voters turned to another heated mayoral race in 2011, they had little basis to judge Kellogg's assurances that city finances were OK.
Kicking off that re-election bid, the two-term mayor gathered his supporters in a storefront campaign office and boasted that new business was moving in and policing had improved. He portrayed himself as the city's defender against outside forces.
"I will fight, and I need you to fight with me," Kellogg said to cheers, amid a backdrop of campaign signs that urged: "Keep The New Harvey Rising."
But the mayor was denying residents even more information: who was funding his campaign.
In previous years, Kellogg's campaign committee filed disclosure reports that showed his money coming from strip club interests, liquor stores, city contractors and employees, among others. In typical races, critics can point to a candidate's list of contributors to question whom the politician is really fighting for.
But in this race, the mayor's committee simply stopped filing the reports — obscuring where his campaign money was coming from or going toward, as well as how much he was spending.
The scope of the violation is rare for a sitting mayor, say those familiar with the law.
"This destroys people's faith in the political system," said Kent Redfield, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Springfield who helped craft the state's campaign finance laws.
Yet the State Board of Elections did nothing to force Kellogg to comply before the election.
He faced four challengers and won with 40 percent of the vote.
More than two years later, Kellogg continued to flout state disclosure laws, and state agencies continued to decline to use their full authority.
On the campaign end, the State Board of Elections levied a $5,000 fine against Kellogg's committee, though the board could have levied many more fines for about a dozen missing reports. The fine has not been paid.
The board has the power to force a committee to perform an audit and hand over the records to the state in some cases. It hasn't done that in Kellogg's case.
Kellogg has sought to distance himself from the issue, saying through a spokesman that he only recently became aware that Citizens to Elect Eric J. Kellogg — of which he is chairman — did not reveal its fundraising over the last three years. The committee's treasurer is a Kellogg relative. The spokesman said the mayor has "directed the committee" to contact the state.
Election board Director Rupert Borgsmiller said the agency is hamstrung by a statute that requires months of notices and hearings before fines are levied. It is a process easily derailed when certified letters from the board go unaccepted, which has happened with Kellogg's committee.
Borgsmiller conceded that the agency had not tried to hand-deliver the notices to the mayor to speed up the process but said the agency planned to do so in the near future.
"We can't do everything in a timely fashion — we try," Borgsmiller said.
Unpaid fines could theoretically keep Kellogg off next year's ballot, but under the law, he may be able to counter such a move by simply appealing the fines.
As for city finances, years ticked by without a licensed firm scrubbing Harvey's books.
In that time, the city took a major development gamble, spending at least $10 million to fix up a privately owned hotel next to a strip club at the town's edge. The Tribune previously reported how the city comptroller was also working for the developer at the time and how the city failed to keep close tabs on how taxpayer money was spent.
The hotel is now half-gutted, languishing in foreclosure and leaving city taxpayers with little to show for the investment.
That revelation hasn't prodded the comptroller's office to use its power to forcibly audit Harvey's books. The state comptroller did start tallying fines against the city last year, which so far total more than $20,000. Harvey officials are appealing the fines, saying they are a "financial burden."
A spokesman for Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka declined to discuss Harvey's case, other than to say the department has "forwarded documents to legal authorities for review."
In recent months, the city moved to play catch-up with its filing requirements, submitting four years worth of broad financial reports that were not vetted by auditors, and one 5-year-old report that was. The city is still short audited reports for the last four fiscal years.
Experts say it remains impossible to know the true depth of the city's financial problems.
From reviewing what is available, one public finance expert at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Rebecca Hendrick, said: "I wonder how they are paying their bills."
Coupled with other issues the Tribune discovered, the documents underscore how years of challenges have gathered into a financial avalanche:
•The city spent at least $12 million more than it took in from taxes and fees over four years, with no clear explanation for how the shortfalls were covered.
•There is little to no money in savings, while long-term debt has ballooned to about $50 million, most of it coming in Kellogg's second term.
•The state says Harvey stopped paying into its police and fire pension funds, paying just $140 toward $7.3 million owed over a three-year period. The back payments owed have reached about $10 million.
•The running tab that Chicago says Harvey owes for water has reached $18 million, about the same amount as the suburb takes in from taxes and fees over an entire year.
The city typically spends about $5.5 million a year on police, a figure that has not kept pace with inflation in recent years.
Still, the range of the city's financial troubles was glossed over during an annual budget hearing this summer.
In a boardroom at Harvey's aging City Hall, Kellogg sat under an enlarged, gold-hued city seal, against a wood-paneled wall. He spoke optimistically about the city's financial future, pointing to a budget that called for increased police spending, partly based on shaky new taxes and fees.
The meeting didn't directly address how the city will deal with the millions owed to Chicago for water, the pension funds or debt payments on the botched hotel development.
Residents were left to judge the city's financial state on the word from officials, with Kellogg assuring them: "I think we are in a great position."
February 19, 2014
Durbin, Kirk, Kelly target federal role in politics, police issues
By Joseph Ryan and Joe Mahr
Federal lawmakers on Tuesday called for a review of Justice Department actions — including measures that helped re-elect a controversial mayor — in a suburb the Tribune recently showed stood out for its high crime and subpar policing.
The lawmakers also pressed for more details on what federal prosecutors are doing to help reduce a violent crime rate in Harvey that continually tops those of hundreds of suburbs in the Chicago area.
In a letter sent Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk and U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to review actions by two wings of the department that were highlighted by the Tribune.
And in a separate letter Tuesday, Kelly joined U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin in asking the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago to explain its actions.
The Tribune reported that records show an undercover FBI operation aided the re-election of Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg in 2007. Then, a civil rights investigation found problems in the Police Department in 2012, but Justice officials did not use their full authority to force reform.
“Harvey’s citizens — like all citizens — must be confident in the honesty and trustworthiness of their government officials and law enforcement,” said the letter by Kirk, Illinois’ Republican senator, and Kelly, a Democrat whose district includes Harvey.
The letters came days after Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart began pushing for authority to intervene in troubled suburbs such as Harvey. Citing the Tribune findings, Dart said more must be done to demand accountability from the suburb’s leaders.
That proposal is awaiting consideration by the County Board.
At the federal level, Kelly told the Tribune on Tuesday that the problems in Harvey need a deeper investigation.
“There are many, many good people in Harvey,” Kelly said. “They deserve to feel confident in their government and their police force, and they deserve good government.”
