McHenry County Blog

What do you do when someone steals six Romney signs from your front yard?

I had mine knocked down six times, run over the first time, I think.

Then, it was stolen this weekend,

A fellow in McHenry is the one from whose front yard a Romney sign has been stolen six times.

He got disturbed enough to wait with a camera.

As the thief was pulling the sign out of the grass, he got the photo you see below:

If anyone knows this guy and wouldn’t mind his being the subject of a police report, please real his name in the comment section.

I guess the sign thieves don’t believe the poll numbers that say Obama will soundly defeat Romney in Illinois.

Silk Lumpkins sees a bowl of lollipops while robbing the Cary Chase Bank.

A year ago in June, Crystal Lake resident Silk Pauline Lumpkins was arrested in Fox River Grove.  On May 26, 2010, she had robbed the Chase Bank on Route 14 in Cary, Illinois.

She plead guilty in Rockford Federal Court today.  The press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office follows:

CRYSTAL LAKE WOMAN PLEADS GUILTY IN FEDERAL COURT TO ROBBERY OF CHASE BANK IN CARY, ILLINOIS

ROCKFORD – PATRICK J. FITZGERALD, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois; ROBERT D. GRANT, Special Agent-In-Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; RONALD K. LUKASIK, Chief of the Fox River Grove Police Department; and STEVEN CASSTEVENS, Chief of the Cary Police Department, today made the following announcement:

SILK P. LUMPKINS, 36, of Crystal Lake, Illinois, pleaded guilty in federal court today to robbing Chase Bank, 300 Northwest Highway, Cary, Illinois, on May 26, 2010.

Silk Lumpkins puts the sucker in her mouth.

In pleading guilty, Lumpkins admitted that at about 2:20 p.m. on May 26, 2010, she entered Chase Bank wearing a disguise consisting of

• heavy covering make-up on her face and hands,
• a long blonde wig, long-sleeved shirt, and
• a baseball cap.

Lumpkins further admitted that she wrote a note at the self-service desk, approached a teller at the counter, and handed the note to the teller that stated something to the effect of:

“If you don’t want to die today, give me all your money. You have 30 seconds to do this.”

Here Silk Lumpkins is sucking away at the lollipop meant for customers.

According to the plea agreement, the teller then removed $5,876 from her drawer and handed the money to Lumpkins. Lumpkins then put the money into a blue “Chase” deposit bag that she brought with her and walked out of the bank with the bag.

Lumpkins was arrested on June 2, 2010.

Sentencing for Lumpkins will be conducted on May 18, 2011, at 10:00 a.m.

Lumpkins faces a maximum potential penalty of 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, up to 3 years of supervised release following imprisonment, and full restitution. The actual sentence will be determined by the United States District Court, guided by the United States Sentencing Guidelines.

The case was investigated by the Rockford Office of the FBI, the Fox River Grove Police Department and the Cary Police Department. The case is being prosecuted in federal court by Assistant United States Attorney SCOTT A. VERSEMAN.

“But that wasn’t enough for him,” said prosecutor Deborah Mayer. “He wanted more. So he took more.”

No, that’s not about disgraced Metra Exec Phil Pagano.

Those are the words of a Federal prosecutor in the Washington, D.C., area after the conviction of the recently-departed U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy’s budget guy.

Ngozi Pole was convicted “of of stealing more than $75,000 from the Senate by giving himself unauthorized salary and bonuses,” as Fox News put it.

The Kennedy aide submitted false paperwork to authorize his thefts.

How like Phil Pagano.

Fox reports,

“It was standard practice to ‘spend down’ any surplus in Kennedy’s annual office budget to a zero balance at the end of each fiscal year.”

The staffer was just doing his part.

Another Democrat who has been known to give Christmas bonuses is House Speaker Mike Madigan.

The Daily Herald’s Josh Stockinger reported Friday that former District 300 Dundee-Crown High School secretary Lisa Burkhart-Foster of East Dundee was sentenced to repay Carpentersville District 300 $75,000 she apparently finally admits stealing from an extracurricular activity fund for sports related and other activities over a four-year period. It started in 2002.

Apparently the loss of the money was discovered during the school district’s big push to hike the tax rate 55-cents per $100 of assessed valuation, plus authorize over $100 million in building borrowing.

But the loss wasn’t made public until after the hard-fought tax hike campaign financed by District 300 vendors and developers.

The January before last School Board President Joe Stevens emailed me the following when I asked him the status of the investigation:

“Regarding the $100,000 suspected lost from the student activity fund, we have now completed our forensic audit and it does validate such a loss occurred.

“We fully expect to recover all of the money through our insurance provider.

“The matter now rests with the States Attorney awaiting further action.”

Ken Arndt

In an August 6, 2007, letter to Daily Herald reporter Emily Krone, District 300 School Superintendent Ken Arndt releases a timeline which includes

• 2005: Central Office employees identified concerns with student activity accounts and began pursuing answers to their concerns
• September 2006 (after the rate hike and bond referendums, I would note): D300 launched a series of proactive steps to research, define, and correct the root cause(s) of the bookkeeping problems.
• July 2006: D300 filed a police report on the matter with after determining that embezzlement was probable.
• July 2007: D300 filed papers in Kane County Circuit Court seeking financial documentation to help answer the remaining questions, which are relevant both to District’s insurance claim and possible criminal charges.

The local police department says above that the thief was notice by District 300 officials on May 7, 2006.  It was not reported, however, until July 6, 2006.

You may notice that it is now May, 2010.  (Click to enlarge.)

It has taken four years for the taxpayers to receive a semblance of justice.

Interviews are in process to select Supt. Arndt’s replacement.

Since then, there has been a report of a Huntley School District parent-teacher organization treasurer doing something similar and a probe is now going on at Crystal Lake High School District 155 for which no resolution has been revealed.

I may have mentioned earlier that I thought gun control advocates, if they really believed in what they espoused, would put “No Guns Within” on signs outside of their homes.

Now comes some evidence that at least one crook or set of crooks were scared away by hunting equipment.

At least in Oak Forest.

My nephew is a hunter and a fisherman.

Goodness knows what he stores in his garage. Probably targets at a minimum.

The crooks broke into his wife’s car, which was parked in the driveway. They used her garage door opener to open the garage enough so they could roll under it.

Apparently, whatever they saw in the garage was enough to convince them that they might be wise to select another victim.

I wonder if they would have gone that far had they known he has a black belt in judo.

So, hunters, the moral of this story is make it obvious that you might have a gun in the house.

I may have mentioned earlier that I thought gun control advocates, if they really believed in what they espoused, would put “No Guns Within” on signs outside of their homes.

Now comes some evidence that at least one crook or set of crooks were scared away by hunting equipment.

At least in Oak Forest.

My nephew is a hunter and a fisherman.

Goodness knows what he stores in his garage. Probably targets at a minimum.

The crooks broke into his wife’s car, which was parked in the driveway. They used her garage door opener to open the garage enough so they could roll under it.

Apparently, whatever they saw in the garage was enough to convince them that they might be wise to select another victim.

I wonder if they would have gone that far had they known he has a black belt in judo.

So, hunters, the moral of this story is make it obvious that you might have a gun in the house.