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Warning: The following article includes mentions of self-harm.

This is the second in a series of stories. Read the first story here.

CHARLESTON, Ill. – Brice Fritz was naked, strapped down to a chair in a jail cell when a staff member monitoring her via video delivered 80,000 volts of electricity through the stun cuff on her leg.

“I felt like I was being electrocuted,” Fritz told the Illinois Answers Project, recalling the incident at Coles County Jail in 2021. The cuff is a sort of shock collar for humans that the manufacturer describes as a wireless device to control detainees, typically used during court or transport.

Fritz, then 25, had been arrested on heroin and meth charges. She said she was in withdrawal that day, her period had started, she was bleeding, and jail staff did not allow her to shower. 

She was on suicide watch, hitting her head repeatedly onto the ground, when staff put her in the chair with the cuff and stunned her, records show. She said the shock – which lasts five seconds and can leave burn marks – took her breath away and caused her to urinate on herself.

“When they stunned me, I felt like it lasted forever,” Fritz said. A standard police Taser, by comparison, issues 50,000 volts, and dog collars just a fraction of that. “I felt exposed and violated.”

Fritz is not alone. Other people endured similar treatment in the jail that year in this small eastern Illinois county.

A recent Illinois Answers Project investigation into the use of restraint chairs statewide found county jails used the devices more than a thousand times per year from 2019 to 2023. The investigation also identified a number of extreme incidents at Coles County Jail, which restrained people in chairs more than 200 times during that period and continues to use the device.

In multiple incidents, staff shocked someone with a stun cuff right before restraining them or right after releasing them. In others, staff kept a cuff on a restrained person but did not activate it. At least one other person was shocked with a cuff while restrained, one was stunned with a Taser while restrained, and one was stunned with a Taser while partially restrained.

In 2020, the jail restrained a man in a chair for the better part of 30 hours, until his hands and feet swelled, went cold and turned purple.

What’s more, Illinois Answers found Coles County failed to report some uses of a restraint chair to the state unit charged with overseeing jails.

The current sheriff, Kent Martin, attributes the issues to a vacuum of leadership under former Sheriff James Rankin, who resigned unexpectedly in early 2022 after eight years. Martin also points to the lack of medical and mental health resources both in and outside the jail.

At least two advocacy groups received complaints about Coles County Jail in 2020 and 2021 and issued reports finding the jail violated its own policies on restraint chairs and endangered people with disabilities. One warned the jail that its actions were unconstitutional.

In response, under Rankin’s leadership, the jail stopped using stun cuffs and pledged reform. Years later, Martin says he’s committed to those reforms. But an Illinois Answers investigation found that the jail has yet to live up to those promises.

“Without continued oversight, there just hasn’t been ongoing attention to these issues,” said Amanda Antholt, a managing attorney with Equip for Equality, a Chicago-based nonprofit watchdog.

Report found ‘grossly improper’ use of stun cuffs

In 2021, Equip for Equality investigated a complaint about Coles County Jail and concluded that staff responded to mental and behavioral health crises with excessive force and used restraint and seclusion as punishments in ways that posed “significant risk of harm,” according to a previously unpublished report obtained by Illinois Answers.

The nonprofit, which litigates civil rights cases, is mandated under federal law to monitor for abuse and neglect at Illinois facilities where there are people with disabilities, including mental illness. The group declined to say who filed the complaint, which is not public.

The group’s report – which included a site visit, interviews and a review of records – identified “routine uses of the restraint chairs as a control and punishment technique.” Due in part to the high ratio of detainees to officers, staff regularly used the chair in non-emergency situations, such as when inmates talked back, yelled or banged on a door, the report found.

“Detainees are restrained for periods in excess of therapeutic or security needs,” the report found. “That detainees are no longer a threat to themselves or others is evidenced by the detainee being able to leave the restraint chair to go to the toilet or being partially released to eat or drink.”

Daniel Lee Parks, 31, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Coles County officials in 2019, alleging he was restrained in a chair for three days. Parks, who has diagnosed mental illness and now receives treatment, said he was not properly medicated at the time.

“Instead of them trying to assist me, they would place me into a restraint chair,” Parks said, adding, “That would typically just get me more angrier.”

Parks settled his lawsuit for $1,000 after he couldn’t find an attorney, records show. Staff also placed a stun cuff on Parks at least once and shocked him with a Taser while trying to restrain him two other times, records show.

That fit a pattern. Equip for Equality found staff often deployed a Taser while forcing someone into a chair, attached a stun cuff “as an additional means of control or punishment,” and then “threatened” or “violently shocked” them with the cuff while restrained. The group received reports of detainees urinating, losing consciousness or having a seizure after being stunned.

Stun cuff policies posted online by the manufacturer advise staff to “use extreme caution and avoid standing near the suspect during its activation” and to take pictures of any subsequent burns.

From 2014 to 2021, the jail – with an average daily population of 100 detainees in that time – activated the devices more than 1,200 times, according to log entries generated each time a cuff is deployed, obtained by Illinois Answers. It is unclear how many of those incidents happened while someone was restrained.

Jail staff told Equip for Equality they used the devices on people in chairs when detainees attempted to loosen or remove straps, flip the chair or hit their head on the wall or furniture. “All these reasons indicate that the restraint chair is being used for inappropriate purposes and further mental health interventions are required,” the report concluded.

The group noted that being “deliberately indifferent to a substantial risk of serious harm” violates the detainee’s constitutional rights; and, restraining a person with mental illness, rather than finding appropriate treatment, may violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In Fritz’s case, staff placed the stun cuff on her left calf “in light of her continued attempts to free herself” from the chair, a county incident report states. Staff shocked her once, the report says.

More than an hour-and-a-half later, staff released Fritz from the chair and then removed the cuff, records show. She said she had marks from the electrodes on her leg for months. In its required report to the state, the jail detailed use of the chair but did not mention the stun cuff.

A month later, staff restrained a man in his 40s who had been hitting his head on the wall, and they placed a stun cuff on his leg. The man was rocking the chair back and forth and screaming “help me” when staff shocked him, records show. He was released an hour-and-a-half later.

Civil rights advocates, informed of the incidents by Illinois Answers, described the practice as torture. Daniel Sheline, president of the Illinois Correctional Association, the local chapter of the national trade association and accrediting body, called it “punishment.”

While a “large percentage” of the jail's population had uncontrolled and worsening symptoms of mental illness and were experiencing drug and alcohol withdrawal, the jail had a “near-complete lack of psychiatric care” and no treatment for people in withdrawal, the Equip for Equality report found.

At the time, the jail contracted with Advanced Correctional Healthcare to provide a mental health professional for six hours per week. The report found the mental health professional did not routinely screen detainees for mental illness at booking, and even those with prior mental health treatment history at the jail were not identified for follow-up.

One person who disclosed their diagnoses of serious psychiatric conditions was not seen for over a month, and no psychiatric medications were prescribed for over two months even though the individual was “experiencing active delusions,” the report found.

Jessica Young, president and CEO of Advanced Correctional Healthcare, said she disagreed with some of the report’s findings. She said detainees are not required to be screened by a mental health provider during intake and that medical providers can use their discretion in issuing medications and determining next steps.

“The situation in Coles County has changed significantly since 2021 and numerous changes and improvements have been made,” she said.

The report also found jail staff routinely denied detainees access to previously prescribed medications for anxiety, sleep, and substance abuse disorders. Jail staff placed people in observation cells “for days to weeks at a time” where they had no access to water and “nowhere to relieve themselves except to urinate or defecate on the floor,” the report found.

Cory Barnes, 47, was restrained for more than seven-and-a-half hours in 2020 after he was arrested on charges of driving on a revoked license and possession of meth. Barnes said he’s struggled with mental illness since he was a boy and has long grappled with addiction. He has diagnosed bipolar disorder and a history of self-harm.

He refused to cooperate when officers were trying to move him from one cell to another, so they Tased him and put him in the chair. He said he sat for hours in his own urine, experienced cramps and screamed in pain.

“It's a special kind of hell,” he said.

Restrained 30 hours, man’s hands and feet go cold

In 2020, Coles County Jail restrained a man for nearly 30 hours, records show.

That March, deputies from a neighboring county brought him in on suspicion of disorderly conduct, resisting and obstructing an officer, and attempting to disarm an officer, according to records. He stared at the wall for three hours before banging his head on it, leaving a bloodstain, records show. That’s when staff restrained him in the chair.

One of the officers texted the jail administrator and nurse to let them know what had happened, according to the reports. When officers tried to release the man later, he began hitting his head again, and the officers again restrained him, the reports said.

Staff attempted to remove him from the chair several times over the course of the next day, but he gave staff conflicting messages, saying he wished to be restrained and released. He rocked the chair back and forth and displayed “odd behavior,” the officers wrote.

When correctional officers checked on him the following morning, one observed that his “hands and feet were swollen and a purplish color.” Another said his hands “did not feel as warm as they should.” Jail staff then called the neighboring county to pick him up, and officers took the man to a nearby jail.

Dr. Marc Stern, who helped author guidelines for correctional healthcare and has monitored correctional facilities for the DOJ, said body tissues without circulation can be permanently damaged in approximately two hours and can die in four to six. If someone completely loses circulation for a few hours, he said, “the risk is losing your hands and feet.”

Following the incident, the Human Rights Authority of the Illinois Guardianship and Advocacy Commission, a state agency that advocates for people with disabilities, received a complaint alleging Coles County Jail staff do not follow policies on the use of restraints and do not notify medical staff when a patient is restrained.

It’s unclear who filed the complaint. The HRA denied a public records request for a copy of the complaint, and the man who was restrained and his family told Illinois Answers they did not file it.

The HRA interviewed jail employees, reviewed practices and policies and determined the jail violated state standards for county jails. Investigators reviewed the logs that staff use to document when they check on restrained people and allow them to stretch. The HRA found numerous gaps in the logs – up to six hours.

The unit charged with monitoring jails’ compliance – the Jail and Detention Standards Unit within the Illinois Department of Corrections – referenced the 30-hour incident in its annual inspection report, concluding jail staff are “relying on their own assessment of a detainee’s medical and mental health needs without seeking the review of a physician or mental health professional.”

The man who was restrained initially spoke with Illinois Answers but ultimately declined to be named for this story. His family, meanwhile, remains upset.

“He didn’t deserve that,” said his mother, who Illinois Answers is not identifying to protect her son’s identity. “Who do we hold responsible?”

Stun cuffs in storage after reforms recommended

Following the investigations, the advocacy groups recommended reforms to Coles County Jail.

The Human Rights Authority recommended Coles County re-train staff on the use of restraint chairs and how to check on restrained people; develop a policy on how to observe potentially suicidal inmates; and, date any new or updated polices to track changes.

Teresa Parks, director of the HRA, said the agency was “satisfied” with the response and negotiations with the jail following its investigation, so it did not refer the matter to the Jail and Detention Standards Unit for enforcement.

The jail declined to make its response public, which is allowed, Parks said. She did not detail the county’s response.

The following year, in 2021, Equip for Equality recommended the jail prohibit the use of stun cuffs, increase mental health staff, revise health screening protocols, curtail use of restraint chairs and limit their use to the shortest duration possible, among other reforms. The report said many of the jail’s challenges appear linked to “insufficient staffing levels – clinical and correctional – and deficiencies in the physical space.”

Antholt, of Equip for Equality, said the sheriff's department took “really quick action on important steps,” such as stopping the use of stun cuffs, which the sheriff says are now in storage.

The jail pledged to retrain staff and improve mental health care, she said. Staff showed investigators architectural plans for a medical observation area in the facility, and, in initial follow-ups, reported a decline in use of force.

“That's what they reported back to us, and those were all really, really good steps, I think, if they were followed through on,” Antholt said.

Equip for Equality has not returned to Coles County Jail since mid-2022.

Some action, but little progress

Since then, the jail has taken action on some recommendations but failed to make progress on others amid a change in leadership, Illinois Answers found.

Many of the most extreme incidents took place under the tenure of former Sheriff Rankin, who was elected in 2014 and resigned in early 2022, months before his term ended. At least nine other employees also left the department that year.

Martin was elected and took office in late 2022. He said he was unaware of the advocacy groups’ reports when first questioned by Illinois Answers.

Martin said that Rankin was frequently absent, so staff stopped soliciting his input and took matters into their own hands.

“There was kind of a void there in leadership,” Martin said, adding, “There wasn't necessarily as much oversight as there should have been.”

Rankin did not respond to numerous requests for comment by phone, email and mail.

Martin said Coles County Jail staff may have been re-trained on the use of restraint chairs after the reports, but his office could provide no documentation.

In response to the HRA’s recommendation from late 2020, the jail created a policy specifically focused on how to observe possibly suicidal detainees, records show. But that didn’t happen until this past April. Previously, the jail had a general policy on inmate medical care that mentioned “suicide risk screening.”

The department has also added questions about mental health to intake and medical screening and plans to adopt a policy requiring mental health screening within two weeks of admission, he said. Sheline, of the Illinois Correctional Association, said it’s best practice for inmates to receive an initial mental health and medical screening upon admission.

Meanwhile, there’s been no new construction in the jail, and plans for a remodel are ongoing, which Antholt called “disappointing.” The remodel would include 10 double-occupancy medical cells, a shower area, a nurses exam area, and an area for corrections officers, Martin said.

The jail’s initial plans for a remodel were estimated at $792,000, records show. But bids for the project came in much higher, Martin said, so he has narrowed the plan, put out a new call for bids, and is looking for more money to “start the project.”

In the meantime, he said the jail has been using previously existing cells as “medical observation areas that are equipped with a toilet, in-cell camera, sink, and shower.”

