Letter to Deputies Explains Sheriff’s Department Probe on Racial Profiling

It’s amazing what pops into the in box of McHenry County Blog.

The latest is a January 20 2011, letter from McHenry County Sheriff’s Office Administrative Bureau Commander Lt. Duane Cedergren.

It’s about an internal investigation of racial profiling, the very subject that whistle blower former Deputy and unsuccessful Republican primary candidate for Sheriff Zane Seipler is basing his wrongful termination suit against the department.

The Commander talks about “extremely unusual circumstances, which necessitate further explanation.”

Take a read and draw your own conclusions.

In order to make the letter searchable, I reprint its text:

The purpose of this memo is to inform everyone of a department internal review that is currently pending. I know that many of you have some questions about what the review entails. These are extremely unusual circumstances, which necessitate further explanation.

Duane Cedergenn

As a result of a pending federal lawsuit that concerns allegations of racial profiling, a review of ALL of our traffic citations, written warnings, and stop cards from 2007, 2008, and 2009 was conducted. We identified three areas that require further review.

One: Not completing the racial profiling data on traffic tickets. Accurately filling out the racial profiling data on the back of a ticket is required both by the State of Illinois and McHenry County Sheriff’s Office General Orders. This data provides valuable information, and therefore, it must not only be recorded, but it must be done so accurately. We plan to re-train all officers in this area.

Two: Recording drivers with apparent Hispanic surnames as “Caucasian.” It has become clear that a number of officers are marking what appear to be Hispanic drivers (based on their surnames only) as “Caucasian” on the back of their traffic tickets. The law prevents you from asking any driver what their race is, but I want to emphasize that your perception needs to be as accurate as possible to reflect the race of the individual that is operating the motor vehicle. Therefore, we believe interviews and training on these issues are necessary.

Three: Any specific minority race that received a higher percentage oftickets than the department average. There are also a number of officers who have higher percentages of minority traffic stops than the departmental average. While we recognize there may be a variety of reasons why these officers have higher percentages of minority traffic stops than the departmental benchmark, this
review is part of the proactive measures we are taking to ensure that systematic racial profiling is NOT occurring.

A set of criteria was established to help decide who will be interviewed. With the guidance of our legal counsel, the following criteria or “benchmarks” were established for anyone that wrote a minimum of 45 citations, warnings, or stop cards in a respective year:

  • For not completing any race profiling data: the benchmark was set at a minimum of 20% or more of the stops for the year (accident citations and multiple citations were identified and removed from the totals);
  • For what appears to be the marking drivers with apparent Hispanic surname as “Caucasian”: a benchmark of 5% or more ofthe officers’ total stops for a particular year;
  • When an officer had a higher percentage of minority traffic stops than the department average: the benchmark was set at 5% or more above the department average for each respective year.

Anybody that fell above these benchmarks has been issued a notice to be interviewed.

I hope this letter has clarified some of the questions about our internal review. For those being interviewed, we apologize for the timing and miscommunication as this situation has progressed. As always, I am available to discuss any further questions or concerns.

Respectfully,

Lt. Cedergren
McHenry County Sheriff’s Office
Administrative Bureau Commander


Comments

Letter to Deputies Explains Sheriff’s Department Probe on Racial Profiling — 19 Comments

  1. Police officers need training to identify the difference between caucasian and Hispanic?

    You got to be kidding!

    Are these supposed to be the stupidest officers in Illinois who need training for this?

    What are Nygren’s standards for hiring when paid on the job training is required for something like this?

  2. but wait, i thought that this was Nygrens “reason ” for the so-called deputy echange program with Mexico ?

    So if not, what was the real purpose for this echange program ?…ahh, i understand now what that Sheriff Deputy Milliman was saying in that deposition.

    Why is this sheriff still a sheriff in mchenry county ? haven’t the citizens sufferred enough

  3. Nygren’s standards – work on my campaign. Put up signs. Get signatures and keep your mouth shut about what goes on OR you will pay a price.
    Looks like Zane isn’t so “Zanely” after all.

  4. Nygren’s standards – work on my campaign. Put up signs. Get signatures and keep your mouth shut about what goes on OR you will pay a price.
    Looks like Zane isn’t so “Zaney” after all.

  5. does you know if Deputy Milliman is back at the sheriffs office ? If so, how is nygren and company treating him ?

  6. I understand that he is on “administrative leave”.

    See First Electric Newspaper – FEN was denied a FOIA request asking for the reason he was placed on leave.

    SO refused and FEN took it to the Attorney General that sided with FEN. Tues Feb 8th article titled “Legal filing claims deputy sent to psychiatrist.” http://www.firstelectricnewspaper.com/

    See if you tell the truth, you are somehow unbalanced. Things are a little upside down in the Sheriffs Office.