The lawmakers said their questions were prompted by a three-part Tribune series, published this month, that showed how Harvey residents face a stark combination of a high violent crime rate and few arrests, unmatched even in Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhoods.
The series found botched casework in a Police Department riddled with officers who have controversial pasts. It also showed how state and federal officials ignored and enabled Harvey’s leaders in ways that may have worsened the plight of residents.
Regarding the undercover FBI operation, the Tribune revealed records that show an agent, using the alias Carlos Vargas, formed a political committee called The Harvey Good Government Group 2007. The committee reported about $140,000 coming from Vargas, with the money being spent on election-related activities.
The Tribune found several fliers from the election that promoted Kellogg and show they were paid for by the political committee.
The FBI agent was at the time undercover as a manager of a strip club in Harvey, records show. His role at the club ended after he lured local officers to act as security on fake drug deals. Fifteen officers were charged, including some from Harvey, one of whom was close to Kellogg.
The FBI later acknowledged it asked that Harvey officer to cooperate against Kellogg, but the officer told the Tribune he declined.
Officials from the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office have declined to address the Tribune’s questions about the political committee, other than to say that government money was not used and that they followed all the rules for such investigations.
Federal lawmakers want to know more.
Kirk and Kelly asked the Justice Department’s inspector general to take a closer look, saying: “The use of federal resources to influence elections in communities where criminal investigations are ongoing warrants special scrutiny.”
Kelly and Durbin — Illinois’ Democratic senator who holds the second-highest post in the Senate — asked U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon to “explain the law enforcement purpose” of the political committee, who approved it and who supplied the money.
The Democrats also asked Fardon to detail what his office is doing to combat crime in Harvey, and whether the office has assessed any improvements there after the three-year civil rights investigation found “serious deficiencies” in police operations. Their letter said they hoped more federal resources would be used to fight crime across the Chicago area, including in Harvey. “We urge you to use the resources available to bring some relief from violent crime to the citizens of Harvey,” the letter said, “and to ensure that the actions of federal law enforcement do not contribute to the challenges facing Harvey.”
The U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago declined to comment.
Kellogg and his police chief have argued that crime has lessened, the department has made reforms and the suburb is trying to weather difficult financial times. The mayor has declined to answer questions about the 2007 election and the FBI
agent’s committee’s role in it. His office did not respond to requests for comment on the letters.
Tribune reporter Matthew Walberg contributed.
March 21, 2014
$88,000 expended on Twitter account with fake followers
By Joseph Ryan, Joe Mahr and Matthew Walberg
Even as Harvey struggles to pay its bills and fund public safety, the south suburb has engaged in questionable uses of tax dollars — including a lucrative deal tied to the mayor's son to run Facebook and Twitter accounts, the Tribune has learned.
That firm has been compensated $88,000 so far for work that one expert said wasn't worth a tenth of what the city paid. The work showed one successful metric: a Twitter following that recently skyrocketed from two dozen to nearly 1,200 people. But that appears based on fake accounts, experts said.
Then there are the city aldermen's five-figure expense accounts, which the Tribune found are used at times to pay relatives, including a company given $325 an hour to plow snow. There's also a financial consulting deal for a neighboring former mayor convicted of tax fraud.
Amid those spending revelations, the Tribune has learned that federal investigators are probing one of the city's biggest insider deals — a botched $10 million hotel development that the newspaper exposed eight months ago.
The spending is under scrutiny in the wake of Harvey's comptroller — himself involved in the hotel deal — recently declaring that without major budget changes, "We will not get through to next Christmas."
Last month the Tribune published an investigative series that showed how Harvey's high violent crime and subpar policing had left it arguably the most lawless place in the region, leaving victims fighting for justice. The series showed how outside agencies at all levels of government had done little to intervene despite red flags, including a failure to force the city to complete yearly financial audits, as state law requires.
The latest findings illustrate how a suburb can spend far beyond its means in a state that does comparatively little to ensure cities and villages protect taxpayer money.
Harvey residents already face a relatively high effective property tax rate, according to one study, with taxes likely to go only higher. That frustrates some residents and business owners, such as Christopher Clark, who questioned why the state didn't catch the problems.
"If we had oversight, we wouldn't even have to worry about a lot of this stuff," said Clark, a Harvey lawyer. "We deserve much better."
Harvey officials have long stressed the need to spark development in a place decimated by industrial decline and left with high poverty and swaths of abandoned homes. An out-of-state firm claimed last year that it had a solution: tapping into the world of Internet social media.
The proposal from Lola Grand pitched social media's "return on investment" as "generally 2 to 3,000 percent," adding: "You can only imagine how greatly the City of Harvey will benefit."
For an $8,000 "set up" fee, Lola Grand said it could provide "a new website, new Facebook, Twitter accounts, and 2 blogs." The firm then said it would bill monthly for "maintenance" and "web content."
Left out of the proposal was a mention of who ran the firm. Records separately obtained by the Tribune show that the mayor's namesake son — Eric Kellogg II — filed paperwork to incorporate it in New York in 2009, registered its website to a Brooklyn apartment and is listed on LinkedIn as its managing director.
The Tribune found sparse evidence that the proposal's benchmarks had been met, including:
•No new website. A review of Internet archives shows the city hasn't redesigned its website, cityofharvey.org, in at least seven years. This week, for days, error codes crowded out much of the text.
•A blog with just two posts. One post announced the blog in October and the other, a day later, reminded residents of a fall festival.
•A YouTube channel with four videos. All prominently feature the mayor. All are more than 5 months old.
•Relatively infrequent posts on Facebook or Twitter. Accounts for each were started in May, but gaps between posts averaged three to four days.
As of last month, the Twitter feed had just 25 followers seeking updates to its posts. After the Tribune asked Harvey about Lola Grand, that number jumped to nearly 1,200. Social media experts said the new followers had telltale signs of being fake accounts bought from online brokers, who sell bulk sets of "followers" to wannabe celebrities, politicians or entrepreneurs trying to appear popular.
For example, one of Harvey's new Twitter followers was Lieni Alves, who hasn't posted a Tweet in 19 months, and then it was in Portuguese. The account follows more than 1,700 people besides Harvey, including porn actresses, a Christian music company, Brazil's president and a host of people who tweet in Arabic and Turkish.
StatusPeople, a London-based firm, created an oft-cited algorithm to count suspect accounts. That algorithm last week estimated that 88 percent of Harvey's Twitter followers were fakes, a figure called "very unusual" by StatusPeople's founder, Rob Waller.