In an April interview, Martin said the jail still only had a mental health professional for six hours per week, although he recently budgeted to bump that up to 12 hours.

“When they are here, they're overburdened,” he said, adding that one inmate’s crisis can eat up most of the professional’s time.

The jail used to have a padded cell where staff would put someone in crisis, but the padding degraded and became unusable, he said. Martin said he is researching options on converting an existing cell into a padded cell and hopes to include a request for one in the next fiscal year budget.

“Without having a cash cow or a staffing explosion, I'm not sure what the best way is to handle that, frankly,” Martin said. “I think a padded cell may be helpful, so we could at least have a way to keep them from slamming their head into the concrete wall or the steel door, which really the only way we have right now for that is that chair.”

Reports missing as restraints continue

Even under new leadership, jail staff failed to report some restraint chair incidents to the Jail and Detention Standards Unit – the group within the Illinois Department of Corrections that monitors jails’ compliance with state standards.

Illinois Answers reviewed all reports submitted to the state but found no evidence showing that Coles County Jail staff submitted reports to the unit for more than a quarter of all incidents from 2019 through 2023, as required by administrative code.

Martin said he believes his staff submitted the reports to the state but may have misfiled them.

While the jail’s reporting to the state improved during the five-year period, there was still no evidence that multiple incidents last year were reported.

When the state did receive reports from the county, it’s unclear if anyone contacted the jail for follow-up or was aware of the improper use of restraint chairs and stun cuffs.

The IDOC said in an email that the state unit “makes every effort to ensure reports are reviewed individually and handled dependent on its content” and suggests improvements.

Brief mentions in the state’s annual inspection reports in 2020 and 2021 indicate the unit knew of the 30-hour incident and that the jail stopped using stun cuffs.

These same reports, along with the 2022 report, also cited the jail for not complying with state standards, finding insufficient staffing, officers not regularly checking on detainees, and problems with cell conditions and admission procedures. In 2023, the jail got a clean review.

Meanwhile, staff continued to restrain people in chairs dozens of times a year even after the advocacy groups’ reports. Staff used a chair at least 40 times in 2022 and 33 times in 2023, according to an Illinois Answers review of county records.

“For that small of a population to have that number of usages, it's really concerning,” Antholt said.

Records show one person was restrained for half a day in late 2022, and, the following year, one person was restrained for more than six hours and another for nearly 11 hours.

A way forward for Coles County

Martin said he’s trying to professionalize and modernize the department and promote transparency.

He said he has emphasized with staff the importance of documentation and record-keeping. He implemented new software to electronically track cell checks and policy revisions, and he plans to send “daily training bulletins” to quiz his staff.

The department has also established a mentorship program with people from religious groups and a recovery program with a treatment center to address substance abuse issues.

In response to questions from Illinois Answers, Martin said that the department added restraint training to all quarterly training dates. Previously, restraint chair training “wasn't as structured,” he said.

So far in 2024, jail staff have used the restraint chair at least 13 times and restrained one person at least four times, Martin said. That’s fewer instances at this point in the year than in prior years.

Asked why, Martin suggested that the state law eliminating cash bail beginning last September reduced the jail population and made it more manageable.

In 2021, the jail had 20 correctional officers and an average daily population of approximately 100 detainees, according to the county. Now, the jail has 21 correctional officers and a population closer to 78, the county said.

Martin said his jail and community face steep challenges. Part of the problem, he said, is that Coles County, a rural region in Central Illinois with a high poverty rate, generally lacks access to health care.

“It's frustrating that we're trying to do the best we can with what we have,” Martin said, “But the system or the state can do better.”

The Illinois Answers Project is interested in hearing from people who have been restrained in chairs. Reach out to reporter Grace Hauck at ghauck@illinoisanswers.org. Interested in localizing this story? Contact Mumina Mohamud at mmohamud@bettergov.org.

Edited by Rachel Aretakis and Casey Toner. Contributing: Cam Rodriguez and Laura Stewart, Illinois Answers Project. Database fact checking by Audrey Azzo, Doris Alvarez and John Volk.

Note on the methodology: There’s no clear definition of what constitutes a separate versus ongoing restraint chair “incident” in Illinois, where people are typically restrained in repeated two-hour blocks. For the purposes of this data collection and analysis, Illinois Answers considered an incident to be ongoing if someone was held continuously in a chair, or if they were only given brief and periodic breaks over a long period of restraint. In these cases, county jails often identified the case with a unique incident number, kept an ongoing observation log, and submitted a single, all-encompassing report to the state. Illinois Answers considered an incident as separate if someone was released from a chair for a prolonged period of time before being restrained again. In these cases, county jails often designated separate incident numbers, logs, and reports.

This story was made possible by a grant from The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation to the Illinois Answers Project.

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Warning: The following article includes mentions of self-harm and profanity.

This is the first in a series of stories.

McHENRY, Ill. – Vernon L. Brooks Jr. was distraught.

Forced into a chair in a jail cell with a black mesh hood over his head, he panicked as he felt officers tighten straps like tourniquets around his wrists and restrain his ankles and chest.

When he screamed he couldn’t breathe, officers removed the hood but kept him restrained for three and a half hours, unable to move. He felt like his circulation was cut off, and he lost feeling in his hands – a numbness he said persisted months afterward.

Brooks had been on a date with his wife at a local haunt that night when he was arrested for what he says was ultimately a paperwork mistake. Believing he was being unjustly detained, he yelled and cursed at officers who put him in a restraint chair at the county jail.

While the officers say Brooks resisted, fought and threatened them, Brooks disagrees with the characterization and says the use of a restraint chair was unwarranted, traumatizing and inhumane. 

It’s not an uncommon experience.

A nine-month investigation by the Illinois Answers Project found county jails in the state restrain people in chairs on average more than 1,000 times a year, often in ways that violate their own policies and last longer than recommended by leading standards and manufacturer guidelines, causing physical injuries and psychological trauma to people commonly grappling with mental illness and addiction.

While Brooks’ case is not the most extreme incident identified by Illinois Answers, it’s a prime example of the now-normalized practice happening daily in jails, which hold people who have been arrested on suspicion of a crime but have not yet been convicted.

A year-and-a-half later, the former Navy sailor is still seeing a neurologist for nerve damage in his wrists and hands through Veterans Affairs. He takes prescription medication for it twice daily. He sleeps with a brace emblazoned with the American flag on his right wrist.

A longtime artist, Brooks has only recently started drawing again. He frequently drops things. His hands often tingle, triggering flashbacks of that night.

And he’s seeking justice.

“I didn’t deserve to be treated like this,” said Brooks, 57, who became emotional as he described the experience and had to step out of the room a few times.

Experts would agree.

Human rights groups have long decried the use of restraint chairs in American jails and prisons, where they say the device is prone to misuse and abuse that is akin to torture. The United Nations Committee Against Torture has urged U.S. officials to abolish the chairs, and Amnesty International has said inadequate training and supervision of their use has caused pain, injury and even death. The same brand of chair used in many Illinois jails was also used at Guantánamo Bay.

Spurred by Brooks’ account, the Illinois Answers Project undertook the first known accounting of the use of restraint chairs in adult county jails across the state. Illinois Answers acquired thousands of county and state records, reviewed jail policies, spoke with sheriffs and jail administrators, consulted corrections and mental health experts, and interviewed dozens of people restrained in chairs.

The investigation revealed that, from 2019 to 2023: 

• Statewide, staff restrained someone in a chair nearly every day, totaling more than 5,500 incidents, which is likely an undercount. The people restrained ranged in age from 18 to at least 70, with the exception of at least four minors, ages 12, 13, 16 and 17. They were booked on charges ranging from disorderly conduct and traffic offenses to murder. While that’s a small percentage of all people booked into jail, the figure surprised several experts, who said it may indicate that staff use the chairs in non-emergency situations.
• State standards, last updated a decade ago, don’t specify a limit on how long someone may be restrained. County policies typically limit duration to two hours at a time. But, in many cases, staff restrained people for far longer. Some were restrained repeatedly for days on end – up to a week – with the exception of periodic breaks. In many cases, staff failed to regularly log checks of people restrained, and some people did not immediately receive medical attention – if at all.
• Some people were restrained numerous times, which experts say may indicate the chair is used as punishment or in lieu of treatment. For example, one man was put in a chair more than 40 times in a little over a year. In many cases, staff used the device to deal with people who were in withdrawal or trying to harm themselves, often in ways that detainees described as punishment and torture.
• In hundreds of cases, staff used a stun gun, Taser or pepper spray in the process of restraining detainees. In hundreds more, staff placed some form of spit hood or mask over their head. In at least one county, people were shocked while restrained with a stun cuff affixed to their leg, sending 80,000 volts of electricity through their body in what legal advocates say is blatant civil rights violation.
• What’s more, many jails failed to report using a chair to the state unit charged with monitoring them, as required by administrative code. For more than 1,700 incidents, neither the state nor county could provide a copy of such a report. After receiving inquiries from Illinois Answers, multiple counties said they began reporting incidents to the state.
• And even when reports are made, it’s unclear how actively the state unit reviews the forms submitted by jails. The six-person unit does not appear to enter or track data from the forms, which also contain information on overdoses, fires, fights and more – masking the scope of an array of issues inside Illinois jails.

The people restrained in chairs included veterans, young men and women struggling with addiction, people who banged on their cell because they wanted a shower or phone call. Many were naked. Some urinated or defecated on themselves. Some saw their hands and feet swell, go cold and turn purple. Some strained against the straps and bled.

Many are haunted by nightmares years later.

County sheriffs and jail administrators, meanwhile, claim staff use the chairs as a last resort in emergency situations when detainees are a danger to themselves, others or property – and never as a disciplinary tool. Some are facing a staffing crisis and lack of resources to properly care for detainees with mental health and substance abuse issues, and they say the chair is the safest alternative to pacify an agitated person in the absence of clinical care. But multiple others, citing concerns about injuries and liability, have stopped using the devices altogether.

By and large, the practice has continued under local leadership of county jails with vague policies, limited oversight, and, in some cases, paltry documentation. And at one jail where two advocacy agencies investigated complaints about the treatment of people with disabilities, Illinois Answers found the jail has failed to live up to a number of promised reforms.

Strapped to a chair like an ‘animal’

Brooks’ ordeal began in November 2020, when he slammed a door in an 120-year-old apartment building, causing a piece of plaster to fall off the wall. He was charged with one count of criminal damage to property less than $300 and sentenced to community service.

Brooks completed his 15 hours at a nearby church, records show. But the pastor never submitted his paperwork. Records indicate Brooks also missed a court appearance and failed to pay a fine. In November 2022, unbeknownst to him, a warrant was issued for his arrest.

That’s why, on a Friday night one month later, Brooks was confused when he was arrested. Brooks, a Black man, believed he had been targeted because of his race.

He and his wife, Mary, were leaving a video gambling cafe near their home when McHenry Police responded to a call of an “unwanted subject” and discovered Brooks had a warrant. (The cafe owner did not respond to questions about why someone called the police.) 

“Why am I being arrested?” Brooks asked when he arrived at McHenry County Jail, according to one report. Brooks, who had been drinking, was not suspected of using drugs, the report said. Officers showed Brooks the warrant, and he temporarily calmed down and got out of the car.

But once in the intake area, Brooks “became more agitated and verbally abusive.” Officers’ reports say Brooks resisted, threatened them, called them racists, refused to complete the intake process, and tried to bite and spit.

In an interview with Illinois Answers, Brooks acknowledged he was upset but said he didn’t threaten or try to spit at or bite officers. Handcuffed and surrounded by five officers, Brooks said he wasn’t a threat. The sheriff’s office denied Brooks and reporters access to video of the incident, citing security concerns.

According to an officer’s report, officers had completed a pat search and were “trying to move inmate Brooks into a better position” to “safely remove his handstraints and exit the cell” when the sergeant decided to put Brooks in the chair. Officers placed a spit hood on Brooks’ head and restrained him “without much difficulty.” Brooks said they then removed the hood.

Brooks, who had previously undergone surgeries on his knee and right shoulder and wrist, said he was in pain.

“They left my ass strapped there like a f— animal,” Brooks said.

An ‘excruciatingly painful’ experience

Forced into a single position, a person restrained in a chair faces potentially serious health risks, especially if they have underlying conditions. A prolonged lack of movement can slow blood flow, cause blockages and even be fatal. The use of a chair can also cause anger, resentment, humiliation and psychological distress.

Restraint chairs have been linked to more than 50 deaths in the United States since the late 1990s, according to investigations by The Marshall Project and USA TODAY. The deaths have been tied to blood clots, suffocation and overdoses that went untreated while restrained. People have also died after jail staff Tased or pepper sprayed them while restrained or failed to provide food, water and medication.

In 2015, a man at Fayette County Jail developed blood clots in his lungs after eight continuous hours in a chair, according to a report from the Human Rights Authority of the Illinois Guardianship and Advocacy Commission, a semi-independent state agency that advocates for people with disabilities. The man, diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was restrained repeatedly, for up to 11 hours in one sitting. Hospital staff later discovered scabs on his buttocks from ulcers.

“You need to use common sense,” said Dr. Marc Stern, an expert in correctional health care who helped write the National Commission on Correctional Health Care Standards. “How long can you let somebody sit on one spot until they get sore? And if you’re talking about a restraint chair that’s got a hard bottom, it doesn’t take more than a few hours for there to start to be damage.”

Straps placed incorrectly or too tightly can restrict breathing and cut off circulation. An investigation published last year by the nonprofit Washington Lawyers’ Committee found people at the federal prison in Thomson, Illinois, were restrained with the straps “intentionally applied to cut into people’s skin and to force their elbows and wrists into uncomfortable positions that cause shaking, numbness and even temporary paralysis.”

