By Frank Main and Art Golab
Chicago Sun Times
A bank robber’s escape from two Cook County state’s attorney’s investigators last month was blamed on lax security.
But the escape also highlighted another concern: the graying ranks of investigators in the prosecutor’s office. They often move there after retiring from other law enforcement work, a Chicago Sun-Times review has found.
Officials with the state’s attorney’s office aren’t attributing the escape to the age of the two investigators who were overpowered. But Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez is now considering age limits and fitness requirements for her investigators after Robert Maday disarmed and escaped from a 69-year-old investigator and his 57-year-old partner.
Maday, 39 -- a convicted bank robber who was being driven to court in Rolling Meadows to face new robbery charges -- carjacked two women and robbed a bank in Bloomingdale after his Sept. 17 escape, police said. He was caught the next day.
“Obviously, this was a significant breach of security,” said Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for Alvarez. “The state’s attorney takes it very seriously. She is going to do everything in her power [to make sure] that it does not happen again.”
The average age of the 163 investigators in the state’s attorney’s office is 56, records show. Many of them are officers and detectives who have retired from the Chicago Police Department.
A Sun-Times analysis of 2008 pension and employment records shows that at least 46 state’s attorney’s investigators were drawing Chicago Police pensions, ranging from about $32,000 to more than $78,000 a year. Their Cook County salaries ranged from about $50,000 to more than $87,000, records show.
Retired federal agents and suburban officers also have found work as state’s attorney’s investigators, Daly said.
Daly said she could not give any details about the proposed age and fitness requirements. But she said they probably would apply only to new hires and would be subject to collective bargaining with the union that represents state’s attorney’s investigators.
“I’m not certain the employer can put in an age requirement, based on changes to state and federal law,” said David Wickster, executive director of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police Labor Council, which represents the investigators. “We would be concerned about their medical ability to meet whatever physical requirements the employer puts in place. Certainly, age is a factor.”
Even though Alvarez is considering age and fitness requirements, she still embraces the idea of retired police officers and federal agents finding a second career as investigators for her office, Daly said.
They don’t need additional training and are already familiar with the duties of state’s attorney’s investigators, which include finding and interviewing witnesses, photographing crime scenes, collecting DNA for lab comparisons, and making sure witnesses get to court to testify, Daly said. Transporting inmates represents a tiny fraction of their duties, she said.
The Cook County sheriff’s office is seeking to impose a mandatory retirement age of 65 for its employees, said Steve Patterson, a spokesman for Sheriff Tom Dart. The proposal is on the table with the workers’ unions, Patterson said. Sheriff’s employees don’t have mandatory fitness requirements, though Dart offers incentives to those who pass an annual test.
In 2001, the Chicago Police Department imposed mandatory retirement at age 63 for its officers, but there is no fitness requirement. The department provides financial rewards to those who pass a fitness test.
The two state’s attorney’s investigators have been suspended with pay during an investigation of the escape by the prosecutor’s office and federal agencies. The Sun-Times is not identifying them because they have not been charged with a crime.
The younger investigator had transported Maday several other times and was on a first-name basis with him, sources said.
The investigators were in the front seat of a Ford Crown Victoria while transporting Maday, who was in the back seat, from the Kankakee County Jail to the Cook County courthouse in Rolling Meadows. Maday, with his hands and legs restrained, somehow leaned between the front seats and disarmed the driver and then the passenger, officials said.
The policy of the state’s attorney’s office is for one of the investigators to ride in the back seat with the inmate when there is no cage in the back -- as was the case with the Crown Victoria.
At the time of the escape, the state’s attorney’s office had just one car equipped with a cage in back to transport prisoners. It has since obtained three more.
Copyright 2009 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.