"Even the large celeb accounts don't have fake numbers anywhere near that high," Waller said in an email.
Lola Grand declined to say how it boosted Twitter followers. It said it designed a websitebut is waiting for Harvey to review it before launching that and the blogs. It said its other social media efforts have directed "hundreds" of residents' requests to Harvey officials. The firm and the mayor's office touted additional behind-the-scenes work, such as "brand development" and "24/7 monitoring of social media channels."
But when the Tribune asked Harvey for internal assessments or reviews of the firm's work, the city produced none. It did provide two images of home pages for a potential new website. Both had the same simple layout but different featured pictures: one of the mayor gazing into the distance and the other of him holding a small child.
Lola Grand offered no records to document its $88,000 in work, except websites already seen by the Tribune and a link to a separate Facebook page just for the mayor, which Lola Grand said was at "full capacity."
Lola Grand justified its fees by saying other firms would charge "far more" for comparable work. But that's not the view of one professor who specializes in social media.
Ohio University professor Karen Riggs reviewed the firm's proposal and online work compiled by the Tribune. She criticized what she considered excessive fees, an abandoned blog, "semiprofessional" YouTube videos and posts to Facebook and Twitter that were sporadic, with little engagement — and a focus on promoting the mayor.
"I'm baffled as to what $8,000 a month — even $8,000 once — could have bought with the results I see here," she said in an email.
The Tribune found other suburbs that post far more often to social media accounts while spending less. Lombard, for example, averages nearly three times as many Twitter and Facebook posts. A village employee spends about 10 percent of her workday on social media and the village website, equating to about $600 a month in salary and benefits, said Village Manager Scott Niehaus.
As for appearances of nepotism, Eric Kellogg II, in a brief interview this week, said the deal was not improper because he manages artists for Lola Grand, not social media. But he declined to name who did the social media work or say how the firm got the deal.
His father, the mayor, also would not say how his son's firm got the deal — adding to more questions of nepotism in his administration. There were also nepotism criticisms at the mayor's former job as a local school superintendent.
Just as Lola Grand was starting its deal, the mayor got a $240,000 payout approved by a school board that included two relatives. As allowed by law, the district then paid the state $144,000 so Kellogg could collect a $113,000 teacher pension at age 57, on top of his $58,000 compensation as mayor.
After the Lola Grand deal was cut, the mayor's administration pushed the City Council to pay the firm's monthly invoices. The payments stopped after one alderman, Shirley Drewenski, questioned the matter at a council meeting late last month.
After the meeting, the Tribune asked the city's two spokespeople about the company. Both are in charge of reaching out to the community and presenting the city in a positive light. Both told the Tribune at the time that they had never heard of Lola Grand.
City Council members control separate pots of public cash to tap at their own discretion, and the Tribune found conflicts of interest there too.
In an unusual arrangement, each of the six aldermen can direct the expenditure of more than $80,000 a year from special expense accounts, all with relatively few rules and little oversight. The Tribune reviewed about three years worth of records that involved spending on a range of items, from gift cards and fruit baskets to huge turkey giveaways and office rent for aldermen.
The Tribune found no indication in the records that aldermen shopped around for the best price and little justification that the spending was for the public good.
In some cases, the Tribune found aldermen using their expense funds to pay relatives as assistants. The accounts for Ald. Michael Bowens have been used to pay nearly $100,000 over about three years to his son's firm to clean up lots, cut grass and plow snow.
"The residents don't seem to mind because they get the job done," Bowens said, defending the arrangement. "They do great work."
The company's brief invoices don't always paint a clear picture of the work done. One billed $325 an hour for 55 hours of work after the 2011 blizzard. The invoice says the company removed "24 inches of snow" by snowplowing throughout the city and shoveling walks to the tune of $17,875.
That invoice didn't specify the type of equipment or amount of salt used, if any.
The biggest insider deal in recent years involves the man at the heart of Harvey's finances: Joseph Letke, long a go-to financial adviser for several south suburbs.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission subpoenaed Harvey in late October, the Tribune has learned, for records that would explain its actions — and the role of Letke's firm — in a development deal that left the city owing millions on bonds for a hotel that is now half-gutted and in foreclosure. An SEC official declined comment.
The Tribune previously reported that the city directed Letke's firm to receive more than $500,000 for consulting on the bonds while Letke was also working with the developer. Letke has told the Tribune he did nothing wrong.
As the appointed city comptroller, he is now making pitches to stem the suburb's spiraling finances.
At a recent, sparsely attended committee meeting in Harvey, Letke told aldermen that the suburb was again on pace to spend millions more than it took in from taxes. That follows years of the suburb reselling Chicago water to residents and other suburbs without paying for it — millions of dollars that Chicago has sued to get back.
To pay off Chicago, Letke floated a plan to borrow even more money, likely at a high interest rate since Harvey's credit rating was last listed in "junk" status. Letke also raised the idea of disbanding the Fire Department and merging it with those of other suburbs, a move that would likely raise property taxes by creating a new taxing district.
At that meeting, Letke held up what he said was the mayor's "financial distress recovery plan," but he would not outline what was in it.
That title stands in stark contrast to the repeated times, as recently as last month, that Kellogg downplayed financial problems.
The plan didn't come up a week later at a full City Council meeting, which took on a business-as-usual tenor. Without delving into the city's dire financial state, the council took a routine vote to approve paying a list of bills.
Lola Grand wasn't on the list this time, but another relatively new firm was: Real Municipal Solutions.
The consulting firm was incorporated about five months ago by former Dixmoor Mayor Donald Luster, who was forced to leave office in 2004 after being convicted of tax and unemployment benefits violations. He told the Tribune he advises Harvey on "revenue enhancement" and "leadership."
His firm billed the city $10,500.
At the meeting, aldermen voted to pay it, along with other bills, without question.
May 27, 2014
Ex-spokeswoman of suburb sends scathing email
By Matthew Walberg and Joseph Ryan
For years Sandra Alvarado was a top aide, spokeswoman and girlfriend to one of the area's most controversial mayors. Then last month she abruptly quit and said Harvey officials ran a "dangerous organization" that routinely ignored illegal acts.
In an about-face for someone who spent a decade defending the suburb in scandal after scandal, Alvarado sent a scathing email to Mayor Eric Kellogg and other top aides in which she implied that she was now speaking with outside investigators.
