When The Spot closed at 3 a.m. on May 11, 2002, Don Loftus left driving the wrong way down Cook Street. He had traveled less than a block when he smashed into a car driven by Malinda Gray.
“He couldn’t even walk,” Gray says. “He got out of his car and was just wobbling back and forth. I guess he tried to walk away from the scene and the cops had to go get him.”
Loftus refused to take a breath test for the Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy. Later, though, at St. John’s Hospital, a blood screen revealed Loftus’s blood alcohol content to be .255, more than three times the state’s legal limit of .08.
Loftus was lucky. First, no one was killed as a result of his admitted misbehavior (he pleaded guilty to driving under the influence). But he was also fortunate that the paperwork necessary to suspend his driver’s license somehow got lost in the shuffle.
Thanks to that snafu, Loftus never lost his right to drive — a right that’s integral to his job as a Springfield Police Department patrol officer.
When a motorist is arrested for driving under the influence, the arresting officer issues a “notice of summary suspension” stating the motorist will lose his or her license for a significant period of time. The motorist’s attorney may then file a petition to rescind the suspension. From the date of that filing, the State’s Attorney has 30 days to set the matter for hearing. If no hearing is set, the suspension is automatically rescinded.
In Loftus’s case, the confirmation necessary to proceed with the summary suspension was never filed. Sangamon County State’s Attorney John Schmidt declined to speculate on what happened. “It doesn’t necessarily mean someone dropped the ball,” he says. “We prosecute DUI cases every day, and we will continue to prosecute to the best of our ability.” What happened in the Loftus case “doesn’t happen very often,” Schmidt says.
As a first-time offender, Loftus paid a $750 fine, attended 22 hours of education and treatment plus a victim impact panel, and was sentenced to a year of supervision, which he completed seven weeks early due to “exemplary” behavior. But according to the report filed by the deputy who arrested Loftus, Loftus could have lost his license for a minimum of six months due to his refusal to submit to testing.
If the case had followed normal prosecution procedures, it would have set some sort of precedent at SPD. The police chief — at that time, John Harris — would have had to figure out what to do with a patrol officer who couldn’t drive. The options would have ranged from desk duty to administrative (unpaid) leave to, possibly, termination.
Bob Markovic, president of the Policemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, says it would have been “uncharted territory” for the department. “To my knowledge we’ve never had that before,” he says.
SPD’s policy prevents discussion of personnel matters, and neither Don Kliment, the current chief, nor Markovic, would reveal the terms of discipline dealt to Loftus. However, sources inside the department say Loftus got only a few days off without pay.
Loftus, 48, declined to comment for this story.
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2004.
