There were more questions than answers when the City Council subcommittee taking public comment on a proposed citizen police review board held its final meeting Monday night. While the Council is generally supportive of the concept, the subcommittee is still pondering nuts-and-bolts details: how many members the Police Community Review Commission needs, whether a law-enforcement […]
Dusty Rhodes
Posted inNews
The devil’s in the details
Bob Markovic knows things are about to change at Springfield Police Department. As president of the Policemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association Unit No. 5 — the union that represents patrol officers and sergeants — Markovic is aware that City Council is set to pass an ordinance establishing a civilian panel to review complaints against SPD […]
Posted inNews
The Color of Money
The neighborhood looks a lot like any other freshly-minted subdivision across town or across the Midwest — shiny new houses with attached garages, fenced backyards, preternaturally green lawns and a pleasant uniformity of design, plopped down on a patch of prairie where no houses stood before. It’s the kind of place where Beaver Cleaver might […]
Posted inNews
Mixed bag of nuts
Things got squirrelly this week at City Council — figuratively and literally. The agenda took under half an hour with little discussion and only one dissenting vote (Ward 7’s Judy Yeager, casting her traditional vote against a 3 a.m. liquor license). That left a roomful of partisan politicians with microphones, no script and a lot […]
Posted inNews
Police shuffle
Springfield Police Chief Don Kliment shook up his command staff Wednesday, naming one assistant chief and four deputy chiefs. The reorganization promotes two officers and demotes only one. The most significant promotion was given to Ralph Caldwell Jr., who is now officially second-in-command to Kliment. Caldwell, a 23-year veteran of SPD, was previously assistant chief […]
Posted inNews
The Witches of Hoopeston
Under a sky blackened by the new moon, witches invaded downtown Hoopeston. From as far away as Canada, New York and Colorado, they came wearing black robes festooned with mystic symbols. To celebrate the Pagan holiday Samhain, they feasted on slaughtered animals. Then the Archpriest and High Priestess summoned The Spiritsand channeled otherworldly messages. And […]
Posted inNews
Party lines
After months of planning, weeks of delay, last-minute jockeying and some nasty public bickering, Mayor Tim Davlin finally got his reorganization plan passed on Tuesday by City Council. But it wasn’t pretty. The Democratic mayor’s own vote broke the tie, which, as he pointed out, fell along party lines, despite Ward 1’s Frank Edwards’ repeated […]
Posted inNews
The bitter truth
Correction The testimony of Court Appointed Special Advocate Carol Reynolds was characterized incorrectly in last week’s cover story, “Suffer the Children.” Reynolds agreed with the Court’s ruling that Mary Slover is “depraved” and “unfit,” but disagreed with the Court’s position on visitation. Mary Slover should continue to have supervised visits with Kolten Slover, Reynolds said. […]
Posted inNews
Less point
If you thought you were hearing things when our beloved local news anchor announced a “one-on-one interview” with President George W. Bush, well, obviously, you weren’t. This week, Springfield got a taste of NewsCentral, the “revolutionary news model” created by Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which bought WICS-TV Channel 20 about four years ago. Proudly promoting itself […]
Posted inNews
Judge for yourself
Did Tommy Lynn Sells really kill 10-year-old Joel Kirkpatrick? Or is he just a “serial confessor” trying to inflate his record as a serial killer? Judge for yourself next Thursday night, Oct. 23, when the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project hosts a discussion with Texas crime writer Diane Fanning. Fanning is the author of Through the […]
Posted inNews
Suffer the children
Murder has never been a strong enough word to describe what happened to Karyn Hearn Slover. She was young and beautiful, just 23 and on her way to becoming a model. One fall Friday in 1996, after she got off work at the Decatur Herald & Review, she shopped for a dress, ran some errands, […]
Posted inNews
An issue of fairness
In June, when Don Kliment was named chief of the Springfield Police Department, questions about how his appointment would be perceived by black officers in the racially-charged agency were quickly calmed by members of the Black Guardians Association. Lt. Rickey Davis, vice president of the BGA, in particular spoke out in support of Kliment, saying […]