"Where can individuals that are elected, appointed or hired to service the public, behave lawlessly? ... In the City of Harvey, that's where," Alvarado wrote in the email last month, adding that city officials "are aware of illegal and immoral acts and do absolutely nothing about it."
Alvarado quit as federal, state and county authorities have increased scrutiny of a suburb that a Tribune investigation in February found was arguably the most lawless place in the region. Sammie Young, who oversees community service officers in Harvey, recently told the Tribune that some officials had been "running around scared" amid fears Alvarado was talking with the FBI.
State and Cook County officials have started combing through the town's financial records as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigates borrowing tied to a botched hotel deal that cost taxpayers at least $10 million.
Earlier this year, the Tribune documented how state and federal officials for years failed to use their full authority to force reforms in a town that's paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to insiders as it nears insolvency while employing officers with checkered pasts on a police force swimming in unsolved violent crimes.
The questionable actions by outside agencies included an undercover FBI agent, posing as a strip club manager, who records show stuffed a campaign committee with $140,000 that helped re-elect Kellogg in 2007. The FBI has declined to say why.
Kellogg has declined to specifically address his former spokeswoman's allegations or release any documents related to her resignation, including the email. That's despite the Tribune's requesting the records four weeks ago. Under state law, agencies have two weeks to release records. The Tribune obtained the resignation email elsewhere.
As a member of Kellogg's inner circle, Alvarado has been at the forefront of city dealings since she rose from a Police Department secretary to become the mayor's public relations director and the police chief's top assistant in 2003. Through her attorney, she also acknowledged having a romantic relationship with Kellogg for nine years, through early 2012.
Over the years, Alvarado defended Harvey to the media when questions arose about Kellogg hiring officers with sketchy backgrounds, lawsuits accused the suburb of condoning corruption or brutality, and county officials raided the Police Department to find long-ignored evidence that let killers and rapists roam free.
But April 18, she wrote an email to the mayor and other city officials in which she said, "I must walk away from a dangerous organization. ... I have had enough."
The email offers a critique of the administration in which she said she "endured a relentless assault of slander, pressure and adversity and death threats" while doing her job.
She said Denard Eaves — who has carried the title of acting police chief for six years — is "regularly threatened and belittled by leaders of the organization."
She said the mayor has phone conferences to "threaten and insult" employees.
Eaves referred questions to the man who took over Alvarado's duties, Sean Howard.
Howard, speaking on behalf of the mayor, issued a statement that said the city takes all allegations seriously, does not condone wrongdoing and wishes Alvarado "the best in her future endeavors."
In her email, Alvarado said Young, who has advised the mayor on public safety issues, has been allowed to "openly and brazenly" threaten people.
Young told the Tribune he's never threatened anyone and welcomed an outside investigation in Harvey. He said that in recent years he was often at odds with Alvarado, including an argument the week she quit over whether she or Young would get to move into a certain office. Young said she quit after the mayor sided with him.
Alvarado declined to comment except through her attorney, Patrick Walsh. He did not elaborate on her allegations except to say she is considering filing a lawsuit and sent the email "because she was concerned for her well-being and physical safety." He said Alvarado did not want the email to become public, but he would not say if she's spoken with county, state or federal law enforcement.
In the final paragraph of her email, however, she wrote without elaboration: "Someone has listened."
In the next sentence, she cited unidentified attachments and said her city-owned car could be picked up 10 miles away at an address in Orland Park.
The address: a building that houses the south suburban field office for the FBI.
Tribune reporter Joe Mahr contributed.
August 22, 2014
Lawsuit stems from allegations of fraud in hotel deal
By Matthew Walberg and Joe Mahr
A south suburban mayor who's long pitched himself as a reformer has refused to testify about alleged corruption in his town because the answers could be used by authorities against him.
A deposition transcript — filed late Thursday — shows longtime Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg was questioned in a lawsuit about an allegedly fraudulent deal tied to a longtime political ally. Kellogg repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to not answer questions about it, as well as about an older allegation that he framed an innocent man with a gun charge over a dispute about cocaine.
Kellogg spokesman Sean Howard said the city does not comment on pending litigation. And defense lawyers caution that people using the tactic are not necessarily guilty of a crime. They may merely fear that their responses could be used to prosecute them.
Still, Kellogg's silence under oath made him the second top Harvey official this year to invoke that constitutional right to avoid answering questions about alleged corruption in a suburb that the Tribune profiled this year as the Chicago area's most lawless.
Three council members reached by the Tribune expressed dismay at Kellogg's action. Ald. Shirley Drewenski said it looks "horrible, just horrible."
"This whole situation is disheartening," she said.
The release of Kellogg's July 31 deposition comes days after his town made national news for a 21-hour hostage standoff, in which two Harvey officers were shot and suffered minor injuries. Kellogg became a visible presence at the scene, escorting an injured officer, cautioning residents to stay inside and thanking outside law enforcement for helping to end the standoff peacefully.
Brewing below the surface for years, however, have been criminal probes and lawsuits that could damage the mayor's portrayal of himself as a committed public servant simply striving to restore Harvey to a middle-class enclave.
In 2006 and 2012, Kellogg invoked the Fifth Amendment when asked in lawsuits about his role in returning a gun from police evidence to a friend whose son had been caught with it. A detective was convicted of giving the gun to the friend but testified that he did so on Kellogg's orders. Kellogg was not charged.
In between, the FBI conducted a corruption investigation in which an undercover agent pumped campaign cash into helping Kellogg win re-election. Federal authorities still won't discuss the case. Kellogg wasn't charged in the probe.
Federal authorities' latest interest in Harvey stems from a deal exposed by the Tribune last year. The town borrowed money supposedly to fix up a hotel that ended up being half-gutted and in foreclosure. The town comptroller's firm got a cut of the borrowed cash while taxpayers were stuck with loan payments that could total $20 million.
Records show the Securities and Exchange Commission — the agency that regulates municipal borrowing — last fall subpoenaed Harvey for records related to the deal and then-comptroller Joseph Letke. This spring, the U.S. attorney's office subpoenaed other suburbs where Letke worked.
Amid the subpoenas, Letke was ordered to testify as part of a lawsuit accusing the town of failing to save enough for worker pensions. Asked about a range of issues including the hotel deal, Letke invoked his constitutional right to remain silent 179 times.
Letke, a longtime Kellogg campaign contributor, kept handling the city's books until the SEC filed suit in June accusing Letke and Harvey of committing fraud in the hotel deal.
