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SWAT change proposed Sheriff seeking to open team to area municipal officers
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Charges against couple tossed Judge: Police search of home was illegal By CHELSEA McDOUGALL cmcdougall@shawmedia.com
Sarah Nader file photo – snader@shawmedia.com
Law enforcement personnel walk away from the scene July 23, 2014, after taking a subject into custody after a SWAT team was called to assist Lake in the Hills police with a person who barricaded themselves inside a residence. Sheriff Bill Prim is asking the McHenry County Board to pass an ordinance that would allow him to enter into intergovernmental agreements to add qualified members of local municipal police departments to the county SWAT team. By KEVIN P. CRAVER kcraver@shawmedia.com WOODSTOCK – McHenry County Sheriff Bill Prim is asking the County Board for permission to make it easier to augment the sheriff’s office SWAT team with officers from local municipal police departments. The idea, sheriff’s office Chief of Operations Ricardo Pagán said, is to increase the size of the team in a cost-effective way that increases cohesion among local law enforcement agencies and gives the office more flexibility to deploy the SWAT team while still meeting its regular patrol obligations.
What it means The McHenry County Sheriff’s Office is looking to augment its SWAT team with several officers from local municipal police departments. The sheriff’s SWAT team is made up of 23 members and a commander who do the duty as needed on top of their regular patrol obligations. Pagán said the sheriff’s office would like to bring in about six municipal officers to bring the total to 30. “If we run into a protracted situation like an active shooter
… obviously, the sheriff’s office still has to patrol the streets and enforce the law as the event is unfolding,” Pagán said. While Prim had been contemplating opening the SWAT team to select members of local law enforcement since before he took office last December, Pagán said the shooting of two sheriff’s deputies in Holiday Hills last year by convicted gunman Scott Peters added an extra impetus. Prim is asking the County Board to authorize him to be able to enter intergovernmental agreements with individual law enforcement agencies, rather than having to go to the County Board
and its committees to approve each individual agreement for each proposed SWAT officer. Applicants would have to pass a qualification course and agree to a three-year commitment, according to the proposed intergovernmental agreement. Candidates’ individual departments would be responsible for paying for needed training and equipment, and making the officer available for twice-monthly training with the county SWAT team, plus an annual five-day exercise. The sheriff’s office SWAT team is not the only one available to
See SWAT, page A4
WOODSTOCK – Prosecutors dismissed serious drug charges for a Wonder Lake couple after a judge determined the search of their residence was warrantless and illegal. William Pilat, 28, and Ginnette Lanningham, 27, both of Wonder Lake, were charged in July 2014 with a number of felonies resulting from the search, the most serious being a Class X felony punishable by six to 30 years in prison. McHenry County sheriff’s deputies seized more than 15 but less than 200 grams of ecstasy, marijuana, drug paraphernalia and $8,839 in cash as a result of a search warrant executed on their residence, according to court records. McHenry County Judge Sharon Prather recently ruled the search was not justified, and that any evidence collected as a result could not be used in the case against them. Her ruling effectively gutted the state’s case, and on Thursday, Assistant State’s Attorney Randi Freese dropped all drugs charges against Pilat and Lanningham. According to court records, McHenry County sheriff’s police were at the couple’s Wonder Lake home July 14, 2014, to arrest Lanningham on an active warrant for a retail theft. The McHenry County sheriff’s deputies conducted what’s known as a “protective sweep” inside the residence, although they had arrested Lanningham outside the front door,
See CHARGES, page A4
How did Tenn. gunman go from ordinary kid to killer? The ASSOCIATED PRESS CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. – Hailey Bureau still recalls the quote her high school classmate Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez selected for his yearbook photo: “My name causes national security alerts. What does yours do?” Abdulazeez was apparently borrowing a wisecrack from a well-known American Muslim blogger, and Bureau said it was considered a joke at the time. “Now it’s very morbid,” she said, a day after the 24-year-
old Kuwait-born Abdulazeez opened fire on two U.S. military sites in Chattanooga in an attack that left four Marines dead and raised the specter of terrorism on American soil. A picture emerged Friday of Abdulazeez as a likable, outgoing young man who enjoyed a laugh, made the wrestling team and seemed “as Americanized as anyone else,” yet was clearly aware of what set him apart at his Chattanooga high school. What’s not clear – to counterterrorism investigators and to neighbors and former
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classmates – is what set him on the path to violence that ended with him being gunned down by police. Abdulazeez did not appear to have been on federal authorities’ radar before the bloodshed Thursday, officials said. But now counterterrorism investigators are taking a deep look at his online activities and foreign travel, searching for clues to his political contacts or influences. “It would be premature to speculate on exactly why the shooter did what he did,” FBI agent Ed Reinhold said.
“However, we are conducting a thorough investigation to determine whether this person acted alone or was inspired or directed.” In the quiet neighborhood in Hixson, Tennessee, where Abdulazeez lived with his parents in a two-story home, residents and former classmates sketched a picture of an utterly ordinary suburban existence. They said they would see him walking along the wide streets or doing yard work. One neighbor recalled Abdulazeez giving
See GUNMAN, page A6
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A police officer ducks under tape near a memorial in front of an Armed Forces Career Center on Thursday in Chattanooga, Tenn.
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