Dustin Kolczak, 32, recalled his hands swelling up to “double the size” after being restrained for an “excruciatingly painful” four hours at Tazewell County Jail. He filed a federal civil rights suit in 2019 alleging officers stripped off his clothes, and then handcuffed, restrained and Tased him. The jail settled for $2,500 and sent Kolczak a check made out for “bodily injury.” The county denied a public records request for video of the event, citing security concerns.

Just last year, a federal judge in Georgia sentenced a former sheriff to 18 months in federal prison for violating the civil rights of six pre-trial detainees at a county jail by ordering the detainees to be strapped into chairs for hours without justification, causing some of their wrists to bleed and scar.

In recent years, many U.S. jurisdictions have restricted or discontinued the use of restraint chairs, according to a 2020 report from the nonprofit Disability Rights California. Utah and Florida have reportedly banned or partially banned their use in correctional facilities, and agencies in Vermont, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana and Iowa restrict their use, the report states.

“These are really dangerous, potentially dangerous devices that are highly regulated in health care settings, which have a lot of backup safety provisions should things go wrong,” said Pamila Lew, a senior attorney with Disability Rights California. “And it’s startling that, in a jail context, there really seem to be relatively few safeguards around their use.”

Hours, days strapped to a chair

Safety Restraint Chair Inc., which makes the chairs used by many Illinois jails, advises that detainees should not be left in a chair for more than two hours. “This time limit was established to allow for the detainee to calm down, and if needed it allows for the correctional staff to seek medical or psychological help for the detainee,” the company website states.

The time may only be extended under medical supervision and must not exceed eight hours, even with regular stretching, the company states. It does not recommend anyone be left in the chair for more than 10 hours total.

In Illinois, most county jail policies require staff to check on restrained detainees at 15- or 30-minute intervals and give them breaks every two hours to stretch, use the bathroom or drink water. Oftentimes, staff restrain people for far longer than two hours.

Over the five-year period and 5,500 known incidents analyzed by Illinois Answers, people were restrained for two hours or less at least 1,800 times. In at least 1,300 cases, people were ultimately released more than two hours after they were initially restrained.

In some of those cases, staff released someone for a brief break, restrained them again, and restarted the clock for another two hours. In others, staff attempted to release someone but changed course, deciding the detainee was still a danger to themselves or others. In other cases, staff deemed it was not safe to try to release someone or a detainee refused to leave a chair.

Specifically, the investigation found: 

• at least 400 incidents exceeding four hours,
• at least 100 incidents exceeding eight hours,
• at least 70 incidents exceeding 10 hours,
• nearly 50 incidents exceeding 12 hours,
• nearly 20 incidents exceeding 20 hours.

For context, the Justice Department previously found a Pennsylvania prison unconstitutionally used prolonged isolation on prisoners with serious mental illness, including “cruel and unnecessary” incidents where people were held in restraint chairs for close to 20 hours.

“Restraining people may have a place in every system for a few minutes to an hour, but there’s no excuse for keeping people in restraints for hours and hours and hours, let alone days,” said Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, a nonprofit legal clinic in Chicago.

Many of those detainees held for the longest periods had diagnosed mental illnesses or had expressed suicidal ideation, according to an Illinois Answers review of records. Most of the longest incidents happened in Madison County, outside St. Louis, and Peoria County in Central Illinois, where people were restrained for the better part of days. 

In Madison County in 2019, a man who had threatened self-harm was restrained for the better part of 37 hours. During that time, he was released from the chair periodically to use the restroom, walk, eat and drink water, according to the jail’s log. But he also refused some offers to be released for a break. Eventually, the man asked to be released “due to his feet being swollen,” records show. The county said they had no record of any medical assessment during that time.

“You're only supposed to be in there for as long as it takes to control the situation,” said Michele Deitch, who helped draft the American Bar Association’s Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners, adding, “And if the person has just gotten up and stretched their legs or whatever, and they're not acting out anymore, then there's no reason to put them back in the chair.”

In Randolph County in 2022, a man who was beating on a door was restrained for more than 25 hours, with periodic breaks to drink water and use the bathroom, records show. Asked by Illinois Answers, the county could not provide a record showing he ever received medical attention and said they don’t typically have a nurse staffed on the weekend.

In one extreme case in Franklin County, Travis Braden returned from the hospital after swallowing a piece of metal and was restrained for his “own safety” at least 29 times over the course of four days in 2022, for a cumulative period of at least 50 hours, according to county reports and handwritten logs. He was given periodic breaks for water, food and to use the bathroom, records show.

Braden filed a federal civil rights lawsuit that is ongoing. He is in custody at a state inpatient treatment center for people with severe mental illness. In a handwritten letter to Illinois Answers, he described the restraint as torture.

“I have horror nightmares about it of which I’m still being treated for today,” Braden wrote. He added: “I want these chairs removed from the jails or for more controlled environments on safety and policy followed.”

What’s more, in more than 1,000 incidents, it’s unclear how long someone was restrained because staff never documented when the detainee was released, as required by most county policies. Asked about the missing information, one county official said the release time “was inadvertently left off of the restraint chair log.” Another noted it “should have been in the report.”

Illinois jail standards say little about restraint chairs

The Illinois County Jail Standards, which establish minimum rules for how to run a jail and treat detainees, say little about the use of restraint chairs and largely defer to a jail's own policy, which vary widely.

The standards require county jails to use restraints only as a last resort, to document the use of restraints, to provide detainees with a medical exam and appropriate treatment “immediately after security control has been gained,” and to review each case at least once every 24 hours to determine the necessity for restraints.

Yet some Illinois county jails are not following standards. In many cases, staff used the chair as an immediate response and did not promptly provide detainees with a medical exam or treatment.

And in one county – Cumberland – staff never recorded when someone was restrained in a chair in the five-year period analyzed by Illinois Answers. In October, the county approved a restraint chair policy that requires staff to create an incident report and developed a form to log the amount of time someone spends in a chair.

Compared to the Illinois standards, a number of bodies offer clearer guidance on the use of restraint chairs, including the accrediting organizations American Correctional Association and National Commission on Correctional Health Care, which sets a 12-hour cap on restraint. But just six Illinois jails are accredited by the ACA, and it was unclear how many are accredited by the NCCHC.

Lew, of Disability Rights California, said the Illinois standards “seem very cursory and general and do not provide any timelines or guardrails against unreasonable use.” A bipartisan legislative oversight committee last reviewed an Illinois Department of Corrections amendment to the standards in 2014.

California’s standards, by contrast, set a higher bar. Lew said the state revised its rules after Andrew Holland, 36, was restrained in a chair at a jail for 46 hours straight and died from a blood clot 45 minutes after he was released. Lew served on the committee for the revisions in 2019.

Now, California requires jails to conduct “continuous direct visual observation” at least twice every 30 minutes, review the use of restraint at least every hour, obtain a medical opinion within one hour, complete a medical assessment within four hours, and take the person to a medical facility after eight hours.

The standards also require staff to document the duration of restraint and record the incident on video “unless exigent circumstances prevent staff from doing so.” In no case, the standards say, should restraints be used “as a substitute for treatment.”

Some California counties even limit the use of a restraint chair to two hours within a 24-hour period, according to Disability Rights California.

Meanwhile, the Illinois standards require jails to report the use of a restraint chair as an “extraordinary and unusual occurrence” to the Jail and Detention Standards Unit within IDOC, which annually audits all 92 county jails and oversees their compliance with state standards.

But for more than 1,700 known uses of a restraint chair detailed in jail reports, neither the county nor the state unit could provide records showing an “extraordinary and unusual occurrences” report was made to the state, Illinois Answers found. That includes 15 incidents of prolonged restraint in which someone was ultimately released more than 10 hours after they were initially restrained.

“It doesn't surprise me at all that counties are not reporting this stuff because really there's no consequence for not doing so,” said Mills, of Uptown People’s Law Center.

Per Illinois statute, if a facility does not meet standards, IDOC is supposed to notify the county board and sheriff and, after six months, can petition for a court order requiring a facility to comply. It’s unclear if that ever happened.

Some jails said they were unaware of the reporting requirement and never filled out the forms. One sergeant said the topic was never covered during training. Another said he believed the reports were unnecessary for the “mere use of the restraint chair.” Many more counties have a policy that requires reporting of incidents to the state but failed to report specific cases.

“It just makes me think, if those reports are missing, what else is missing?” said Daniel Sheline, president of the Illinois Correctional Association, the local chapter of the national trade association and accrediting body that promotes implementing agency standards. “Are they even documenting some of these things at their end, let alone reporting up to the state agency that governs them?”

Sheriffs and jail administrators who submitted reports said they don’t know what happens to the records. The IDOC said the state unit “makes every effort to ensure reports are reviewed individually and handled dependent on its content” and offers suggestions for improvement.

The revelation also raises questions about the quality of the unit’s annual inspections. An Illinois Answers review of inspection reports from last year found that, for all jails, inspectors checked a box indicating staff were properly reporting “extraordinary and unusual occurrences,” even when many were not.

“The fact that the sole oversight authority over the jails is the prison system is itself concerning,” said Amanda Antholt, a managing attorney at Equip for Equality, a federally-mandated nonprofit watchdog that monitors for abuse and neglect of people with disabilities.

The IDOC repeatedly declined to comment on the investigation’s findings. Top department officials also ignored a reporter’s direct outreach.

Why county jails use restraint chairs

Restraint chairs are used widely in Illinois. Nearly all jails possess at least one, and most used one sometime in the five-year period analyzed by Illinois Answers.

Jails use the chairs for many reasons. Staff often restrain people as they’re coming into jail, especially when detainees refuse to comply with booking procedures, are intoxicated, belligerent, fighting staff or threatening people.

In other cases, staff restrain people who are damaging property, such as breaking a sprinkler, ripping wiring out from a phone, throwing objects, or flooding a cell by clogging a toilet. In some cases, staff use chairs to transport people within the jail or to court.

Staff also restrained people who became combative because they believed they were being denied services – such as access to a phone call, preacher, mattress or shower – or were required to remove clothing, shoes or jewelry, especially wedding rings.

Some jail staff use restraint chairs after exhausting all other options, such as placing someone in a safety smock, observation cell, padded handcuffs or padded cell. Others quickly jump to using a chair.

“It's a very difficult job, for one, that we do. We don't need to make it more difficult on ourselves by using the restraint chair as a device it’s not intended for,” Sheline said. “We should be limiting how often they’re used, how long they're used.”

Nine Illinois county jails said they don’t possess any form of restraint chair, and several stopped using the chairs in recent years, citing concerns about injuries, a lack of policy, inadequate training, and chairs falling apart over time.

“There is too much potential for abuse with them,” wrote Stacey Wood, executive assistant with the Christian County Sheriff’s Department, which stopped using its chair three years ago.

Other jails say they need restraint chairs because they don’t have any better options when people are in crisis – especially when detainees are grappling with mental health and substance abuse issues. Sheriffs and jail administrators say they have a duty to care for detainees and need to prevent someone from harming themselves at all costs.

In the forms submitted by jails to the state after using a chair, staff in numerous counties indicated the need for improved screening procedures, increased counseling hours, padded cells, faster response time with emergency medication, and full-time mental health and medical professionals on site.

"Open more mental health hospitals and take these individuals there instead of jail to get the help that they truly deserve," Tazewell County Deputy Jail Superintendent Mike Harper wrote on one form.

Sheline, who has worked in corrections for over two decades, said he’s seen a rise in mental health crises and self-harm inside jails in the last 10 to 15 years. In that time, Illinois has closed many mental health facilities, and it takes longer to get people who have been deemed unfit for trial a bed at an Illinois Department of Human Services facility, he said.

In 2022, multiple sheriffs sued Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration over the delayed transfer of inmates into IDHS custody, saying detainees with mental illness were languishing in jail. The lawsuit became moot in early 2023, when Pritzker signed a law extending the period a detainee deemed unfit for trial can sit in jail from 20 to 60 days. If IDHS cannot find a bed in that time, the law allows IDHS to request 30-day extensions.

According to IDHS, the average wait time was 74 days as of early March.

It was unclear how many people restrained in chairs over the five-year period analyzed by Illinois Answers were waiting for a bed at an IDHS facility at the time. Records suggest that’s the case for at least some incidents.

In one such incident in Effingham County last year, five officers donned riot helmets to restrain a man who was hitting his head in an isolation cell. In the incident report, one officer wrote that he planned to forward the report to IDHS “in an effort to expedite” the man’s transport to a state facility.

“It's just a snowball effect where you have more and more people in the jail that are working double shifts every week, and then you have more and more inmates that are having mental health problems,” Sheline said.

Just last year, the state unit overseeing county jails cited most of the 92 facilities for non-compliance with state standards, including for inadequacies in detainee supervision (62), staffing or personnel (19), and housing (6).

Sometimes the availability of cells influences the decision to place someone in a chair. In multiple incidents in Peoria County, staff restrained people who needed to be on suicide watch "due to not having proper housing available,” records show. One person was released 11 hours later, another 12 hours later.

Peoria County Sheriff Chris Watkins said his jail was built decades ago and was not designed to house detainees with serious mental illness, so “other measures had to be utilized to protect this specific population.”

Dr. Terry Kupers, an expert on psychiatric health care in custodial settings, however, questioned this approach.

“Someone who's suicidal should not be in a restraint chair. Period,” Kupers said. “What they probably need, if it’s that urgent, they probably need to be transferred to a psychiatric facility.”

Ashley Holst, 24, was restrained in a chair twice in 2019, once for six hours at DeKalb County Jail and then again at St. Clair County Jail for five hours. Both times, Holst said she was having a mental health crisis, and the chair only made her “more agitated.”