Two months later, Kellogg was ordered to answer questions in a suit involving a former mayor-turned-felon who was fired by Letke. Ex-Calumet City Mayor Jerry Genova blamed Kellogg for getting him fired for political reasons.
Kellogg testified that he had nothing to do with Genova's employment and brushed aside many questions by claiming the city's day-to-day operations were overseen by administrative assistant Dreina Lewis, Kellogg's sister.
He took a different tack when Genova's lawyer, Patrick Walsh, asked about the hotel deal and Letke's duties. Kellogg's lawyer, Stepfon Smith, stepped in to say he'd told Kellogg not to "self-incriminate" because of the SEC allegations of fraud. Kellogg then refused to answer more than 50 questions about Letke or the deal.
Walsh then asked about his department's 2006 arrest of a man who later won his freedom and a certificate of innocence. The man said he was framed after Kellogg falsely accused him of stealing the mayor's cocaine. The mayor has previously testified that never happened. But the suburb settled a lawsuit filed by the man for $1.4 million. In the July 31 deposition, Kellogg refused to answer two questions about his interactions with the man.
Defense lawyers say use of the Fifth Amendment may be smart even for an innocent person seeking to avoid being unfairly prosecuted. But they said it's more unusual for a public official. Attorney Ron Safer said that in 15 years of private practice and 10 years as a federal prosecutor he couldn't recall a public official using it.
"I've never seen it once, let alone three times by the same individual," Safer said. "Typically, public officials, even those under investigation, want to provide their side of the story, and are eager to do so."
Kellogg's silence on the hotel deal could make it harder for the town to dig itself out of heavy debt and years of overspending that, records show, was partly masked by big borrowing.
A federal judge, at the SEC's request, banned Harvey from issuing bonds — the common way towns borrow money — at least through Sept. 23. To try to get the judge to lift the ban, the suburb blamed the alleged fraud on Letke, saying Harvey had no clue about any misdeeds.
"The City's only mistake here was attempting to operate in good faith and to work with the Comptroller and the Developer to improve itself," its lawyer, Tiffany Ferguson, wrote in a brief to the court June 30.
That was a month before Kellogg refused to answer questions under oath about the deal. It's a tactic that attorney and former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot said has "totally undermined" the suburb's original defense.
"I think that a question that will be asked is, in a city the size of Harvey, if he really didn't know, what would be the basis for taking five? Is it plausible that he didn't know?" she said.
August 29, 2014
City sues, says suburb is $20M behind on its utility payments
By Joe Mahr and Matthew Walberg
On the edge of Chicago's West Pullman neighborhood, city pipes pump millions of gallons of water a day across the Cal-Sag Channel to the scandal-plagued suburb of Harvey.
For years, Harvey has, in turn, resold the city's water to its residents, businesses and even to neighboring towns.
But since late 2008, court records show, Harvey has fallen $20 million behind on its water payments to the city, and it has not paid anything since March, prompting Chicago to sue the town for the cash and nearly $4 million in late fees.
Now lawyers for Chicago are set to ask a Cook County judge on Friday to take the rare step of issuing a restraining order that would bar Harvey from handling water collections — a move that could cripple the finances of the town of 25,000 residents. Even if the judge does not issue a restraining order, any order to repay the debt in the near future could fuel massive hikes in Harvey water bills as well as those of the nearby suburbs to pay for Harvey's financial mismanagement.
"No one wants to bury the city of Harvey," said Shelly Kulwin, a private attorney who represents Chicago, "but the law has to be followed."
At first blush, the case highlights how a suburb beset by violent crime, subpar policing and insider deals — issues the Tribune has brought to light — can teeter on the brink of insolvency over something as seemingly simple as managing its water.
It also shows how the effects of mismanagement can ripple across the region, from the area's biggest city to some of its smallest suburbs.
And it shows, too, how the state's failure to press its statutory oversight role has allowed the town to get into trouble. Municipalities are required to conduct annual audits, which show how they spend their money, but the state for years did not force Harvey to conduct those audits.
In Hazel Crest, one of the neighboring suburbs Harvey supplies, Village Manager Marlo Kemp said he worries that Harvey will impose higher water rates on his residents to raise cash to help pay off the debt to Chicago, an outcome he fears Hazel Crest cannot stop.
"It's Harvey or bust for all of the villages that actually rely on Harvey water," Kemp said. "Nobody has the money to try to build the infrastructure to get water from any other village."
Harvey Mayor Eric Kellogg acknowledged in January that the town began "experiencing serious cash flow problems" in 2008, around the time it began falling behind on its water payments. But he declined at the time to tell the Tribune how the town used the water money. A spokesman for the town on Thursday declined to discuss the case in detail but said Harvey is "100 percent committed" to solving its legal issues.
The town comptroller, Louis Williams, offered the first public explanation of what happened to the water collections. Williams told aldermen earlier this month that the town had used the water revenues for years to cover budget shortfalls. By doing so, Chicago attorneys said, the town was breaking a state law that requires municipalities to use water revenues for water expenses only. What's more, Williams' statement about how the money was spent was reason for the court to step in, the attorneys argued.
Harvey, in a legal filing this week, said Williams' statement doesn't prove anything.
Still, former comptroller Joseph Letke told the Tribune that town officials — against his advice — did spend water money to cover expenses.
Several Harvey aldermen said they never knew, until recently, that the town was using water collections to pay day-to-day bills.
"They kept tapping into it," said Ald. Joseph Whittington. "They said it was in a lockbox — and it was never was."
As an inner-ring suburb, Harvey is allowed by state law to get water from Chicago and sell it to other suburbs. Besides Hazel Crest, Harvey provides water to Homewood, East Hazel Crest, Posen and Dixmoor, leaving them dependent on the struggling Harvey for a crucial resource.
Harvey even threatened to shut the water off to Dixmoor when that town fell behind on payments in 1999.
Chicago is not threatening to turn off Harvey's water. In court records, attorneys for the city said doing so would be illegal and unfair to residents there. But the lawyers said the city is tired of getting stiffed.
While other towns over the years have fallen behind on water bills to Chicago — Chicago directly supplies 47 of them — a review of Chicago records shows that Harvey has owed the most and has done little to work out a deal to pay back the debt.
Emails show that Harvey at times flirted with agreeing to a deal in 2011 and 2012, only to back out. First Harvey wanted 18 months to pay without penalties, then five years.
Still, the town's debt to Chicago grew, the city alleges, as water payments continued to be diverted.
