Back in October, 2014, right before Sheriff Keith Nygren went out of office, a suit was filed by Crystal Lake’s Pete Sonneville against Sheriff’s Deputies for entering his home on East Crystal Lake Avenue without authorization.
You can read the details here.
The suit was settled at the end of April, 2015, with neither side admitting fault, but with Sonneville being paid $15,000, plus attorney’s fees to Louis Meyer’s law firm,.
The Sheriff’s Department, under the new management of Bill Prim, agreed to provide training to deputies “specific to warrantless searches.”
Glad he got something !
It sounds like the deputies involved got off scot-free. A reasonably bright seventh grader would have known that they didn’t have the legal right to enter Mr Sonneville’s house. No amount of new training is going to change their behavior if they know that they won’t face any consequences for their actions.
I noticed on a previous post that the Sheriff’s Department is hiring, and they only require a GED. Perhaps it’s time to raise the bar a bit. They pay people well enough that they could require at least two years of college.
You cannot train common sense and you cannot learn it in college.
Unfortunately, all too often those doing the interviews have none either.
End result is a department full of idiots.
The qualifications to become a deputy are very easy to meet, and the sheriff gets to choose which candidate(s) he wishes to hire off of a large eligibility list. This is not a good practice. The qualifications should be far more difficult to meet, and the sheriff should choose from a smaller list of better qualified people.
A requirement of two years of college credit is certainly no guarantee that the candidate will possess common sense, but it will filter out a good percentage of the imbeciles that seem to slip through the cracks and get hired.
It would be a good start I agree.
I know plenty of imbeciles who have gone to college.
Let’s not harm those who can’t afford college but are willing to work and sacrifice as a patrol officer.
We had the same thing happen. We should have sued as well. In our case it was driven by the Regional Superintendent of Schools. Police entered my home illegally through my garage. Should have sued.