Holst has had a long and complicated struggle with addiction and mental illness and previously tried to harm herself. She’s been hospitalized several times and charged with battery against health care professionals several times.

At St. Clair County Jail, Holst was screaming and banging on her cell window when an officer decided to restrain her in a chair because two other secluded rooms were already occupied, records show. Staff put a spit hood over her head as they restrained her because she was “screaming and spit was flying from her mouth,” records show. Neither the state nor county had an “extraordinary and unusual occurrences” report on file for the incident.

Holst served over a year in prison, mostly in a mental health unit, at Logan Correctional Center – a deteriorating facility set to be demolished – for aggravated battery and was released in August. Now, she is on medication, working at McDonald’s, and plans to go to school for alcohol and drug counseling. She said she’d like to work in a prison someday to support people in similar situations.

Searching for justice

Back at McHenry County Jail, a nurse immediately assessed Brooks for injuries and evaluated the restraints for proper circulation, records show. According to the supervisor’s report, Brooks was “too agitated to answer the nurse’s questions, and she cleared him to remain in the (chair).”

Two hours after restraining Brooks, staff tried to allow Brooks to stretch his limbs one at a time, but Brooks was “too agitated,” the report said. A nurse cleared Brooks to remain in the chair. An hour later, staff returned, and a nurse checked his vitals. He initially ignored the officers, then asked to be released. The sergeant told Brooks his release depended on his “ability to show self control,” according to the sergeant’s report.

Staff finally removed Brooks from the chair another 40 minutes later, around 2 a.m. Saturday. “He leaned forward and crawled into the cell, used the bunk to sit for a brief moment and stood and walked toward the toilet,” the supervisor’s report states.

That morning, he called his wife, Mary, and explained what happened. She contacted the pastor who oversaw her husband’s community service, and he submitted Brooks’ paperwork on Monday.

When her husband came home, Mary Brooks took photos that show scabs on his wrists. Brooks drew an illustration of his experience at the jail, depicting the chair. It’s the only artwork he made for over a year-and-a-half. In June, he finally made a new drawing.

“I don’t want to lose my gift because of what they did to me. It’s like they took something away from me,” he said.

After the incident, Brooks and reporters with Shaw Media and Illinois Answers filed public records requests with the McHenry County Sheriff’s Office for video of the restraint. The office denied the requests, saying “releasing any video footage jeopardizes the security of all McHenry County Sheriff’s Building and operations.”

The McHenry Police Department denied a public records request for video of Brooks’ arrest, saying it automatically purges all audio and video after 90 days.

Asked about the incident, the McHenry County Sheriff’s Office directed Illinois Answers to its policy, which allows staff to use the chair “to control inmates who display behaviors which may result in extensive damage of property or who are in danger of causing physical harm to themselves or others.”

Emily Matusek-Baker, a spokesperson for the department, said the sheriff’s office was unaware of any allegations made by Brooks. She said the office has orders and training in compliance with the ACA, NCCHC, and IDOC and holds its employees accountable to meet standards.

Brooks has since visited a neurologist at a V.A. hospital, where electrodiagnostic testing found evidence of nerve damage near his wrists but did not establish the cause. According to a doctor’s report from a February visit, Brooks was still feeling significant numbness in his right hand.

Mary Brooks said her husband has been “traumatized” by the incident and isn’t the same.

Brooks said he has been arrested before but never treated in this way. He previously faced other charges, including for soliciting and begging, drug possession and trespassing.

He filed a complaint last summer with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office alleging discrimination and excessive force, and the office’s Civil Rights Bureau closed the case two weeks later, saying it has statutory authority to investigate possible patterns and practices of unconstitutional or unlawful conduct in county correctional facilities, but not individual incidents.

At least 11 people have filed federal civil rights complaints related to the use of restraint chairs in Illinois since 2013. Two settled. Three are ongoing. Three were dismissed. Three were found in favor of the sheriff’s department and jail staff. Nearly all detainees have represented themselves.

Some have sought recourse through other avenues, including two volunteer-run advocacy groups. Others said they didn’t know who to turn to, believed too much time had passed, or didn’t want to pursue it.

Brooks, a former minister and the son of a Chicago police officer, said he’s been trying to forgive the jail staff for what happened. But he can’t let it go. He said he wants to expose the use of restraint chairs and sue the jail – if he can find a lawyer to take his case.

“I don't want nobody else to go through this,” he said.

The Illinois Answers Project is interested in hearing from people who have been restrained in chairs. Reach out to reporter Grace Hauck at ghauck@illinoisanswers.org. Interested in localizing this story? Contact Mumina Mohamud at mmohamud@bettergov.org. 

Contributing: Amanda Marrazzo, Shaw Media; Meredith Newman, Cam Rodriguez, Casey Toner and Laura Stewart, Illinois Answers Project. Database fact checking by Audrey Azzo, Doris Alvarez and John Volk.

Note on the methodology: There’s no clear definition of what constitutes a separate versus ongoing restraint chair “incident” in Illinois, where people are typically restrained in repeated two-hour blocks. For the purposes of this data collection and analysis, Illinois Answers considered an incident to be ongoing if someone was held continuously in a chair, or if they were only given brief and periodic breaks over a long period of restraint. In these cases, county jails often identified the case with a unique incident number, kept an ongoing observation log, and submitted a single, all-encompassing report to the state. Illinois Answers considered an incident as separate if someone was released from a chair for a prolonged period of time before being restrained again. In these cases, county jails often designated separate incident numbers, logs, and reports.

This story was made possible by a grant from The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation to the Illinois Answers Project.

In 2006, 19-year-old Jessica Whiston inherited 20 acres of land that her grandparents once farmed in Quincy, Illinois. The land had sat dormant since the 1980s and was overgrown, but Whiston and her husband Bradley worked to turn it into a productive farm. The couple were eventually able to produce 100,000 pounds of vegetables a season.

In July 2015, a powerful storm tore through Quincy, downing massive trees and knocking out power for several counties. Seven and a half inches of rain fell in less than an hour, causing the creek behind the farm to overflow. Six feet of black water, inundated with chemical fertilizers and pesticides and runoff from animal operations nearby, flooded her fields. 

“We lost everything,” said Whiston. “We didn’t have enough money to replant and we didn’t have any money to pay our mortgage. I just thought, ‘Well, that was it. We tried really hard and there’s no coming back from this.’” 

Severe weather caused by climate change, such as more frequent flooding, was one issue Illinois lawmakers tried to address during this year’s legislative session, which ended May 29. 

Among the bills that did not pass is a piece of legislation that sought to restore protections for wetlands stripped last year in a United States Supreme Court decision. In May 2023, federal protections for wetlands were gutted, weakening Clean Water Act protections for millions of acres of wetlands across the U.S. 

An Illinois bill, SB 771, or the Wetlands Protection Act, that would have reinstated those protections in the state passed in committee, but failed to make it to the chamber floors of the General Assembly. The bill will be considered again during the veto session this fall.

“We’re definitely disappointed the legislature didn’t act right away,” said Jennifer Walling, executive director for the Illinois Environmental Council. “They need to. This is an election issue, and we could be in even worse shape with a different president.” 

Sponsors of the bill said a law is needed for Illinois to fill the gap left by the Supreme Court decision. The reinstatement of regulations would ultimately help reduce flooding in vulnerable communities and improve water quality, proponents said. 

One major opponent of the legislation was the Illinois Farm Bureau, which also signed onto the federal lawsuit that eventually reversed wetland protections. Chris Davis, the farm bureau’s director of state legislation, said its opposition stemmed from not enough protections for landowners. 

“Illinois Farm Bureau agrees wetlands provide certain benefits and supports reasonable efforts to discourage their conversion,” Davis said in an emailed statement. “However, this should not mean that, in all instances, wetland conversion is unnecessary or that private landowners should solely bear the cost of protecting wetlands.”

Sen. Laura Ellman (D-Naperville), sponsor of the senate Wetlands Protection Bill, said that she’s still committed to working with the farm bureau this summer. 

“I still want to engage with the farm bureau, in spite of them never being able to support the bill or probably even be neutral,” she said, “to help make our bill better and to serve their members, our Illinois farmers. They can still help make the bill better.”

House bill sponsor Rep. Anna Moeller (D-Elgin) did not return requests for comment.

For Liz Rupel, lead organizer with the Illinois Stewardship Alliance, the 2024 legislative season was “a mixed bag” when it comes to conservation in agriculture. While some conservation bills passed this legislative session, including increased funding for socially-disadvantaged farmers, more money for cover crop assistance programs, and funding toward planting native wetland and prairie plants, other bills that could have an impact did not pass, she said. 

One of the “most devastating setbacks,” she said, is budget cuts for an important agricultural conservation program. The Soil and Water Conservation District’s operating budget was slashed in half. The organization provides technical assistance to farmers who implement conservation practices, like planting cover crops to prevent dust storms or installing or restoring a wetland on their property to prevent flooding.

Read the rest of the story, at investigatemidwest.org

Investigate Midwest is an independent, nonprofit newsroom. Our mission is to serve the public interest by exposing dangerous and costly practices of influential agricultural corporations and institutions through in-depth and data-driven investigative journalism. Visit us online at www.investigatemidwest.org

Newly released Chicago Police records indicate Chicago Public Schools’ top security official denied detectives access to school video surveillance footage at a high school where a former student shot four others and that the school’s principal discouraged a witness from cooperating with homicide investigators the afternoon of the shooting. 

The shooting, outside Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen just before Christmas 2022, left two students dead and two wounded. Illinois Answers Project previously reported on delays in sharing information by school officials the afternoon of the shooting and over the following weeks. 

The records, obtained by Illinois Answers, show in greater detail the extent to which police say CPS Chief of Safety and Security Jadine Chou and Juarez Principal Juan Carlos Ocon did not provide critical access during the homicide investigation at Juarez High School. 

Chou and Ocon “refused to allow CPD to view the exterior/interior surveillance cameras from their facility which possibly contained footage of the incident and the armed offender fleeing on foot,” according to the reports.

When police tracked down the witness school officials sent home, five days after the shooting, the witness told police they “told school staff that (they) wished to speak to police about what (they) saw but (were) discouraged by the school’s principal.” 

The witness had been “sequestered” in an office by the school’s principal, according to the records, and that witness’ account of the shooting became the one that prosecutors relied on in charging the 16-year-old former Juarez student with murder. 

A spokeswoman for CPS said that “CPS provided the name of the suspect and directed police to access video footage at the city’s nearby emergency center (the Office of Emergency Management and Communications) within the first hours of the police investigation.” 

The records show detectives asking Ocon, Chou, and other school officials for access to school video. One investigator explained that “time is of the essence to review the video related to this incident and evidence related to this incident may have already been lost due to the delay in accessing the video surveillance system.” 

He told one Juarez administrator that the video could show which way the shooter ran, location of footprints in the snow, that other evidence may be lost due to snow accumulation, that video could confirm the description of the shooter, help guide detectives in determining where to seek interviews or other surveillance footage, help locate a gun or clothing that may have been discarded, or help detectives understand if the shooter got in a car or went into a building following the attack. 

The police report states another Juarez administrator told detectives, “You’ll get it when you get it.” The names of both administrators are redacted in the police report.

Chou is the district’s top safety and security official, a position she’s held since 2011, and her work includes developing and implementing district-wide school safety policy. 

In an interview in May, she denied doing anything to impede the homicide investigation. She said that “it is incomprehensible that anyone would think that we, anyone else, me, anyone around me, would want to do anything to block … would block or delay or forestall progress on an investigation.”

Chou noted in the interview that detectives were eventually able to access the video.   

Chou said in an interview this week that she stopped detectives from accessing the video the day of the shooting because the mother of the student witness told school officials she didn’t want to talk with police. The witness “was in the camera room,” and school officials weren’t “able to let the witness out of the camera room because dozens of police were outside the door and wouldn’t move,” Chou said. 

That’s why CPS and CPD were at “a standstill,” Chou said. 

Chou said the witness’s mother told school officials, in Spanish, that they wanted to leave. She said the family was visibly traumatized — the witness by what she saw and the mother for her daughter — and it “makes sense” that they wouldn’t want to talk with detectives. 

“My recollection is she spoke in Spanish, was in the room literally where they were translating and asking and (the mother) said, ‘no.’ That was because they were … scared and they did not strike me as people who were like, ‘Please, we’re ready to talk to CPD.’ It makes sense they said ‘no.’ I will go to my grave with that.” 

But according to records released by police, the witness’s mother told detectives that school officials told her “she should go home and take some time before speaking with police.” The witness had already provided information about the shooter to school officials and had told other school officials that they “wished to speak to police about what (they) saw.”  

“(The witness) and (their) mother agreed to continue assisting with this investigation and meet with members of the Cook County state’s attorney’s ooffice,” according to the police reports.

Ocon didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

Eight weeks after the shooting, a former student, expelled for behavior and attendance problems, was arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder. Last week, he pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to 46 years in prison. Prosecutors said he was involved in another shooting the day of his arrest, and the reports released after his conviction tie the gun from the Juarez homicide to another shooting weeks earlier.

Illinois Answers has not named the gunman since he was a minor when he committed the crime. 

On the day of the shooting, the student witness told a school administrator the name of the shooter, and the administrator then gave a sheet of paper with information about the boy to the school’s principal, who would not give the information to investigators, according to police records. The records show detectives explained the situation to at least three Chicago Police Department deputy chiefs at the scene, who were unable to get Ocon or other CPS officials to share the paper. 

Chou said the district’s then-deputy general counsel, Ruchi Verma, told her they could not turn over the piece of paper itself. Verma is now the district’s general counsel. So Chou wrote down the name and information that was on the paper and gave it to police.