By December 2012 — with Harvey behind by more than $10 million — Chicago filed the lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court.
By the first half of 2014, court records show, Harvey was paying for only 13 percent of the water it received. The loss to Chicago equates to more than $1,000 an hour.
At a courtroom in the Daley Center on Friday morning, city attorneys are set to propose that a judge appoint a trustee to control the water revenues. That way, they argue, Harvey can't misspend them while the lawsuit is pending.
It's unclear when the judge will rule on the issue. In the meantime, Harvey has until Sept. 5 to file records showing the court how it spent the money it collected from water bills. A trial date in November also has been set.
If the judge rules to take control of water revenues, it could spell even deeper woes for Harvey, its residents and the towns getting water through Harvey.
Harvey's ability to raise cash was already squeezed this summer when a federal judge banned the town from borrowing money amid allegations it defrauded previous lenders. In its latest legal filing, Harvey's lawyers argue that losing control of the water revenue would cause Harvey to "suffer extreme financial hardship" and "diminish services to its residents."
Ald. Keith Price said he worries that in just a few months it would "probably be impossible to make payroll."
Williams, Harvey's comptroller since earlier this summer, has told the City Council its financial records, while hard to decipher, appear to show water money used to cover overspending of about $5 million a year. That's nearly the equivalent of the town's annual police budget.
The City Council has asked Williams to slice spending by at least a fifth, but Harvey has yet to pass a budget almost four months into the fiscal year. That frustrates a grass-roots group of residents who want the town to consider seeking state loans — and tougher state oversight of Harvey finances — under the state's seldom-used "distressed cites" law.
Kellogg has floated raising water rates by 33 percent. That, too, frustrates residents as well as the suburbs dependent on Harvey for its water and already reeling from double-digit hikes imposed by Chicago since 2008.
Kemp, the Hazel Crest village manager, said he wishes the state had forced Harvey to do audits sooner, saying they could have exposed the financial mess before it threatened his residents' wallets. Now, if rates are increased to cover the past-due bills to Chicago, his residents may have to pay twice for the same water used years ago.
"You're sticking it to the people who paid you in the first place," he said.
December 26, 2014
In the gray one, Ruth Cameron raised two daughters who went off to college. One came back and bought the blue one next door. Together, the women describe a growing list of frustrations.
By Joe Mahr and Matthew Walberg
On Sangamon Street near the northern border of Harvey sit two, crisp 1½-story houses.
In the gray one, Ruth Cameron raised two daughters who went off to college. One came back and bought the blue one next door. Together, the women describe a growing list of frustrations.
They say the fire hydrant in front of their homes has been broken for years. The alley floods Ruth's garage when it rains. And they say their complaints to city officials are ignored.
"It's not just that nothing is ever done. It's that they treat the residents as if we are a gnat flying around their head," Ruth said.
The Camerons are among the residents of the once-stable blue-collar suburb who talk in sighs about troubles that they blame on far more than simply a poor town on hard times.
Over the past year, the Tribune has documented the south suburb's woes as arguably the area's most lawless community — with high violent crime, subpar policing and questionable cops. Town finances have been laden with insider deals, with little accountability demanded by state and federal agencies.
Since the 1980s, the suburb of 25,000 residents has struggled with crime, corruption and decay. But dozens of residents over the past year complain the problems seem more acute.
They translate into headaches not seen in many other places: 911 calls that go unanswered, town water bills that mysteriously jump, garbage left to fester in alleys, vacant houses that litter neighborhoods and shelter criminals.
Residents wonder who would ever want to buy the homes in which they've invested years of payments and improvements.
They say they feel at the mercy of town leaders who either claim ignorance about key issues or refuse to answer questions citing a fear of being prosecuted.
And they say they wonder just what it will take for outside officials to do their part to ensure the town reaches a basic level of solvency and justice.
Teresa Cameron traces her frustration to the day orange-tinted water flowed down her street.
Harvey firefighters had come to test the rusty hydrant in front of her house, she said. At first, they couldn't get it open. Then they couldn't turn it off. When the finally stopped the gushing, they put an "out of service" tag on it. More than four years later, the faded red tag remains, along with a slow drip.
Cameron moved with her family to Harvey in 1977 and, as a kid, lived the suburban dream: a backyard to play in, a neighborhood to ride bikes. In 2008 she was living in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood when her mom called with an intriguing suggestion. The house next door was in foreclosure. Teresa bought it for $36,600.
Then came the hydrant break, she said, and an education on living in Harvey in the 21st century.
Harvey had rough-and-tumble politics long before the current mayor took charge in 2003. But Cameron said she was surprised about the extent of insider deals to the town comptroller, aldermen's relatives and mayor's son that the Tribune detailed this year.
"It's a grab-and-go," she said. "Let's just loot the city, and do what we can … and we could care less about what's going on in Harvey."
Some local officials say they were also kept in the dark on problems.
Meanwhile, the mayor and former town comptroller have refused to answer key questions in court depositions. Both have cited a constitutional right not to answer questions under a fear the answers could be used to prosecute them.
When not under oath, Mayor Eric Kellogg has publicly blasted the Tribune. At a council meeting this month in the predominantly black suburb, Kellogg, who is black, referenced what he called the "strangulation, annihilation and castration of African-American men around the country" before suggesting the Tribune was giving him a "public castration."
Cameron isn't persuaded. She said reporters must shed light on how poorly residents are treated — even put in danger, such as with her fire hydrant.
Experts say tapping into hydrants near homes is key to fighting fires and saving lives because firetrucks carry just a few minutes worth of water. Yet she said those at City Hall have simply shrugged.
The mayor did not respond to questions on the hydrant, but Cameron said she confronted him when he visited the neighborhood this fall. She said he told her not to worry. The neighborhood had other hydrants.
The mayor visited the block because of what happened across the street to Cameron's neighbors, Gil and Katy Williams.
The couple remember the day city officials and workers crowded their block, the day they told Gil how sorry they were for what happened to him, the day they quickly tore down a vacant garage and boarded up another.
"It was a 'Please Me' ordeal," Gil recalled. "They're trying to please me for what happened, by doing what we asked them to do before."
Two days earlier, Gil was unloading his car inside his garage when a stranger put a gun to his head and told him to empty his pockets. The gunman sped away in the 71-year-old's 2006 station wagon, while the couple's dog Breezy barked from inside their modest brick bungalow.
