Next to a popcorn machine and hidden behind a pile of boxes is the Texas Thunderbolt, an electric chair purported to have been used in the Lone Star State during the 1930s and 1940s.
On the floor just steps away is an old plastic milk crate, containing a heavy steel ball attached to a chain — just the kind of thing to keep inmates from escaping from prison work camps.
The two items are among thousands of artifacts and display pieces squirreled away in a storage facility under the flight path of Springfield’s Capital Airport.
They are part of a museum devoted to the history of Illinois law enforcement that organizers want to open in the capital city. If all goes according to plan, the museum could be up and running by next spring.
The push to open the museum comes as cops have taken it on the chin in the past year. During the spring legislative session, state lawmakers approved a new law aimed at ending alleged racial profiling by police. And then there was former Gov. George Ryan’s decision last January to empty death row, in part because of a concern that some inmates had ended up there because of illegal police interrogations.
The museum and its myriad displays would tell the story of law enforcement in Illinois from a cop’s perspective.
“I really think this is something people would be interested in because of the history,” says G.A. “Jack” Pecoraro, executive director of the Springfield-based Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police.
On a recent weekday, Pecoraro was poking around the storage facility, showing off pieces of memorabilia that are awaiting a new home.
Along with the electric chair, there’s a death mask of legendary bank robber John Dillinger, who was killed outside Chicago’s Biograph Theater in 1934. In a cluttered office in front of the warehouse, there is a seat from the theater, said to have been the same one Dillinger sat in before his demise.
A statue of a horse, highlighting Chicago’s mounted patrol corps, stands surrounded by boxes of police uniforms from around the world. And there are guns, scores of them, including Prohibition-era Thompson machine guns and firearms fashioned to look like umbrellas.
Most of the exhibits once had a home in Chicago.
From 1973 until 1990, Pecoraro’s father, Joseph, ran the American Police Center and Museum. The facility, which drew 25,000 to 40,000 visitors per year, closed about two years ago after organizers were unable to resolve a dispute over building a new, larger facility near the current Chicago Police Department headquarters.
In its heydey, the Chicago museum welcomed school groups and hosted a parade every year honoring law enforcement personnel. The museum was featured in travel Web sites as a quirky place to view so-called “cop-a-bilia.”
In 2001, Joe Pecoraro — a Chicago police officer for 35 years — approached two Chicago-area state lawmakers in hopes they could secure a state grant to help move the museum south. The two went to then-Gov. Ryan, who seemed amenable to the idea.
But the proposal went nowhere amid a state budget crunch that had started two months earlier with the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
At the same time, however, there was a separate, unrelated push to help the Illinois State Police build a museum honoring their work.
State Rep. Raymond Poe, R-Springfield, was able to win approval of a $100,000 state grant to serve as seed money for the construction of the state police facility.
The initial idea was to put the state police museum somewhere at the Illinois State Fairgrounds.
When Gov. Rod Blagojevich took office, however, he froze millions of dollars in grant money. Funds for the state police museum were among those and it remains unclear whether the governor will ever release the money.
Hoping a unified front could help unfreeze the state grant, Jack Pecoraro has since teamed with the head of the state police effort.
Laimutis “Limey” Nargelenas, a commander of the Illinois State Police under former Gov. James R. Thompson, envisions a wing for local police, one for state police and another for sheriffs. The museum, he says, could trade exhibits with other states.
“Everybody thinks it’s a great idea to capture the importance of law enforcement in Illinois,” Nargelenas says.
Among Nargelenas’s collection is the rope that was used to hang the person who killed the first state trooper.
The state police collection also features guns — troopers used to have to purchase their own — and state police badges. One star is damaged from a bullet.
Although Poe recently said he wanted to keep looking for a site at the fairgrounds, Pecoraro and Nargelenas agree that a spot downtown might get more foot traffic, especially with the eventual opening of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
They toured the old Masonic Temple as well as the First United Methodist Church, but determined both downtown buildings were too large.
Pecoraro says the former Springfield Children’s Museum building on West Washington Street may be a good spot, especially because of the foot traffic that will come once the Lincoln facility opens.
In addition to honoring police slain in the line of duty, Pecoraro says the museum could provide an educational experience for school children. Police dogs could be brought in for demonstrations and the museum could offer classes to help seniors recognize scams, he says.
One display at the museum when it was operating in Chicago, called “The Horror of Drug Addiction,” featured a casket filled with drug paraphernalia. The message: Don’t do drugs.
“It was pretty good on the kids,” says Pecoraro, a former head of the Illinois Secretary of State Police and a top administrator in the Illinois Department of Corrections until last summer.
For now, Pecoraro and Nargelenas are hitting the bricks trying to raise private dollars through corporate contributions and private donations from ex-cops, former state troopers and police unions such as the Fraternal Order of Police.
Pecoraro hopes they can secure enough money to open the museum by the spring of 2004.
“It’s up to Limey and me to get the ball off the ground,” he says.
This article appears in Dec 25-31, 2003.