The district’s policy, and state and federal law, all appear to allow district officials to share information during health and safety emergencies. Attorneys for CPS and CPD discussed those laws after the department’s chief of detectives, Brendan Deenihan, summarized the resistance detectives encountered for CPD’s chief attorney.

The dispute at the scene set off a months-long back-and-forth over how and when detectives are to investigate violent crime where students are victims or offenders. Records show Chou and other school officials sought urgent changes to school policy after shooting, citing “recent experiences in the field,” though nothing was formalized. Police sources said an informal arrangement now exists and detectives who investigated shootings at or near high schools at the end of January were able to quickly access school surveillance footage. 

The newly released records also show how school officials responded to detectives who’d raised concerns with their supervisors and with police department lawyers about CPS’ response to the shooting. Weeks after the shooting, after a detective in the case threatened the school’s principal with a grand jury subpoena due to  his lack of cooperation, Juarez school officials and district legal staff met with detectives at Juarez and admitted “procedural and strategic errors on the day of the incident,” according to the police records. 

Chou, in the interview this week, said she doesn’t “remember anyone conceding anything.”

The district’s lawyers, in that meeting, told school officials to “cooperate fully with (detectives) and this homicide investigation.” 

Ocon, the school’s principal, told detectives “he has been a principal for 15 years” and said he contacted CPS’ legal office for guidance because “he’s been ‘indoctrinated’ to proceed in certain ways when dealing with police and that he’s not going to change his way. (He) did not clarify what he meant.”

In the weeks after the shooting, police discussed charging Ocon with obstruction of justice but eventually decided not to proceed. CPS did not discipline Ocon nor conduct a formal review of school officials’ actions after the shooting.

At the urging of Mayor Tiffany Henyard, the Village of Dolton paid a west suburban construction company — linked to multiple corruption cases — more than $200,000 in no-bid, no-contract work to replace senior homeowners’ roofs and windows.

Now, federal investigators are seeking records from Dolton officials concerning the construction project undertaken by Summit-based O.A.K.K. Construction Co., owned by Alex Nitchoff. His family ran a restaurant in town, and his father once engaged in an apparent scheme to attempt to clear hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes from properties the family owned in the village.

Alex Nitchoff, O.A.K.K.’s president, is awaiting sentencing after he pleaded guilty in January to bribing a Cook County assessor’s official for property tax breaks. His late father, Boris, was implicated in a home renovation bribery scheme involving former Chicago Ald. Carrie Austin (34th). O.A.K.K. construction was subpoenaed as part of the federal investigation of Austin, the Sun-Times reported in 2019. An attorney for Alex Nitchoff declined to comment. Austin has denied any wrongdoing.

Federal subpoenas were issued this spring to the Village of Dolton and Thornton Township, where Henyard is the supervisor, and records show O.A.K.K. was named in the Dolton subpoena. They are part of an ongoing and intensifying federal investigation into Henyard, the self-styled “supermayor,” whose controversial governing style and decisions have generated national and international news coverage.

Dozens of businesses, government employees, political figures and members of Henyard’s inner-circle are named in the wide-ranging subpoenas, which also seek spending records from multiple trips, including a October 2022 trip that Henyard and supporters of her cancer nonprofit foundation took to Springfield to promote a breast cancer bill. The bill, though, had not been filed, and the State Legislature wasn’t in session, as first reported by the Illinois Answers Project and Fox 32 Chicago.

Other people or organizations named in the subpoenas include:

• Henyard’s nonprofit that claims to help cancer victims, “The Tiffany Henyard Cares Foundation,” which she financed using township money. The Illinois Attorney General’s Office is investigating the foundation, which is barred from fundraising after failing to submit required documentation.

• Jose Aldaco, a businessman from Bensenville, who billed the township $17,000 for 1,000 T-shirts and sweatshirts ahead of the journey that Henyard and members of her foundation took to Springfield. The federal subpoena asked for records related to that specific T-shirt invoice submitted by Aldaco’s company. The invoice came one day after the paperwork creating Henyard’s foundation was submitted to the state. Messages left for Aldaco were not returned.

• Kamal Woods, who is identified in divorce records as Henyard’s boyfriend, works under Henyard at the township and is a director of her foundation. Woods earns a “highly lucrative salary — in excess of $100,0000 per year” working at the township in addition to his side gig providing private security for local government, according to his divorce case. Woods hung up when reached for comment.
• Keith Freeman, the initial registered agent for Henyard’s foundation, who is also the village manager and Henyard’s paid senior advisor at the township. Freeman is charged with bankruptcy fraud after allegedly shielding income he made from the Village of Robbins, the Village of Dolton, Thornton Township and a Northfield-based company that leases vehicles to poor municipalities at high rates. Freeman has pleaded not guilty and did not return emails and phone messages seeking comment.

• Michael Kasper, the election attorney for former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, who helped Henyard defeat a recall effort in 2022. Messages left for Kasper were not returned.

• Former Calumet City Mayor Jerry Genova, who was sentenced to five years in prison on corruption charges in 2002, worked on a campaign for Henyard’s slate of candidates in 2023. Genova said in a statement that he has worked as a marketing and economic development consultant for 30 years and that he “works for a private firm that provides consulting services to Thornton Township and other governmental and corporate clients throughout the Southland and Chicago area.”

As for the Nitchoffs, they are a longtime fixture in Dolton, having owned and operated Olivia’s Restaurant — a well known diner in town that has since been turned over to new ownership.

They are also absentee landowners. A Chicago Sun-Times investigation showed that the Nitchoffs attempted to evade several hundred thousand dollars in unpaid property taxes on Dolton properties by letting their taxes become delinquent and then rebuying the properties through shell companies for a fraction of the debt through Cook County scavenger or tax sales.

All the while, Nitchoff’s businesses were active in Dolton political affairs, contributing more than $8,600 over seven years to former Mayor Riley Rogers. In February 2022, they contributed $2,000 to Henyard’s campaign and another $5,000 four months later. The latter contribution occurred days after O.A.K.K. first billed the village for the no-bid, no-contract residential construction at several dozen homes that totaled $205,000, money that the village paid out of federal COVID-19 grant money.

Having never authorized the work, the Dolton village board initially refused to pay the bills. O.A.K.K. responded by sending letters to the senior homeowners, threatening to put liens against their homes.

“I am really confused right now,” resident Rose Rice wrote in an email to village officials. “First of all, I didn’t sign any papers or an agreement with this company, so why is this lien against my property and why is my name on this document … This is asinine.”

John Bodendorfer, O.A.K.K.’s construction manager, apologized during a December 2022 village board meeting and said the letters should have been mailed to the mayor and village board instead. He said he was “seeking payment for the work that we completed for the homeowners.”

At the same meeting, village trustees, a majority of whom oppose Henyard, criticized the process and asked Henyard how she picked the contractor.

“If you don’t get a (bid), you get contractors who donate to her campaign fund,” said then-village trustee Edward Steave. “That’s reality. Because the mayor should not have all the power to pick the contractors, pick who she wants, and then she goes to them for campaign donations.”

Henyard said she announced at an earlier board meeting that they needed contractors to do the work and O.A.K.K. signed up.

“I don’t go pick people,” Henyard said. “People come to the village, they apply and they want to do it and they do the work. I could care less who does it as long as the resident gets the service.”

Because the cost of each job did not exceed $5,000, Henyard said the village was not required to seek other proposals to comply with the requirements of the federal grant money the village used to pay for the project.

“I’m asking again for the board to make them whole, pay them what’s owed to them so they can complete the process …” Henyard said.

After Village Trustee Jason House asked for a copy of O.A.K.K.’s contract and its customers, Henyard made it clear that none existed: “For the record there is no contract. No one has a contract.”

Bodendorfer declined to comment for this story. He pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he gave jewelry, meals, sports tickets and home improvement materials to Lavdim Memisovski, a commercial group leader at the Cook County assessor’s office, for tax breaks on the Nitchoff family properties that exceeded a half-million dollars. His boss, Alex Nitchoff, pleaded guilty to bribery charges in January.

Nitchoff’s late father, Boris, was implicated in the federal corruption case against Austin, the former alderperson, after he allegedly provided her with sump pumps and kitchen cabinets in her home as he sought business from the City of Chicago.

Records show the Village of Dolton also paid O.A.K.K. Construction $14,500 to build a fence around the property that became a publicly-owned ice rink that was used for one of Henyard’s campaign events without her campaign paying for it, in an apparent violation of state election law.

Freeman, the village manager, said at the December 2022 trustee meeting that the critics were ignorant of the federal grant reporting rules and accused them of “gaslighting.”

“It’s like you want to start a fight,” he said.

Freeman was indicted in April for bankruptcy fraud after allegedly underreporting income for multiple years in a bankruptcy filing earlier this year.

Freeman is accused of falsely reporting that his 2023 income was $99,647 when it was approximately $195,000. He also allegedly failed to report that Village of Robbins, where he formerly worked as village manager, had a claim against him because he received about $90,396 “in excess of his authorized salary.”

The indictment also alleged that a Northfield company that uses high-interest loans to sell firefighting vehicles and other municipal equipment paid him $24,500 in consulting fees from December 2021 through January 2022 — income he also did not list on his bankruptcy filing.

The subpoenas issued to Thornton Township and the Village of Dolton sought records related to First Government Lease, of Northfield, and its president Paul Graver. Records show that the Securities and Exchange Commission fined Graver $50,000 in 1992 after he took part in “three schemes to fraudulently induce the purchase or sale of securities.”

Records show the Village of Dolton leased a 2023 Chevrolet Tahoe from the company for five years for $149,000 in all — with nearly $56,000 of overall price tag coming from loan and interest costs.

Village Trustee Kiana Belcher, who criticized the lease agreements in a September 2023 board meeting, said that Dolton leases multiple vehicles from the company.

Graver did not return messages for comment.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Capitol News Illinois. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

It was on L.J.’s 11th birthday, in December 2022, that child welfare workers finally took him away. They arrived at his central Illinois home to investigate an abuse allegation and decided on the spot to remove the boy along with his baby brother and sister — the “Irish twins,” as their parents called them.

His mother begged to keep the children while her boyfriend told child welfare workers and the police called to the scene that they could take L.J.: “You wanna take someone? Take that little motherf—– down there or wherever the f— he is at. I’ve been trying to get him out of here for a long time.”

By that time, L.J. told authorities he hadn’t been in a classroom for years, according to police records. First came COVID-19. Then, in August 2021 when he was going to have to repeat the third grade, his mother and her boyfriend decided that L.J. would be homeschooled and that they would be his teachers. In an instant, his world shrank to the confines of a one-bedroom apartment in the small Illinois college town of Charleston — no teachers, counselors or classmates.

In that apartment, L.J. would later tell police, he was beaten and denied food: Getting leftovers from the refrigerator was punishable by a whipping with a belt; sass was met with a slap in the face.

L.J. told police he got no lessons or schoolwork at home. Asked if he had learned much, L.J. replied, “Not really.”

Reporters are using the first and middle initials of the boy, who is now 12 and remains in state custody, to protect his identity.

While each state has different regulations for homeschooling — and most of them are relatively weak — Illinois is among a small minority that places virtually no rules on parents who homeschool their children: The parents aren’t required to register with any governmental agency, and no tests are required. Under Illinois law, they must provide an education equivalent to what is offered in public schools, covering core subjects like math, language arts, science and health. But parents don’t have to have a high school diploma or GED, and state authorities cannot compel them to demonstrate their teaching methods or prove attendance, curriculum or testing outcomes.

The Illinois State Board of Education said in a statement that regional education offices are empowered by Illinois law to request evidence that a family that homeschools is providing an adequate course of instruction. But, the spokesperson said, their “ability to intervene can be limited.”

Educational officials say this lack of regulation allows parents to pull vulnerable children like L.J. from public schools then not provide any education for them. They call them “no schoolers.”

No oversight also means children schooled at home lose the protections schools provide, including teachers, counselors, coaches and bus drivers — school personnel legally bound to report suspected child abuse and neglect. Under Illinois law, parents may homeschool even if they would be disqualified from working with youth in any other setting; this includes parents with violent criminal records or pending child abuse investigations, or those found to have abused children in the past.

The number of students from preschool to 12th grade enrolled in the state’s public schools has dropped by about 127,000 since the pandemic began. Enrollment losses have outpaced declines in population, according to a report by Advance Illinois, a nonprofit education policy and advocacy organization. And, despite conventional wisdom, the drop was also not the result of wealthier families moving their children to private schools: After the pandemic, private school enrollment declined too, according to the same report.

In the face of this historic exodus from public schools, Capitol News Illinois and ProPublica set out to examine the lack of oversight by education and child welfare systems when some of those children disappear into families later accused of no-schooling and, sometimes, abuse and neglect.

Reporters found no centralized system for investigating homeschooling concerns. Educational officials said they were ill equipped to handle cases where parents are accused of neglecting their children’s education. They also said the state’s laws made it all but impossible to intervene in cases where parents claim they are homeschooling. Reporters also found that under the current structure, concerns about homeschooling bounce between child welfare and education authorities, with no entity fully prepared to step in.

“Although we have parents that do a great job of homeschooling, we have many ‘no schoolers’” said Angie Zarvell, superintendent of a regional education office about 100 miles southwest of Chicago that covers three counties and 23 school districts. “The damage this is doing to small rural areas is great. These children will not have the basic skills needed to be contributing members of society.”

Regional education offices, like the one Zarvell oversees, are required by law to identify children who are truant and try to help get them back into school.

But once parents claim they are homeschooling, “our hands are tied,” said Superintendent Michelle Mueller, whose regional office is located about 60 miles north of St. Louis.