It was a longtime fear of the couple, who had regularly complained to city officials about the four abandoned garages along their alley. They worried that criminals could hide there, using them to prey on kids walking to school, or older residents using the alley to get to their garages.
Census estimates show Harvey has one of the area's highest rates of vacant structures: about one in four residences. Residents and aldermen have long complained little is being done to ensure the salvageable ones are boarded up or rehabbed while the decrepit ones are torn down.
Katy, a retired teacher, had even gone to a meeting of a regional advocacy group a few years ago that was protesting Harvey's efforts at securing abandoned structures. The mayor's administration has countered that it's addressed the issue.
The Williams said they saw little progress, despite Gil's pleas to City Hall, warning them someone could get hurt. Then he was robbed.
Only after the Sept. 8 robbery did City Hall spring into action. So many city workers, officials and police showed up, Katy said, that "you would have thought President Obama had come."
The mayor showed up too, vowing to put his best detective on the case. The couple said they were pleased that police made an arrest this month.
But they wish the suburb had shown that kind of effort before the robbery. Even now — with two of the garages taken care of — Katy, 69, feels it's still too dangerous to go to her garage at night.
"I used to say, 'I'm not going to let nobody run me out of my house.' … Things have gotten so bad now, that I've changed my mind."
On a recent Saturday, on the other side of town, Mauzkie Ervin seethed as he rolled his big garbage can across four lanes of busy traffic.
It wasn't that he'd been a victim of a petty crime, he said, but lackluster policing.
Harvey's law enforcement struggles are well-documented. The sheriff, at the invitation of the town council, is now assessing a department where a 2007 raid by prosecutors and outside reviews in 2010 and 2012 documented valuable evidence left untested, shoddy detective work and lax supervision.
The mayor and chief argue that the department is well-run and reported crime is the lowest in decades. But the Tribune this year found that — when adjusted for the town's declining population — the rate of crime is comparable to when the mayor took office and declared a safety "state of emergency."
Ervin, a 58-year-old delivery driver, is deeply critical of the mayor's police force. As an example, he tells the tale of his garbage can and the vacant house next door.
In May, he said, the home's air-conditioning unit and copper pipes were stolen. Records show Ervin and a neighbor caught a man rolling away the pipes in Ervin's garbage can.
Harvey police arrested the man, who lived two blocks away. Court records show he was sentenced to a year of supervision, a form of probation. Ervin said the vacant home's owner reinstalled new pipe and a new air conditioner.
This month, Ervin said, the home's air conditioner and pipes were again stolen. So was his garbage can. He said he told police of the suspiciously similar theft. The lead wasn't mentioned in a police report.
Two days later, Ervin said he drove by the probationer's home, saw his can next to the man's garage and called police. He hoped they'd seek a search warrant to look for the stolen goods on the man's property. But officers declined. So, with the can too small to fit into Ervin's trunk, he said he walked it back to his house, dodging traffic on 159th Street.
The suburb's spokesman did not respond to questions about the incident. Ervin said he suspects many residents have "given up" on calling police because too often "nothing is going to be done."
Linia Thomas lives about a half block from the mayor's home, on a wide corner lot in what was one of Harvey's most exclusive neighborhoods.
Her 85-year-old home, nicknamed the Gingerbread House, has a shake roof built in a wave pattern, above walls of stucco and patterns of exposed stones. In the lawn, lion statues guard carefully manicured trees and shrubs.
She and her husband bought the home in 1984 for $93,000. The average Chicago-area home has nearly tripled in value since then, but she thinks her home value actually dropped in that time.
She blames the drop not just on city leaders' questionable spending, but on outside agencies' refusal to embrace what little oversight exists of towns, particularly those whose neighborhoods are deteriorating, like hers.
For years, Harvey has broken a state law requiring its books be audited. The law is supposed to protect taxpayers from having to bail out a town run into the ground. It's a rare safeguard in a state that gives many towns wide taxing power with little oversight.
But the state comptroller's office — under Democrat and then Republican control — failed to aggressively enforce the law. And, Harvey became one of the worst offenders.
After the Tribune highlighted the failures in February, the state sent in auditors, but there still remains no audited record of where Harvey's money went since April 30, 2009.
State officials have defended their efforts, saying they've sent records to "legal authorities." But to Thomas, the state failed Harvey's residents.
"They've got laws on the books to protect us innocent taxpayers, and they did nothing to see that the books were done," she said.
Federal regulators are also pushing for audits. Harvey now must report progress to a judge.
Thomas, however, remains skeptical of federal efforts too. The FBI continues an investigation of town officials' actions, but Thomas pointed to a previous Tribune revelation that an undercover FBI agent helped re-elect the controversial mayor in 2007. The agent's campaign efforts led to no charges. The FBI still won't discuss it.
"There's nothing to be hopeful for until I see some actual action," Thomas said.
The suburb's leaders did take some action — passing a budget — on a recent Monday night. But it came four months after a state law said it should have been passed. The town is still expecting to spend millions more than it takes in, with no explanation of how it can keep paying its bills.
Sitting in the audience, scribbling notes, was resident Allen Mahone.
He'd moved as a kid to Harvey in 1945, when it still had some dirt roads. Then it soon became an industrial powerhouse as factories sprang up. At 18, Mahone got a job at the plant making diesel engines.
He retired with a pension at 49, as the factories began to close and crime set in. He watched waves of middle-class families — first white, then black — move away.
But Mahone, now 77, isn't ready to leave yet.
He formed the Har-V Community Coalition three years ago in his living room. Only one person came to his first meeting.
More than 40 attended the most recent potluck gathering in a church hall. Thomas, Ervin and Teresa Cameron were there. Mahone alternated tones of a teacher, preacher and sales manager. He praised the group for working for change. He chided them for not bringing pencils and paper to take notes. He handed out copies of articles detailing Harvey's woes. He asked members to spread the word to at least three people.
"All we need is your participation and concern," he told the group. "If that's not the thing for you, that's OK too. Because the motto is: Everybody doing just a little bit can get a whole lot done."
He said the group isn't endorsing specific candidates in April's municipal election but is pushing to educate residents about core problems, such as the dire town finances.
Records recently obtained by the Tribune show the suburb's leaders ignored years of warnings and spent the town deep into debt while scrambling to make payroll and avoid bouncing checks. Calling it a "crisis," the last comptroller suggested jacking up water rates, boosting fees on major employers, hiking property taxes, and even charging mobile phone users a penny per text sent in Harvey. Little was done.
