Continuing McHenry County Blog’s coverage of Saturday’s meeting about the Department of Children and Family Services..

The Crystal Lake DCFS attrocity during Governor Jim Thompson’s first term

I then told of the early teen girl’s death in a Uteg Apartment fire.

Her mother had left her chained to her bed.

Let me reprint what I wrote about it April 9, 2008:

It started in 1979, early in Jim Thompson’s term as governor.

During that spring a teenage died in the Uteg apartments south of Route 14 where the Pizza Hut was located.

This child, a girl, I believe, was chained to her bed.

She died because of a fire.

That was bad enough, but it got worse when Crystal Lake Police Chief Sam Johns told me:

“You don’t know the worst part, Cal.

“We called DCFS 30 days before the fire.”

Rules for Department of Children and Family Services caseworkers require a home inspection within 24 hours of a complaint.

The last time I saw a compliance figure, DCFS met that goal 98-99% of the time.

So, I was dumbfounded that a caseworker would ignore a complaint from a police department. After all, this was not from some anonymous source, as many of its complaints are.

I was angry.

I called the Thompson-appointed DCFS Director Greg Coler (who served from 1979-83), demanding an investigation. He agreed.

Time passed and I eventually remembered that I had not heard back from Coler.

I remember calling him from my office, an old auto dealership building on the southeast corner of Woodstock and Brink Streets across from Crystal Lake’s train station.

Yes, he had done an investigation.

I asked if the caseworker had been fired.

She hadn’t been.

“She’s the best caseworker we’ve got,” Coler told me.

It turns out that she had been given a promotion.

She was supervising others.

I was incensed.

Had he been in the room I would have wrapped the telephone cord around his neck.

After that conversation whenever we would attend receptions in Springfield, he invariably gravitated to the other side of the room…even more than a decade later.

And, after that, I took the “good intentions” of DCFS with more than one grain of salt.

But back to the meeting

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More tomorrow.