Even the state’s child welfare agency can do little: Reports to its child abuse hotline alleging that parents are depriving their children of an education have multiplied, but the Department of Children and Family Services doesn’t investigate schooling matters. Instead, it passes reports to regional education offices.

Todd Vilardo, who since 2017 has been superintendent of the school district where L.J. was enrolled, said he is seeing more and more children outside of school during the day. He wonders, “‘Aren’t they supposed to be in school?’ But I’m reminded that maybe they’re homeschooled,” said Vilardo, who has worked in the Charleston school district for 33 years. “Then I’m reminded that there are very few effective checks and balances on home schools.”

“A Huge Crack in Our System”

There’s no way to determine the precise number of children who are homeschooled. In 2022, 4,493 children were recorded as withdrawn to homeschool, a number that is likely much higher because Illinois doesn’t require parents to register homeschooled children. That is a little more than double the number a decade before.

In late fall of 2020, L.J. was one of the kids who slipped out of school. After a roughly five-month hiatus from the classroom during the pandemic, L.J.’s school resumed in-person classes. The third grader, however, was frequently absent.

At home, tensions ran high. In the 640-square-foot apartment, L.J.’s mother, Ashley White, and her boyfriend, Brian Anderson, juggled the demands of three children including two born just about 10 months apart.

White, now 31, worked at a local fast-food restaurant. Anderson, now 51, who uses a wheelchair, had applied for disability payments. Anderson doesn’t have a valid driver’s license. The family lived in a subsidized housing complex for low-income seniors and people with disabilities.

In an interview with reporters in late February, 14 months after L.J. had been taken into custody by the state, the couple offered a range of explanations for why he hadn’t been in school. L.J. had been suspended and barred from returning, they said, though school records show no expulsion. They also said they had tried to put L.J. in an alternative school for children with special needs, but he didn’t have a diagnosis that qualified him to attend.

The couple made clear they believed that L.J. was a problem child who could get them in trouble; they said they thought he could get them sued. In the interview, Anderson called L.J. a pathological liar, a thief and a bad kid.

“I have 11 kids, never had a problem with any of them, never,” Anderson said. “I’ve never had a problem like this,” he said of L.J. The boy, he said, lacked discipline and continued to get “worse and worse and worse every year” he’d known him.

To support the idea that L.J. was combative, White provided a copy of a screenshot taken from a school chat forum in which the boy cursed at his schoolmates.

At the end of the school year, in spring 2021, the principal told White and Anderson that the boy would have to repeat the third grade. Rather than have L.J. held back, the couple pulled him out of school to homeschool. They didn’t have to fill out any paperwork or give a reason.

On any given day in Illinois, a parent can make that same decision. That’s due to a series of court and legislative decisions that strengthened parents’ rights against state interference in how they educate their children.

In 1950, the Illinois Supreme Court heard a case involving college-educated parents who kept their 7-year-old daughter at home. Those parents, Seventh-day Adventists, argued that a public school education produced a “pugnacious character” and believed the mother was the best teacher and nature was the best textbook. The judges ruled in their favor, finding that, in many respects under the law, homeschools are essentially like private schools: not required to register kids with the state and not subject to testing or curriculum mandates.

In 1989, the legislature voted to change how educational neglect cases are handled. Before the vote, DCFS was allowed to investigate parents who failed to ensure their child’s education just as it does other types of neglect. In a bipartisan vote, the General Assembly changed that, in part to reduce caseloads on DCFS — which has been overburdened and inadequately staffed for decades — and also in response to concerns about state interference from families who homeschool.

Since then, DCFS has referred complaints about schooling that come in to its child abuse hotline over to regional offices of education. The letter accompanying the educational neglect referral form ends with: “This notice is for your information and pursuit only. No response to this office is required.”

Tierney Stutz, executive deputy director at DCFS, said that regional education officials are welcome to report back findings, but that “DCFS does not have statutory authority to act on this information.”

“Unfortunately, this is a huge crack in our system,” said Amber Quirk, regional superintendent of the office of education that covers densely populated DuPage County in the Chicago suburbs.

To see how this system is working, reporters obtained more than 450 of these educational neglect reports, representing over a third of the more than 1,200 forwarded by DCFS over three years ending in 2023. About 10% of them specifically cited substandard homeschooling claims. But officials said that in many of the other reported cases of kids out of school, they found that families also claimed they were homeschooling.

Faced with cases of truancy or educational neglect, county prosecutors can press charges against parents. But if they do, parents can lean on Illinois’ parental protections when they defend themselves in court from a truancy charge.

That’s been the experience of Dirk Muffler, who oversees truancy intervention at a regional office of education covering five counties in west-central Illinois. “We’ve gone through an entire truancy process, literally standing on the courthouse steps getting ready to walk in to screen a kid into court and the parents say, ‘We are homeschooling.’ I have to just walk away then.”

More recently, the ISBE made one more decision to loosen the monitoring of parents who homeschool: For years, school districts and regional offices distributed voluntary registration forms to families who homeschool, some of whom returned them. Then last year, the state agency told those regional offices that they no longer had to send those forms to ISBE.

“The homeschool registration form was being misinterpreted in some instances that ISBE was reviewing or approving homeschool programs, which it does not have statutory authority to do,” an ISBE spokesperson told the news organizations.

Over the years, the legislature has taken up proposals to strengthen the state’s oversight of homeschooling. In 2011, lawmakers considered requiring parents to notify their local school districts of their intent to homeschool, and in 2019 they considered calling for DCFS to inspect all homeschools and have ISBE approve their curriculum.

Each time, however, the state’s strong homeschooling lobby, mostly made up of religious-based organizations, stepped in.

This March, under sponsorship of the Illinois Christian Home Educators, homeschoolers massed at the state Capitol as they have for decades for Cherry Pie Day, bringing pies to each of the state’s 177 lawmakers.

Kirk Smith, the organization’s executive director and former public school teacher, summed up his group’s appeal to lawmakers: “All we want is to be left alone. And Illinois has been so good. We have probably the best state in the nation to homeschool.”

“Nobody Knows. He’s Not in School.”

Just days after child protection workers took 11-year-old L.J. into protective custody on his birthday, a 9-year-old homeschooled boy, 240 miles away, disappeared and was missing for months before police went looking for him.

Though the case of Zion Staples was covered in the media, it has not been previously reported that his homeschooling status delayed the discovery of his death.

Zion had been living in Rock Island, in the northwest part of the state, with his mother, Sushi Staples. The family had a long history of abuse and neglect investigations by DCFS, and Staples had lost two kids to foster care in Illinois nearly two decades before because she mistreated them; the children were not returned to her. The most recent investigation by DCFS was in 2021. The department did not find enough evidence to find mistreatment and the case was closed.

Despite her past involvement with child welfare services, no Illinois laws restricted her from homeschooling the children who remained in her care, including Zion and five others who were then ages 8 to 14.

When reporters asked DCFS for his schooling status, the agency’s responses revealed considerable confusion about where he was being educated. DCFS originally told the news organizations that Zion was enrolled in an online school program, but the company that DCFS said had been providing his schooling told reporters that Zion had never been enrolled. DCFS later clarified that his mother said he was leaving public school in August 2021 to attend an online program, but no one was required to verify this information.

On a December morning in 2022, Staples told police she returned home from running errands and found Zion dead. A coroner would later find that he died from an accidental, self-inflicted shot fired from a gun the children found in the house. His mother hid the body and later confided to her friend, Laterrica Wilson, that she did it because she did not want to risk losing her other children.

“She said: ‘Nobody knows. He’s not in school. He’s homeschooled. I’ve got this figured out,’” Wilson recalled in an interview with a reporter about a conversation she had with Staples a few months after the child had died. “She said she had too much to lose.”

Wilson, who lives in Florida, said it was one of several calls she had with Staples over the course of months as she tried to figure out what had happened and what to do about it. Police records indicate that in July, in response to a call from Wilson, they visited the home. Staples denied the child even existed. Later, when police executed a search warrant, officers found Zion’s body in a metal trash can in the garage; he was still wearing his Spiderman pajama bottoms. He’d been dead for seven months, an autopsy revealed.

Staples was charged with concealing a death, failure to report the death of a child within 24 hours and obstructing justice. Staples pleaded guilty to felony endangering the health of a child in February and was sentenced to two years in prison in April.

Staples did not respond to a letter sent to her in prison seeking comment on this case.

DCFS and its university partners study all sorts of risks to children involved with the child welfare system, but they’ve never examined homeschooling and do not track the number of children the agency comes in contact with who are homeschooled. While the agency’s inspector general is required to file reports on every child who dies in foster care or whose family the agency had investigated within the preceding year of the child’s death, the children’s schooling status is rarely noted in them.

For L.J., homeschooling rules also blinded school officials to abuse he suffered, although their administrative office is within sight of his apartment complex. About five months passed from when he was withdrawn to homeschool in the summer of 2021 before the first signs of help arrived. Following a call to its hotline in January 2022, DCFS found White and Anderson neglectful, citing inadequate supervision, but that did not result in L.J. returning to school. DCFS offered services, but Anderson and White declined.

DCFS received more calls to its hotline in June 2022 and again that September, alleging that Anderson and White had mistreated L.J. In both of those cases, DCFS investigators did not find enough evidence to support those allegations and closed the cases.

The caller in September told DCFS the boy appeared malnourished. L.J. hadn’t been in school since 2019, the caller reported. But DCFS said they did not pursue an investigation into his schooling matters because it wasn’t in their policies to do so.

It did send an educational neglect report to Kyle Thompson, the superintendent of schools overseeing the regional office of education in Charleston. The form didn’t mention physical abuse, but it did say that L.J. had begged for food from neighbors, that doctors were concerned about his weight and that a DCFS caseworker had recently visited the home but no one had answered the door.

Thompson was in his office when the educational neglect report ended up on his desk on an October afternoon. Alarmed when he read the allegations, Thompson went to the apartment that same day. White and Anderson came to the door, Thompson recalled, and eventually agreed to meet with school officials.

“I really feel like we may have saved that kid’s life that day,” Thompson said.

But Anderson and White continued to keep L.J. at home.

In November, a grocery store manager found L.J. in the parking lot begging for quarters and called police, who took L.J. home and later issued a ticket to White and Anderson for violating a city truancy ordinance. L.J. hadn’t been to school the whole year — 70 days.

Anderson said he didn’t know why he was cited, since he was homeschooling. “Apparently, it wasn’t good enough for the school system,” he told reporters.

A few days later, police and child welfare services again visited the home and found welts and bruises on L.J.’s back. L.J. said Anderson had beaten him with a belt as punishment for eating leftover Salisbury steak and potatoes without permission. The boy also told child welfare workers he had not showered for two weeks.

Anderson and White would later tell reporters L.J. was on a diet of fruits and vegetables because he was too fat and prediabetic, but L.J. told police he ate mostly cereal. Though DCFS found credible evidence of both neglect and abuse in its November and December investigations, the couple said they did not abuse L.J. or deny him an education. They are still trying to get the two younger children back, but they say they don’t want L.J. In an April court custody hearing, a judge in their child welfare case admonished them for not accepting responsibility for their treatment of L.J., including keeping him from school.

For its part, the state did ultimately take responsibility for L.J.’s schooling: Caseworkers took the children into custody on a Friday. The following Monday, L.J. returned to public school.

Mollie Simon of ProPublica contributed research. Andrew Adams of Capitol News Illinois contributed data reporting. Have a news tip regarding homeschooling, chronic truancy or educational neglect? Email them to Molly Parker or Beth Hundsdorfer at investigations@capitolnewsillinois.com.

For three critical hours after four students were shot, two fatally, at Benito Juarez High School, the school principal and some staffers threw up roadblocks to the police investigation and weeks later had to be threatened with grand jury subpoenas to spur their cooperation, the Illinois Answers Project has learned.

Detectives on the scene of the mass shooting that happened just before Christmas 2022 quickly learned the four victims and the suspected shooter were all current or former CPS students and asked to view school surveillance video, to interview a student witness who’d given information to school officials and sought access to other records relating to the students involved.

But at most every turn, according to public documents and police sources, school principal Juan Carlos Ocon and other administrators told detectives that cooperating would violate CPS policy, and they insisted on checking with their legal department. 

The delays — which have never been previously reported — cost investigators invaluable time to interview witnesses and gather physical evidence, law enforcement sources said. Police arrested a 16-year-old about eight weeks later in connection with the mass shooting after they saw him leaving a stolen car with a rifle. But between the slayings at Juarez and his arrest, he is suspected of taking part in another shooting, authorities said. He has pleaded not guilty in the Juarez shooting, and his defense attorney pointed to the delay in his arrest to question the strength of the case. Illinois Answers is not naming the teen since he was a juvenile at the time of the shooting.

Interviews with Chicago police and CPS sources and a review of thousands of pages of police and school records and emails, many of them heavily redacted, paint a scene of chaos at the site of the Juarez shooting and show how sharp disagreements quickly developed between officers and the school’s award-winning principal, Ocon. 

Police told Ocon and CPS’ chief of safety and security, Jadine Chou, that the emergency of the shooting warranted their cooperation, and the disagreement set off a back-and-forth between high-ranking officials in both agencies that would stretch over months. 

While police discussed having Ocon charged with obstruction of justice, they eventually decided not to, and CPS never disciplined Ocon, records show.

In an interview with Illinois Answers, Chou disputed the duration of the delays in cooperation, as outlined in emails at the time from the CPD’s chief of detectives and investigators on the scene. She argued police eventually got access to the surveillance video and information given to the principal that day by a school employee. 

“It is incomprehensible that anyone would think that we, anyone else, me, anyone around me, would want to do anything to block … would block or delay or forestall progress on an investigation,” Chou said.