Now there's a new comptroller. He's also preaching fiscal discipline. But there remains no plan for solvency.
Mahone wants the town to consider a little-known Illinois statute to spur state help in restructuring debt and trimming spending. But town leaders are lukewarm to outside intervention.
Mahone fears the clock is running out on Harvey, and he may be forced to leave.
Patricia Marshall said she doesn't go to meetings. It makes her too angry when nothing happens. She didn't go to the council meeting even after she was shocked by a recent water bill.
She normally paid less than $40 a month. But the bill demanded $1,200.
It was a particularly massive amount for Marshall. She'd bought her 1,200-square-foot home three years ago out of foreclosure for less than $9,000. It offered a fresh start for the second-shift factory worker who'd struggled with legal and financial problems.
She thought about trying to fix up the house but hesitated because she doubted she'd be able to recoup the investment.
And that was before the mysterious water bill arrived in the mail this fall.
She showed the Tribune past bills — denoting all were paid in full. When she complained to Harvey, she said she was told water workers had failed to properly record $1,200 worth of water she'd used since she moved in.
Harvey spokesman Sean Howard said a faulty meter caused the city to undercharge her and the bill was for what she "legitimately" owed.
The suburb, however, did not respond to Tribune requests for water records for Marshall and others getting such spikes in bills. That's despite a state law requiring public bodies to provide records. It's one of a string of failures to follow the law documented by the Tribune and the state attorney general. But — unlike in some states — there's no criminal penalty for breaking the records law.
Marshall couldn't wait for outsiders to help. She said the suburb offered her a deal mixed with an ultimatum: The bill would be cut roughly in half, but she'd have to start paying now or her water would be shut off.
She knows the irony: Her suburb gets the water from the City of Chicago and has been so late paying those bills that Chicago sued Harvey to get a $26 million judgment, which has yet to be paid. All the while, Chicago hasn't threatened to turn off the water to Harvey.
But Marshall — just a regular citizen — she said felt she couldn't risk losing her water service. So she agreed to pay an extra $20 per month until the mysterious debt is paid off.
"I guess they just do what they want to do to the people," she said.
To the jury:
There ought to be a law against what happened to the town of Harvey, Ill.
But a Tribune investigation found that the faded blue-collar suburb of Chicago was an astonishingly lawless place, squeezing taxes out of its 25,000 residents but failing to deliver even the most basic protection and services.
When Tribune reporters noticed that Harvey’s violent crime rate towered over others in the Chicago region, and its police department made few arrests, we set out to find out why, who let it get that way and who’s letting it stay that way.
What we found was far more than a crime story.
In battling for public records, digging through court files and criss-crossing the community, we found a town government deep in debt and teeming with costly insider deals — with no audited trail of where the cash goes.
The suburb stayed afloat through an elaborate scheme that stiffed millions of Chicago taxpayers: taking the city’s water without paying for it, then pocketing cash from selling the same water to residents and businesses across the suburbs.
Amid that financial chaos, the police department became so distrusted that the town’s evidence room had to be raided by prosecutors. We found cops accused by their own peers of everything from condoning bribe-taking to trumping up cases.
The critical question to us: Who enabled this widespread dysfunction? We found a state with unusually weak oversight — one that sets higher ethical standards for barbers than cops. We found a federal government that acknowledged major problems yet may have made them worse. That included a shocker — that the FBI secretly helped the controversial mayor stay in power.
Within days of an initial burst of stories in February, the Cook County sheriff rallied for better oversight. Members of Congress demanded answers from the Department of Justice. Later, federal securities regulators accused the suburb of fraud and stopped it from borrowing.
But the underlying problems have not been solved, and residents say they see little hope — except in the Tribune’s continued attention.
It can be unnerving to cover council meetings where the mayor accuses a reporter, in front of residents, of publicly castrating him. But after writing more than 30 articles over the year, we see the story of Harvey as a bigger story of our state and our country. It’s a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when too few people care about a place on the map that many haven’t seen — or want to see.
For dogged coverage of a down-on-its-luck town abused by its public officials, I am proud to nominate Chicago Tribune reporters Joe Mahr, Matthew Walberg and Joe Ryan for the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting.
Sincerely,
Gerould W. Kern, Editor
Biography
Joe Mahr is an investigative reporter focused on regional reporting for the Chicago Tribune.
Joseph Ryan was an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune until June 2014.
Matthew Walberg is a general assignment reporter for the Chicago Tribune.
Winners
Prize Winner in Local Reporting in 2015:
Rob Kuznia, Rebecca Kimitch and Frank Suraci
For their inquiry into widespread corruption in a small, cash-strapped school district, including impressive use of the paper's website.
Local Reporting
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Local Reporting in 2015:
Ziva Branstetter and Cary Aspinwall
For courageous reporting on the execution process in Oklahoma after a botched execution – reporting that began a national discussion.
The Jury
The Jury
Angie Muhs(Chair )
executive editor and vice president of audience development
Buffy Andrews
assistant managing editor/social media and engagement
Bill Church
executive editor
Meg Heckman
lecturer of journalism
Jacinthia Jones
metro editor
Carlos Sanchez
executive editor
Ned Seaton
publisher and editor-in-chief
Winners in Local Reporting
Will Hobson and Michael LaForgia
For their relentless investigation into the squalid conditions that marked housing for the city's substantial homeless population, leading to swift reforms.
Brad Schrade, Jeremy Olson and Glenn Howatt
For their powerful reports on the spike in infant deaths at poorly regulated day-care homes, resulting in legislative action to strengthen rules.
Sara Ganim and members of The Patriot-News Staff
For courageously revealing and adeptly covering the explosive Penn State sex scandal involving former football coach Jerry Sandusky.
Frank Main, Mark Konkol and John J. Kim
For their immersive documentation of violence in Chicago neighborhoods, probing the lives of victims, criminals and detectives as a widespread code of silence impedes solutions.
2015 Prize Winners
Anthony Doerr
An imaginative and intricate novel inspired by the horrors of World War II and written in short, elegant chapters that explore human nature and the contradictory power of technology.
Julia Wolfe
A powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coal-mining life around the turn of the 20th Century.
Stephen Adly Guirgis
A nuanced, beautifully written play about a retired police officer faced with eviction that uses dark comedy to confront questions of life and death.
David I. Kertzer
An engrossing dual biography that uses recently opened Vatican archives to shed light on two men who exercised nearly absolute power over their realms.