I got an e-mail recently from an unlikely
source. A roiling tale of police shenanigans ranging from political
incorrectness to official misconduct, it might’ve been the
beginning of a good little news story if it were accurate. But
it’s not easy to get within spitting distance of reality when
two of the three players involved cannot talk about the incident,
and the third has a reputation for being a taco short of a combo
plate. Still, if you wheedle enough bureaucrats and
glimpse enough documents, you can piece together a more realistic
version of the same story in the e-mail an come up with an amusing
little romp reminiscent of The Three
Stooges . . . if Larry and Moe had
had cell phones. The escapade started with a prank call. Not
your garden variety “Do you have cotton balls?”
monkeyshine (“You do?! What are you — a teddy
bear?!?”) but something vulgar broadcast (thanks to
speakerphone) over the mobile device of Sangamon County Chief
Deputy Tony Sacco while he was dining in a restaurant. Sacco was, by all accounts, understandably
upset. It wasn’t just the nastiness of the call that bothered
him; it was the fact that some prankster had obtained the digits to his Nextel — a
phone meant for law-enforcement business only. The next day, he
obtained a subpoena requiring Nextel to provide the identity of the
subscriber from whose phone the call had been placed. As it turned out, that phone was registered
not to an individual but to an obscure local business. The
company’s name, which is not listed in the phone book,
included the word Don, thereby raising an intriguing question:
Could this phone belong to Sacco’s long-time nemesis, the
former radio shock-jock Don “One-Eyed Jack” Jackson? Their feud — as all townies undoubtedly
recall — dates back to July 3, 1998, when Jackson’s big
fireworks show at Lake Springfield went tragically awry. A few
lamparies experienced premature kablooey, setting off a huge explosion and badly injuring
two technicians aboard the fireworks barge. On shore, Jackson and
Sacco had a heated argument about whether it was safe for officials
to approach the barge. Sacco ended up filing a misdemeanor assault
charge against Jackson for throwing a cup of water on him. The
subsequent trial left Jackson fuming about Sacco to this day. “He lied in a court of law. He said I
threw a glass of water on him, and it wasn’t true,”
Jackson claims. “And if it were true, it would be something
to laugh about.” Perhaps it was an awareness of Jackson’s
grudge that inspired officials at the sheriff’s department to waste no time tracking down the obscure company
that owned the prankster’s phone. It’s hard to know for
sure since Sacco can’t discuss the matter, except to say the
sheriff’s office routinely responds to citizens’ complaints
of telephone harassment with this same enthusiasm. In this particular case, the sheriff’s
investigators discovered that the offensive call had been placed
not by Jackson, but by one of their very own badge-wearing
officers. This explains why Sacco isn’t able to talk. “We’d like to be able to tell you
the whole story, but we couldn’t comment about that,”
he says. “It involves a personnel matter and I don’t
think we can answer anything about it because there was discipline
involved.” The officer who placed the call —
let’s just refer to him as Curly — obviously
can’t speak about what happened, nor will his attorney,
citing the substantial suspension his client has already suffered. Jackson, however, is not only free to talk but
anxious to complain he was the victim in this scenario. He says
Sacco sicced his Drug Investigation Response Team on him, slandered
him throughout the hallways of the sheriff’s department and
the State’s Attorney’s office, threatened to seek a
felony charge against Jackson for interfering with a law
enforcement officer, and promised to invite News Channel 20 to film
his arrest. I found zero evidence that the DIRT team had been
alerted, nor that the state’s attorney’s office had been
asked to issue a felony warrant. But Jackson insists it’s all
true. “People from the sheriff’s office
picked up the phone and called me and told me!” he says.
“It was a matter of a top cop running amok, and it just blows
me away.” He’s so outraged, in fact, that he
brought this whole yarn to me — the writer whose last article about
him carried the headline “How One-Eyed Jack wrecked my
life” [Feb 13, 2003]. Without rehashing too much painful
history, let’s just say I was burned by Jackson myself,
simply by being a guest on his radio show the day he defamed one of
my professional colleagues, by broadcasting a rumor that was
patently false. Surely he had gained some empathy, some
remorse for what he did to my colleague and me — now that he
had been unjustly accused. Right? Sadly, no. “There’s a huge difference between
a radio talk show and an individual from the sheriff’s office
running amok,” Jackson claims. In his mind, a little chatter
in the halls of some county offices was somehow worse than slinging
mud willy nilly via radio airwaves. What ails Jackson can’t be cured even
with a dose of his own medicine.
This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2006.