A CPS spokeswoman said there’d been no findings of wrongdoing, but records show the agency never conducted a comprehensive after-action review of what happened. 

“It’s because when we sat down to talk about it, it was this: (CPD had) the information, you had the camera, you had access to the camera,” Chou said. “What’s … the after action? You know what, we could both do better on the clarification of the guidelines.” 

Tension between the police and CPS has existed for years over the reporting of violence on school grounds and how and when police can arrest students involved in violent crime. One investigator described CPS as viewing itself as a “non-extraditable Vatican within the city of Chicago.”

But even among police officials accustomed to dealing with CPS during investigations, the degree of resistance they encountered at Juarez stood out, law enforcement sources said.

The dispute spurred CPS to consider changes in how it deals with police when violent crimes happen on school grounds, involving students. And it appears as if cooperation between the two agencies has improved in recent months, through an informal agreement, with police quickly getting access to critical information in two Chicago school shootings. But 17 months after the Juarez slayings, CPS officials have not created any formal policy or update but say they expect to have one finalized before the 2024 school year — about 21 months after the shooting.

At least some of the disagreement stems from an apparent misreading of federal and state law governing the release of student records.

Chou said in the interview that she spoke to CPS counsel from the scene of the shooting. A high-ranking CPS lawyer, Ruchi Verma, recounted in a CPS email that she told Chou: “if there is an active shooter situation … information could be disclosed. No one informed us that there was an active shooter situation.”

But district policy, state law, federal law, and training documents circulated within CPS all allow school officials to cooperate with police during “health and safety” emergencies, and none set the threshold for cooperation as high as active shooter situations. Verma, who is now the district’s general counsel, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A national expert on the applicable federal law said in an interview with Illinois Answers that school officials should have cooperated with police.

“What you just described would clearly be a health safety emergency exception. If there’s a shooter, they don’t have him apprehended, give them whatever they want. I don’t know if they didn’t understand that at the school,” said LeRoy Rooker, who served for 21 years as director of the Department of Education’s Family Policy Compliance Office. “It doesn’t matter what it was — they can give any of that stuff to law enforcement if it’s a health or safety emergency.”

A CPS spokesman said CPS officials on the scene provided information to police on “an ongoing basis.” 

After about three hours, the school’s principal shared information about the former student suspected in the shooting, and police were eventually able to get video from the city’s 911 center. By the time Chicago police started getting at least some information, top brass scheduled a news conference at the district police station nearby.  Police sources described this news conference as an attempt to present a unified front between CPS and the police despite the conflicts.

Much remains unknown about the afternoon of the shooting because CPS, CPD and other city agencies have either denied access to records detailing the investigation or have released only heavily redacted versions. Sources in each agency spoke on the condition they not be identified, citing agency rules forbidding media interviews and fearing retribution.

The Chicago Police Department declined to make any of its officials available for interviews and declined to answer questions about the mass shooting investigation.

Even that night, after some of the disputes were resolved, police had doubts about CPS continuing to provide what they needed. A timeline of the investigation shared among homicide division supervisors shows police still were uncertain whether video existed from a CPS camera near the shooting.

Those doubts proved well founded. Ocon didn’t respond to detectives for weeks after the shooting, and other CPS staff ignored requests for interviews, records show. Frustrated with the pace of cooperation, detectives resorted to running parts of their investigation through the police department’s chief attorney, who sent requests for evidence to her counterpart at CPS.

In early January, a sergeant in the detective division told the department’s top attorney, Dana O’Malley, that some CPS staff continued to ignore detectives and that the principal still hadn’t turned over a school document detectives had been seeking for weeks. At one point, a homicide detective, John Korolis, sent Ocon an email telling him he could get a grand jury subpoena if Ocon didn’t start returning his voicemail messages.

Almost three weeks had passed since the shooting. 

Afternoon of the shooting

At 2:35 p.m. on Dec. 16, 2022, the dismissal bell rang at Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen. Dozens of students and staff lingered in a courtyard outside the school near a pedestrian overpass according to prosecutors at the initial court appearance of the teen charged in the shooting. Informally, it’s near an area known as “the rock.”  

A few minutes after dismissal, a girl was standing with some students lingering outside. She walked over to another group of teens nearby where she ran into a 16-year-old boy who’d been expelled from Juarez for attendance and behavior problems, according to prosecutors. Someone mentioned that there were La Raza gang members in the group she had been standing with.

The girl returned to those teens and warned them that the former student was there “to cause trouble” and that they should leave. 

At 2:38 p.m., the former student asked one of the victims if he was a La Raza gang member and then fired at least eight rounds from a .357 handgun, hitting three boys and a girl described as an “unintended target,” authorities said.

Students scattered. A security guard witnessed the shooting and briefly ran after the gunman while a passing motorist tried to point the guard in the right direction. At least one witness took a photo of the armed teen standing over a victim and then chased the gunman before losing sight of him. 

At 2:40 p.m, police arrived to find the four victims. The two students who died, Nathan Billegas, 14, and Brandon Perez, 15, were both shot in the head, records show. Billegas was a student at Bulls College Prep, and Perez a student at Juarez.

A 15-year-old boy and 15-year-old girl were also shot, and both survived. The girl had a graze wound to her thigh. The boy had a gunshot wound to his shoulder and thigh. The witness — who’d walked between the groups — wasn’t wounded.

Perez died at 3:06 p.m.

At 3:10 p.m., a teacher emailed the principal and other administrators to let them know 25 students and two other staff members were taking shelter in his classroom.

“I know you are all busy right now but just wanted to let you know. The staff and I are doing our best to take care of them,” he wrote.

Billegas died at 3:17 p.m. At 3:27 p.m., police lifted the school’s lockdown.

The moments after shootings are often when they are solved — or not. It’s when memories are fresh and when witnesses are most likely to talk. The longer it takes for detectives to track down witnesses, the more difficult it can be to get them to cooperate. 

Time is critical, too, in gathering evidence for an arrest and prosecution before it can be altered or destroyed: the gun involved in the crime, clothing to compare to security footage, gunshot residue tests, a cell phone.

Detectives expected cooperation because they were investigating a school shooting that resulted in two dead students and two wounded students. It didn’t appear to be an “active shooter,” but police operated under the belief that someone who shoots four people in a school courtyard remains an ongoing threat because they haven’t been arrested.

The police department’s chief of detectives, Brendan Deenihan, outlined difficulties detectives encountered in an email to police department attorneys the next morning. 

While detectives were at the school, they believed a student witness “provided a name of the shooter” to a school staffer. Detectives saw the staffer give a CPS photo of the named shooter to Ocon, according to the email. 

Chou said that after the shooting, the witness and a guardian were in the room where police would have been able to view surveillance footage, and the guardian had told CPS they didn’t want to talk to police.

Chou said no detective ever told her they wanted to speak with the guardian. But law enforcement sources said officers did ask CPS staff to speak to the guardian and were denied access.

Police weren’t allowed inside the room because the guardian and witness were in there, and school officials didn’t want to let the family leave the room because the police were outside, Chou said.

Eighteen hours after the shooting, detectives were still trying to identify the student witness and the CPS staffer who gave the principal the piece of paper with the named shooter’s photo, according to the email sent by Deenihan.

“Efforts are on-going to identify and interview both the student who may [have] witnessed the incident and provided the offender’s name and the faculty member who provided this information to the (principal),” Deenihan wrote.

In the following days, detectives spoke to the witness, who was cooperative. 

As for the paper handed to Ocon, he  “continually refused and resisted in providing this information to the (detectives) citing it was against CPS policy. After several hours the (principal) subsequently forwarded this information to the assigned personnel,” Deenihan wrote.

Chou said a CPS attorney told her not to release the record, because it was from the school’s record keeping system, but said it would be OK to write down the information and share it with detectives, which she did. Chou said detectives left but later returned and said they needed the actual record for evidence.  

And it was only after weeks of back-and-forth and a threatened subpoena before detectives got the document, according to emails. 

Detectives also were unable to get video from the school, Deenihan wrote. 

“Initially the school faculty (principle and CPS Security personnel) refused to provide the assigned personnel any video surveillance of the incident,” Deenihan wrote. 

Deenihan wrote detectives were able to view the video after “three hours” and pulled video from the city’s 911 center that night. Chou said detectives should have just gone to the Office of Emergency Management and Communications in the first place, which is how detectives often pull video from incidents at or near CPS property because they can pull from nearby cameras that aren’t part of the CPS system.

Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, whose 25th Ward encompasses the high school, was at the scene of the shooting early on and said he recalled CPS officials telling him and detectives that CPS couldn’t show them the video because legal counsel advised against it.

His account mirrors that of police sources familiar with the investigation, who said CPS denied officers access to the video. 

Sigcho-Lopez said he didn’t see a sense of urgency from CPS in giving police access to video and information for their investigation. And though he’s one of the most vocal critics of the police on the City Council, he said that “has to be put aside on this.” 

“Look, it’s an emergency, we need to see that video footage, you know. And look I got my own perceptions here,” Sigcho-Lopez said in an interview with Illinois Answers. “Politics aside, at that point to me, that was a priority right? To say, look, we need to solve this immediately.” 

Within about 30 minutes of police beginning to get information, police and district officials announced a news conference at the Near West district police station. Before it started, someone from the police department’s News Affairs office told Supt. David Brown that he might be asked about issues with CPS cooperation. “Yeah, I’ll handle it,” Brown said. Brown didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

Sure enough, a reporter soon asked about the quality of cooperation from CPS. Brown dismissed the question and did so again after the reporter asked him to clarify.

Reporter 1: Speaking of video we’re hearing from sources that the school has not turned over video. Is there any comment on that or the reasoning why there might be?

Brown: So again speculation and just, just not appropriate. 

Reporter 1: But there is not — you all said POD and private video — there is not the video from the school, correct ?

Brown: So again you talk about your sources, I don’t know who those people are. We’re just starting our investigation so I think it would be irresponsible to, to …

Reporter 1: But to confirm there is …

Brown: No, we’re not confirming your source information. We, what we’re saying is we’re just starting this video gathering, and we’re just starting the investigation any speculation would just be inappropriate.

Reporter 2: These are kids leaving school on a Friday who just got shot, two of them killed. I mean – this should never happen.

Brown: We haven’t confirmed any information about the victims, so it would just be conjecture on your part, or your sources’ part, that the victims are students. As soon as we know that we will share that information. 

Contrary to Brown’s statements, police knew the victims were students and that there was a dispute over access to CPS video.

A Chicago Tribune reporter later asked a CPS spokesperson about “rumors” he had heard of the district’s failure to cooperate. An agency spokeswoman insisted that CPS was “cooperating with CPD, as always.”

By about 10 p.m. the day of the shooting, CPS provided a photo of the former student. Detectives warned other officers that the suspect “should be considered armed and dangerous.”

As it turned out, the boy was well-known to the police; one officer had encountered him at least four times.

Detectives also asked the crime lab to rush its comparison of shell casings recovered from the Juarez shooting with casings from another murder scene earlier in the year since they suspected the same weapon was used in both crimes. 

Amid chaos, CPS braces for new school week

The week following the shooting was chaotic. School officials had to find counselors for students because at least a few dozen of them witnessed or were within earshot of their classmates being murdered, and dozens more knew the victims. 

School officials needed to assure students and their parents that returning to school was safe. Some students didn’t return until after winter break. Others never returned.

One student emailed a student advocate and said they wouldn’t be coming to school because they feared for their safety. Another student emailed a teacher, who removed the student’s name from the email and shared it with Ocon: 

“I got told that one of the kids who got shot was part of a gang and apparently they’re going to show up tomorrow for ‘revenge.’ I’m just saying so that there can be extra security. I don’t know if this is true but either way I wanted to let you know since you’re someone that I can trust. But please, don’t tell anyone that it was me who told you.”

One of the concerns shared by students: social media posts threatened retaliation for the shooting and warned kids not to wear colors of the La Raza street gang that at least one of the four victims was affiliated with. School and police officials soon learned of the threat, and CPS asked for extra officers near the school during the week and adjusted dismissal time.

On the morning after the shooting, a Saturday, Deenihan emailed two CPD attorneys about issues he was having with CPS.

About the same time, he asked detectives to forward what they found about CPS policy and said he’d raise the issue with CPD’s attorneys.  

“I thought you mentioned you reviewed CPS policy (online) which stated there is an exception to sharing information for a Public Safety incident. If any of you have the policy, can you please share? I am going to set up a meeting with the Lawyers next week, and move on this topic ASAP,”  Deenihan wrote. “We will eventually have a school shooting inside a school,” Deenihan wrote. “CPS can’t out a 3 hour delay with sharing information.”

A detective supervisor responded to Deenihan with a summary of state and federal law, and of CPS’ own policies. Deenihan thanked them and said he’d raise the issue with the police department’s lawyers.

“This does help. I will share with Legal Affairs and have them review case law,” Deenihan wrote. “Thanks to all for being professional even when our counterparts may not have done so.” 

On the following Monday, Chicago Police Department General Counsel Dana O’Malley followed up on Deenihan’s concerns, emailing CPS General Counsel Joe Moriarty, to discuss “an issue with CPS and CPD.” 

O’Malley later asked her counterpart at CPS what they tell principals about sharing information with police.

“As we discussed, CPD’s immediate concern is what happens if we have an active shooter and need information on the spot to save lives,” she wrote.  

Moriarty shared the powerpoint presentation that  CPS’ law office provides to principals. It shows the principal and other CPS administrators could have shared information at the scene. 

One slide said: “Federal and state law allow the disclosure of student information in connection with an emergency, to appropriate persons if the knowledge of such information is necessary to protect the health or safety of the student or other persons.” 

