While the board that reviews and fires Cook County sheriff’s officers accused of misconduct was illegally constituted, Cook County’s sheriff has asked a federal judge to shy away from allowing about 230 former sheriff’s deputies and correctional officers to continue with a lawsuit over the issue, warning granting the reinstatement “with back pay” sought by the fired officers would place the public at risk.
On April 24, attorneys for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart filed a brief in Chicago federal court, asking U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood to dismiss the putative class action lawsuit brought by named plaintiffs Martenia Shyne and Antoinette Garnett-Williams.
The class action, the sheriff’s attorneys argued, is based on a “misreading” of a state law. And if the plaintiffs prevail, Dart asserted, an “absurd result” would create a “moral hazard and risk to the public of terminating scores of pending disciplinary complaints against violent, dishonest or otherwise unfit Sheriff’s police officers and restoring them to a position of public trust.”
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart
The case landed in federal court in February, one of the latest among more than two dozen cases now pending in Chicago state and federal courts against Dart and his office over employee discipline and terminations handed down by the Cook County Sheriff’s Merit Board.
The legal actions were launched in the wake of a May 2017 state appellate court’s ruling, finding the Merit Board had been improperly constituted since at least 2011, when Dart appointed John Rosales to the board to replace an outgoing board member, with a term to expire in March 2012. Rosales served until early 2015.
The appeals court held merit board members must be appointed to staggered, six-year terms.
Some of the lawsuits have been lodged by Cook County sheriff’s officers fired or hit with accusations over a range of alleged misconduct, including some who faced criminal charges.
In the April 24 brief, for instance, Dart notes the plaintiffs in the case at bar were also among those accused of misconduct. Dart noted neither of the plaintiffs had yet faced an “evidentiary hearing,” nor had they yet been formally disciplined. However, according to the sheriff’s brief, Shyne had “fraternized with known gang members” and Garrett-Williams had “stalked and made off-duty threats to kill a woman.”
However, despite the accusations of misconduct against them and against other sheriff’s officers either fired or facing pending complaints, the class action assert not just the final decisions, but all proceedings before the “sham” Merit Board were illegitimate.
They asserted the illegitimacy of the proceedings against the previously fired officers and others facing pending actions remained even after Illinois lawmakers instituted a “fix” of the problems under legislation approved in late 2017.
So, too, they argued, Dart’s decision to simply refile the old complaints before the newly constituted Merit Board also should be considered illegal, as the old board’s constitutional problems rendered void all actions introduced before it.
“… Because the old Board was illegal and unable to take jurisdiction of the Plaintiffs’ cases any time prior to Dec. 13, 2017, there never was an earlier case which could make for an amended filing,” the plaintiffs argued.
To allow the disciplinary cases to continue would violate the fired officers’ constitutional rights, they asserted.
The plaintiffs asked the court to order the county to reinstate all of the fired officers with back pay, and award them at least $100,000 each in compensatory damages.
Dart, however, has moved to dismiss the federal class action, noting none of the plaintiffs in this case have suffered violation of their due process rights, as they have not yet exhausted their legal options, including hearings before the Merit Board and review of those decisions in circuit court.
And the sheriff asserted a court order reinstating the fired and suspended officers would produce a result Illinois lawmakers would have never intended, granting a “free pass” to officers disciplined “for violations of the public trust.
But “worse,” the sheriff said, allowing the class action to continue could lead to a “windfall result” for suspended and terminated officers “who the Sheriff has determined to be dishonest, incompetent, dangerous or otherwise unqualified for their jobs – before the new Merit Board has a chance to decide whether the Sheriff’s determination is correct.”
“Such a windfall result to suspended officers would inevitably harm the people of Cook County and this District, other Sheriff’s employees, and detainees at the County Jail and County courthouses.”
The sheriff asked the court to agree with his position, that the “best solution is for currently suspended officers to proceed before the current Merit Board on a case-by-case basis, rather than for the Court to grant plaintiffs’ demand for a catch-all order ‘reinstating’ all suspended officers.”
Dart and his office are represented in the matter by attorneys Stephanie A. Scharf, Sarah R. Marmor, Deirdre A. Fox and George D. Sax, of the firm of Scharf Banks Marmor LLC, of Chicago.
The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Christopher Cooper and Cass Casper, of Chicago.