The
failure of Illinois State Police to catch a felony conviction of a man who
obtained a Firearms Owner and Identification card, then allegedly killed five
people in Aurora with a legally purchased gun, isn’t the first time a
conviction has slipped past state police.
Gary
Martin, 45, is dead after getting in a shootout with police on Friday, when he
allegedly killed five coworkers at Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora, reportedly during
a meeting where he was being terminated. Another coworker was wounded, police
say, and five officers were hurt in a shootout with Martin, who was shot to
death.
Martin
had a substantial criminal record, including a 1995 felony assault conviction in Mississippi,
police say. He’d been arrested by Aurora police six times, including for incidents
that involved domestic violence.
Felons
aren’t allowed to own guns in Illinois and so the Mississippi conviction by
itself should have prevented Martin from buying a gun. Instead, Illinois State
Police in 2014 issued Martin a Firearm Owner’s and Identification card, which is
required for gun purchases and is issued by police after a background check.
After
obtaining his FOID card in January, 2014, Martin bought a pistol from a gun
dealer. The Mississippi conviction was picked up after
Martin was fingerprinted when he subsequently applied for a concealed weapons
permit. Once state police caught that, his FOID card was revoked. By then, it
was too late. According to police and media reports, Martin used the gun he
purchased in 2014 to kill.
Illinois
State Police did not immediately respond to questions about why Martin was able
to get a FOID card despite being a felon. But it wasn’t the first time that a criminal
has come up clean in a state police check.
In
2016, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation hired
Tashika Miner as a health services investigator even though she was a felon. As
an investigator, she was tasked with conducting investigations in to doctors,
chiropractors and physician’s assistants. Her position gave her access to
patient files and required her to testify in court and in regulatory or
administrative hearings.
Miner
previously had been a caseworker with the state Department of Human Services.
Before that, she was a Chicago police officer for five years. Her days as a cop
ended in 2006, after she was caught up in a drug investigation. According to an inspector general’s report issued in 2017, Miner
obtained confidential information from police databases, including a database
maintained by the FBI, and turned the information over to a street gang leader, who
used it to help determine whether police vehicles were following him and how he
could best hide drug paraphernalia from police. In 2007, Miner pleaded guilty
to federal charges of conspiracy to possess a kilogram or more of heroin, 400
grams or more of fentanyl and at least 50 grams of crack. She got a 10-month
sentence.
None
of that was caught when state police conducted a background check on Miner when
IDFPR hired her: “A search of the files of this bureau made pursuant to the…name
based inquiry submitted by your agency failed to reveal any criminal conviction
for the subject in question,” state police wrote in a response to the
department’s request for background check.
According
to the inspector general, the check conducted by state police didn’t include a
check of federal or out-of-state records. And so Miner passed muster because
she’d been convicted in federal court. State police told the inspector general that the law enforcement agency needed fingerprints to check federal court convictions via
the FBI, and that would have required a fee paid to both the FBI and to the
vendor that operates machinery that takes and records fingerprints.
State
police did not immediately respond to emails asking whether the process that
failed to pick up Miner’s federal conviction was the same as the one that
didn’t spot Martin’s assault conviction before he obtained a FOID card.
Sangamon
County Sheriff Jack Campbell said that sheriffs can object when someone applies
for a concealed weapons permit, but not a FOID card. He said he’d like to see
the system changed so that sheriffs have the same power when someone asks for a
FOID card.
“Absolutely,”
Campbell said. “In a way, they almost go hand-in-hand. We would like to have
the same say-so with regard to a FOID card as with a concealed-carry permit.”
Even so, the state Concealed Carry Licensing Review Board, which determines
whether to sustain objections from sheriffs, has thrown out more than 80
percent of objections lodged by sheriffs with concerns about applicants for
concealed carry licenses.
At
IDFPR, Miner was flagged by a coworker who searched the internet and spotted a
newspaper article about her crimes committed while she was a Chicago cop. According
to the inspector general, the Department of Human Services, where Miner
worked before IDFPR gave her a job, told state investigators that a criminal background
check would not have been done because her job didn’t involve “direct care.”
Miner
disclosed her federal conviction in her employment application, writing “2007,
conspiracy” in the space asking whether she’d been convicted of a criminal
offense. When an IDFPR supervisor who learned about Miner’s conviction told
Susan Gold, the department’s deputy director of statewide enforcement for the
division of public regulation, about the federal court conviction, Gold “told
him there was no problem with Ms. Miner’s employment because she passed a criminal
background check conducted by ISP,” the inspector general reported.
The
inspector general found no fault with Gold or state police. Rather, the inspector general determined that an IDFPR human
resources specialist was guilty of malfeasance for failing to tell anyone about the inconsistency between the ISP criminal history report and the employment application in which Miner disclosed her criminal past and also for not inquiring about the inconsistency. The inspector general also found that IDFPR broke the law by failing to establish a documented review process for evaluating criminal histories of job applicants.
Miner remains on the job at IDFPR. She was paid $55,300 last year.
Contact Bruce Rushton at brushton@illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Feb 14-20, 2019.