An informal resolution

The problems came to a head, and then a resolution, in January.  On Jan. 1, a supervisor in the detective division compiled a list of student and faculty witnesses for the chief CPD attorney and a detective division commander.

“Some staff have also not provided responses to our questions citing a need to contact CPS Legal or have ignored our requests for interview,” the sergeant wrote. “Some of these staff members are witnesses and others have never been interviewed. Additionally, as of this date the principal, Juan Ocon, has not turned over the evidence containing the directory information given to him the day of the incident.”

One day later, Korolis, the lead detective in the case, emailed Ocon threatening him with a subpoena if he didn’t begin to cooperate:

“I have left numerous voice messages for you and have received no response to date,” he wrote. “ With the tragic homicides of these two young Chicago Public Schools students, it’s imperative that we have cooperation from your Juarez High School team. My partner and I need to interview you and your staff at your school post-haste. I have contacted the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office and they are involved with this investigation. If you are more comfortable with a subpoena to appear, let me know.”

On Jan. 5, about three weeks after the shooting, Chou, CPS’ chief of safety and security, emailed Korolis and provided records of student attendance for the date of the shooting and mentioned that she spoke to the principal, who was “able to locate the folded paper you were asking about and he indicated that he made you aware.” 

Chou said in an interview with Illinois Answers that the dispute over interviewing Ocon and other staff didn’t take into account that he and staff were on Christmas break, and that Ocon may have turned off his phone when going out of town. 

“He left the city, he was on time off, and he’s entitled to that. I don’t know when they were calling him. I asked him myself … did you avoid returning phone calls? Did you ignore phone calls? He said he did not ignore phone calls,” Chou said.

“There was a big block of vacation time in between there where, a principal who witnessed this and … and needed time and again … a lot of people took off their work phones and I don’t think that should be held against him.”

Ocon declined to comment. 

More than two weeks after Korolis emailed the principal, subpoenas were issued for three CPS staffers. Detectives met with Ocon and other school officials just after school resumed in January, more than three weeks after the shooting.

As detectives were arranging grand jury testimony for the three CPS staffers, Chou, the school district’s chief of safety and security, pushed an effort to address what happened at Juarez. 

Chou circulated a document described as “draft guidance” that pertained to school-level sharing of information. 

“We would like to provide clear guidance to school leaders on info sharing and other interactions with CPD,” Chou wrote. “Based on feedback from Principals and recent experiences in the field, there is a need to codify and clarify this guidance … due to the urgency, if possible, would ask for your feedback (by tomorrow).”

The document, Chou said, will include examples of what constitutes an emergency and other clarifying information.

As police and school officials were trading input on the policy in February, the 16-year-old suspect in the shooting was arrested at home. Police working in unmarked cars saw the boy run into his home with a rifle and called the department’s SWAT team and told them he was “the possible offender from a homicide.”

He surrendered after the SWAT team’s Bearcat truck arrived, about 3:40 p.m. His family declined to let officers search the home, and a judge signed a warrant about 9:40 p.m., and officers cleared the home and turned it over to a search team about an hour later.

After weeks of working on a fix with input from the Chicago Police Department , progress stopped, except for Chou checking back with Chicago Police into the fall of 2023. It appears police officials never responded to her requests to finish drafting the policy.

Police sources said the two agencies have come to an informal arrangement. Detectives encountered no resistance after shootings at two high schools in late January where students were victims at Senn and Innovations high schools.

Still, 17 months after the shooting, Sigcho-Lopez said it wasn’t appropriate that CPS never conducted any broad internal review of the way its employees responded to the shooting. 

“There has to be an evaluation,” he said.

“What went wrong, internally here? Why [did it take] so long? Why? Because, you know, time is of the essence, right? So,I don’t think that CPS can say, in my opinion, that they did everything they could,” Sigcho-Lopez said.

This story was republished from Block Club Chicago.

A former Loretto Hospital executive is accused of helping to embezzle nearly $500,000 from the West Side safety-net hospital.

Heather Bergdahl, 37, has been charged with embezzlement, according to a criminal complaint released Monday. The charges come amid an FBI investigation into Loretto after Block Club Chicago and the Better Government Association revealed questionable practices at the hospital —  including funneling vaccine doses meant for the city’s poorest people to places where Chicago’s wealthiest lived and played.

Bergdahl was arrested Thursday night when federal authorities learned she was sitting on a plane ready to take off for Dubai. Agents rushed to stop the flight and remove her, said a federal official who took part in the arrest.

The criminal complaint refers to an Individual A with whom Bergdahl worked to embezzle and steal about $487,000 from the hospital. Individual A is not named, but details in the complaint make clear the pseudonym refers to Anosh Ahmed — another former Loretto executive who faced scrutiny and resigned after Block Club’s reports.

Ahmed did not appear to be facing charges as of Monday afternoon. Prosecutors have filed a series of cases under seal that appear to be related to the investigation.

The investigation is ongoing, said Joseph Fitzpatrick, spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago.

Loretto Hospital is a safety-net facility that receives significant public funding and serves low-income people.

“Unfortunately, the hospital was targeted and preyed upon, and it fell victim to a crime,” according to a Loretto statement released Monday. “For legal reasons, we are currently unable to discuss details, but we continue to offer our full cooperation and support the investigation.”

Ahmed created business entities, and Bergdahl issued at least 11 checks from the hospital to them, according to the complaint. But the entities did not “provide any goods or services to [Loretto] that would justify such that payments,” according to the complaint.

“Bergdahl issued these funds to [Ahmed], and [Ahmed] took these funds, both knowing that the funds had been embezzled from the hospital,” according to the criminal complaint.

Ahmed hired Bergdahl, and it appeared they knew each other before that from living in Houston, according to the criminal complaint.

After Ahmed resigned in March 2021, Bergdahl continued at the hospital — and issued $486,540 in checks from the hospital to companies where Ahmed was the CEO, according to the complaint.

Ahmed would deposit the money into the bank accounts for those companies, then move them to other accounts he controlled, according to the complaint. None of the companies provides services or goods to Loretto Hospital, according to the criminal complaint.

The accounts listed an address in the 400 block of North Wabash Avenue, according to the complaint. Ahmed had a home at Trump Tower on the block. Around November 2021, the accounts’ addresses were changed to an address in Houston — where Ahmed had a condo.

Four of the checks — which totaled $314,888.96 — were issued just in the four days after Ahmed opened the bank accounts, according to the complaint.

Bergdahl didn’t submit bills, invoices or other proof of a transaction for the checks, going against Loretto’s usual practices, according to the complaint.

And while Bergdahl was employed at Loretto Hospital, she received more than $419,000 from two of Ahmed’s accounts, according to the complaint.

Records also showed phones connected to Bergdahl and Ahmed making frequent contact, including during the times when the checks were issued from the hospital to the entities controlled by Ahmed, according to the complaint.

“I believe that, during those calls, Bergdahl and [Ahmed] planned and coordinated Bergdahl’s embezzlement of [Loretto’s] funds by way of checks made payable to the Individual A Entities, and [Ahmed’s] opening of bank accounts in the names of those entities to receive those funds,” an FBI agent notes in the complaint.

Some of the checks also included a signature from Ahmed on the payor line, even though he was no longer working at Loretto Hospital, according to the complaint.

There are other indications the businesses that received funds were not legitimate, such as them lacking websites, not having business registrations and not having regular banking transactions, according to the complaint.

Bergdahl left Loretto Hospital in March 2022 but continued as a contractor until that April, when the hospital “terminated its relationship” with her, according to the complaint.

Bergdahl currently works as the CFO at Anosh Inc. in Houston, Texas, according to her LinkedIn profile. She lives in Houston, where Ahmed also has a residence.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a complaint, not an indictment, against Bergdahl — something typically done when prosecutors are going to arrest somebody quickly. Prosecutors now have 30 days to go to the grand jury to get an indictment, although they can get extensions.

Berhdahl was released on a $486,000 bond secured by her parent’s home, court records show. As a condition of her release, Bergdahl was ordered to have no contact with Ahmed, according to federal court papers filed in Texas. Bergdahl’s attorney, Jordan Melissa Matthews, did not immediately return a call for comment Monday afternoon.

Bergdahl’s attorney, Jordan Melissa Matthews, did not immediately return a call for comment Monday afternoon.

Loretto Hospital has seen several shakeups and FBI investigations since Block Club’s reporting.

Starting in March 2021, Block Club revealed the hospital was funneling vaccines meant for underserved areas of the West Side to ineligible people at Chicago’s Trump Tower, where Loretto’s then-chief financial officer, Ahmed, lived, and at a luxury jewelry store and high-end Gold Coast steakhouse where Ahmed hung out. Miller’s suburban church also received vaccines.

Block Club then partnered with the Better Government Association to show Ahmed’s friends won contracts worth $4 million from the nonprofit hospital while Loretto board members took hospital-funded Caribbean trips, among other benefits.

The Loretto Hospital investigations led to FBI and state probes, the resignation of Ahmed, the end of Miller’s leadership at the hospital and prompted the city to take over vaccine distribution to ensure doses went to West Siders who were struggling to get shots instead of the rich and powerful.

Kelly Bauer is a senior editor at Block Club Chicago. David Jackson is an investigative reporter at Injustice Watch.

Tracey Scott said it’s not her fault.

The Chicago Housing Authority CEO on Wednesday touted the agency’s efforts to help thousands of people find affordable places to live — and blamed its well-documented failures on “historic challenges” that predated her four-year tenure.

“I’ve heard you,” Scott said to critics during a meeting of the City Council’s Committee on Housing and Real Estate, her first City Hall appearance in more than a year. “We have been addressing historic challenges. … We have much to celebrate, but there is much more work to do.”

Some alderpeople and almost all members of the public who spoke at the meeting agreed with that last part.

Scott faced withering criticism and calls to resign from residents and even a member of the CHA’s governing board. They said the agency has let its properties deteriorate while failing to build additional homes during a citywide affordable housing crisis. Several resident leaders ripped Scott for rarely visiting CHA properties.

“Tracey Scott, you seem to have forgotten that you are a guest here at CHA — you have outstayed your welcome,” said Francine Washington, speaking directly to Scott. 

Washington, a longtime CHA resident, has served on the CHA board since 2014.

“Miss Tracey Scott may be smart, but she has contempt for the residents,” Washington said. “Miss Scott, everybody’s complaining. They’re talking about what they need. The bottom line: She has to go.”

Alds. Gilbert Villegas (36th) and Byron Sigcho-Lopez (25th), the housing committee chair, had called the hearing partly in response to reporting from the Illinois Answers Project and Block Club Chicago that found hundreds of homes in the CHA’s scattered-site program are sitting empty, often for years.

While the homes go unused, agency officials said more than 120,000 people are on the CHA’s own waiting lists.

Some of the CHA’s vacant properties have become magnets for crime, including one in West Humboldt Park that’s used as a drug stash house.

Villegas cited those findings again during the hearing Wednesday.

“This is unconscionable,” Villegas said. “The status quo is not working and we need answers … This is not just a housing issue. This is a crime issue. This cannot stand.”

Villegas noted that his family had lived in the CHA’s Lathrop Homes for eight years when he was growing up. Their time in public housing helped his family get ahead, he said.

“I worry others aren’t getting the same opportunities,” Villegas said.

But Scott highlighted the CHA’s Restore Home initiative, a pledge to spend up to $50 million in 2024 to rehab dozens of vacant properties. 

Over the past four months, the CHA has finished fixing up five apartment buildings and three houses, Scott said.

Despite that modest start to the program, a number of alderpeople accepted Scott’s argument that the CHA is making progress on preserving and constructing more housing.

Though residents and neighbors have been “very unhappy with CHA historically,” officials seem to be making “some big improvements on some core areas,” said Ald. Maria Hadden (49th).

Still, Hadden suggested CHA officials provide more data to back up their testimony.

“It would be good to see the numbers,” Hadden said.

Ald. Jessie Fuentes (26th) noted the CHA had turned over 23 acres of its property to the billionaire-owned Chicago Fire soccer team — one of a series of deals the agency made to sell off vacant land even as it struggled to build new housing.

“The CHA has given away land through dispositions like the soccer facility,” Fuentes said. “What [other] dispositions are in the queue?”

Scott said the Fire agreement was “a rare opportunity.” Though she previously opened the door to additional deals, Scott told alderpeople, “We do not have plans right now to do any dispositions for [things like] a soccer facility.”

The CEO also told the committee the CHA plans to accelerate its pace of housing construction and launch a “customer call center” so residents, applicants and others “can get in touch with us.”

While most alderpeople gave Scott the benefit of the doubt, CHA residents and neighbors were far less charitable during the public testimony part of the meeting. Residents spoke of coping with roaches, mold, and sewage and plumbing problems in their apartments. 

“I have had people who have died from elevators not working, firemen not getting there in time, we drink brown water because the galvanized piping has not been changed since 1970,” said Lindsay Graves, a resident leader at the Vivian Carter Apartments in Englewood. “I would say it’s time for change at the head of CHA — we need something much better than this.”

Les Kniskern has lived kitty-corner from a scattered-site home in Montclare for more than 13 years. The home has been empty and unused that entire time — except when it was infested with raccoons. He suggested the CHA was squandering money from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“How has this been an effective or responsible use of the HUD funds, sitting on it for more than 13 years until it’s unusable?” Kniskern said.

The CHA is formally an independent government body with its own board responsible for providing oversight. But last month, alderpeople advanced a measure to increase oversight of the agency, and Scott agreed to testify before the housing committee.

“That is important not only for council members but more importantly for residents,” Sigcho-Lopez (25th) said at the time. “I think it’s important that we have checks and balances and accountability in every delegate agency.”