John Kass has some fun gossip masquerading as speculation. Funnier if you've heard prior speculation about a jail break being orchestrated to make the sheriff look bad. Here's the back story first:
JailbreakWatergate is probably the benchmark for all political dirty tricks, but Illinois has a rich trove of its own shenanigans.
Republican consultant Karl Rove, these days the White House political czar, stole stationery from Democrat Alan Dixon in 1970 and used it to flood a Dixon campaign event for state treasurer with homeless people. The fake invites promised free liquor and food.
Near the end of his 1992 primary campaign for a congressional seat, Democrat Mel Reynolds said he was grazed by a bullet in a drive-by shooting. Who shot MR? Nobody figured it out, though Reynolds got a lot of attention while he campaigned with a bandage on his forehead that seemed to get bigger by the day.
Hardly a campaign goes by without charges of yard signs ripped down, bricks thrown through windows of campaign offices and political workers being harassed. But as harebrained political stunts go, the one that looks to be unfolding behind Saturday night's Cook County Jail breakout is in a class by itself.
Investigators say that a guard who initially reported that inmates overpowered him has now admitted that he aided the plot. The goal: to embarrass outgoing Sheriff Michael Sheahan and Tom Dart, the sheriff's chief of staff. Dart is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination to replace Sheahan.
Investigators say the guard's story is that he was trying to help one of Dart's opponents, Richard Remus, a former jail official who resigned in 2003 after he was accused of abusing inmates. Remus has sued Sheahan's administration, charging he's been made the fall guy in the abuse probe. He says that Sheahan's office is now smearing him by concocting the story that the jailbreak was a conspiracy designed to benefit him. (Another Democrat, Sylvester Baker Jr., is also running.)
Six inmates escaped, but all were picked up by Monday. One of the inmates has been convicted of murder. All but one of the others face charges of violent crimes, including murder, kidnapping and armed robbery. Six guards were suspended Tuesday pending an investigation of the escape. Late Tuesday, one of them was charged with six criminal counts related to the escape.
There's a wild political story in here somewhere. It's going to take a while for the facts and the motives to be sorted out.
Today John Kass writes:
Chicago Tribune | Hard to throw cold water on hot-tub sex
It was a bright autumn afternoon when Cheryl Nash pulled into her suburban driveway after work. The poor woman had no idea she was about to become involved in a political story involving an allegedly nekkid cop and sex in a hot tub--which may or may not have anything to do with a plot involving jailbreaks and the Cook County sheriff's election....“My son is in the computer room, which has a clear view of the hot tub next door and he can see everything,” she told us. “He watched it. He saw. I told him to stop watching. He's 14 and I'm on the phone [with the police], and he's out looking on the deck after that too. He was. I'm not going to lie. He's 14 years old. Well, he's 15 now.
”I said to the [dispatcher], `Is it legal to be outside having sex in your hot tub?' She said, `No.' And so she dispatched a squad.“
One love-tubber was later identified by police and prosecutors as a 22-year-old Orland Park man.
The other was identified as Lt. Kelly Mrozek, 38, of the Cook County Sheriff's Police, though she was without her gun, badge or swimsuit.
The Nash family wanted to sign a complaint. The Lockport Police Department, perhaps bowing to the notion of professional courtesy, wasn't interested in filing charges against a sister officer.
Mrozek's brother-in-law is the operations chief for Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan. Hmmmm.
So the cops kicked it upstairs to the Will County state's attorney's office. They weren't interested, either. Sure it's amusing, unless you live next door to it and authorities tell you that you might as well enjoy the show because nothing will be done.About a month later, the state's attorney's office finally told Mrs. Nash that they weren't going to prosecute. It was a he-said, she-said issue, they said.
After receiving that message, the Nash family got another message from their neighbors.
“The very next day, she's out in the hot tub with that guy again. Naked. It was 7:30 p.m.,” Nash said.
...It turns out that Mrozek's brother-in-law is Paul O'Grady, the operations chief for Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan. But that has nothing to do with anything, officials said.
After some pointed questions by Kass' assistant, suddenly Mrozek was cited, stripped of her badge, etc.
Kass continues:
But it all happened so fast, that now I'm starting to get suspicious. I can't help it.Could this hot tubscapade be yet another plot to damage the political fortunes of Sheahan's chief of staff, Tom Dart?
Dart is running for sheriff as Sheahan's handpicked successor. One amazing spin to the jailbreak saga is that the escapes are all a nefarious plot to make Dart look like a chump right before the election.
His enemies are trying to make Dart out to be some 19th Warder who cares more about what his political puppet master, Jeremiah Joyce, wants on his McDonald's burger than how to run a jail.
What could be more damaging than a hot tubscapade? I mean, could you vote for anyone who wouldn't immediately drain that tub-eau-love?....Still, I wanted to know if the Dart-hot tub nexus was as plausible as that politically inspired jailbreak theory.
“Is John trying to tie Dart into that?” a Sheahan official told the Swede[ Kass' assistant]. “You're joking, right?”
I never joke about hot tubs.