  7. Just a question-Let’s just say that Susie Creamcheese-Smith marries Jose Gomez, and is now names Susie Gomez. I know what race I’d subscribe to her-how about you?
    Are they going to interview each and every person who received a citation, and expect an honest answer as to a) what did they did wrong while driving, and b) what should we have called you race-wise?

  8. Immediately after you vastare. Just another example of fishing in a puddle and wondering where the fish are. No matter what the result of the investigation are, someone is going to be pi__ed off STILL

  9. It is disgusting that the Siepler supporting crowd is now insisting that people be racially profiled and segragated based on the sound or appearance of thier last name. It simply does not reflect the reality of today’s society and stinks of trying to turn race relations back to the 1950’s.

    Not only are Surnames now diversified but according to U.S. census data most of those who have what are traditionally profiled as Hispanic surnames self-identify themselves as Caucasion.

    Thier is not one piece of evidence to date that anyone involved as signed a document stating someone commited a crime that they did not except the guy pointing the finger at everyone else.

  10. It is called following the law.

    Innocent US citizens were also caught up in it.

    It is to be done properly.

    While they were being lazy to do “easy pickins” other citizens were being victimized.

    But – get the bag off of your head. Nygren is in deep doo.

  11. I have been with the MCSO for a long time.

    Long enough to see it go from good to bad and then really bad and now to getting better.

    The reason it’s getting better is easy.

    Cundiff is out, Lowery is out, Miller is scared and Nygren is scared.

    Seipler and Milliman have changed the way these guys are going about what once was “business as usual”.

    As far as the Nygren Supporters posting on this article (my co-workers) I have to say this in ZANE’s defense. Zane is not the only person to ever do what he did.

    Zane never got arrested in a bar fight in Wisconsin, never was involved in a high speed chase, drunk, and accused of throwing DRUGS and BEER from the car. Zane has never sexually assaulted anyone.

    Zane has never stolen narcotics money. He has never returned tortured children back to the torturers.

    He never covered up a DUI/weapons arrest for the drinking buddy of Nygren.

    He never man handled a female deputy in a drunken stupor and covered up a the incident.

    Never shot his gun off in his apartment with his girlfriend in the room the bullet entered. (Accident my A@#)

    He never put an innocent man on death row. (Innocent driver gets a warning= innocent man convicted of double homicide and sentenced to die by lethal injection. What’s worse? One got fired the other got promoted all the way to the top.)

    He never got busted with porn or for excessive speeding or negligent discharge of firearms.

    The only thing I remember about Zane was he handled his calls, was one of the boys and saved Koziol’s butt from a lunatic with a knife.

    Oh yeah, he complained that Bruketta Jones and Stevens were picking on Mexicans.

    We all knew that one.

  12. Seriously AZ (Jeremy), have you read the names that Bruketta and Falb labeled as “Caucasian”?

    Maybe some of those people (10%) fall into the category you are talking about. What about the others?

    Plus, didn’t you, I mean Bruketta, admit to mislabeling the people you knew to be Hispanic intentionally?

    I heard you guys (Patenaud/Bruketta) trying to convince yourselves that you could explain this away as a training issue.

    You really should talk softer when the door is closed. Walls are paper thin. I’ve seen some of the names in question.

    I think the surnames is a good starting point.

    I’m sure D.L. photos would show a bigger picture and the booking photos off all the no valid arrests would be telling seeing as Bruketta is the king of the No Valid arrest.

  13. AZ – thought all along that you were one of the people in “trouble”.

  14. Sorry guys your numbers are wrong when you use 10%…The U.S. census bureau has reported that most (that would be over 50%) people with historically ethnic Surnames self identify as Caucasion.

    I’m good with fine tuning the policy to be more clear on which box to check but it for a 3rd party to assign a race to someone is not the clear cut process you guys want to make it.

    But the fact remains the disagreement seems to be over the manner these peoples appearance were described not whether they were falsely accused. To this date the only person we have heard evidence of actually signing such a document stating the witnessed someone committing a crime that they did not is the guy throwing the tantrum and pointing the finger at everyone else.

  15. There is physical evidence “But” and admission. No tantrums involved with the evidence. The Judge (and yes the magistrate is a JUDGE) has seen it. Get a grip.

  16. AZ and BUTT – You are going through the same thought process that Nero did while he fiddled.

  17. So now Shadow and vastare are capibal of identifing people by their screen-names!!

    Keep guessing who I am and where I work (if I doactually work);this is becoming fun!!

    Just goes to show something else they know nothing about.

    But seriously has it right; the ONLY group of American citizens I know of who call themselves ____________-American are African-Americans.

    Hispanics who have become American citizens legally, and those babys born here normally refer to themselves as Americans, and the SOS office, when a name is run through the squad computer, SELDOM lists someone as Hispanic. SOS returns list race as whatever the person wrote down when filling out the application.

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