In his bid to win re-election as Lake County sheriff, eight-year incumbent Mark Curran cites his management experience and blames recent controversies in his office on a handful of former disgruntled employees.
Curran, a 51-year-old attorney and former prosecutor, said he was elected to serve the county, not deputies who second-guess his decisions.
“Do you want to be friends with your kids?” said Curran, who took over the office as a Democrat in 2006 and switched to the Republican Party in 2008.
In recent years, he has faced criticism over his handling of the deaths of two former inmates and a sex discrimination case. All three incidents led to lawsuits, two of which cost the county millions of dollars.
During an unrelated disciplinary hearing earlier this year involving another employee, workers in the sheriff’s office accused Curran of playing favorites with discipline and hiring, based on political leanings.
He faces military veteran Jason Patt, 36, a Democrat, in Tuesday’s election.
Patt, an investigator for the Lake County coroner’s office, has garnered support from some local law enforcement unions by pointing out perceived missteps in the sheriff’s office and emphasizing the need to improve employee morale. He has criticized Curran’s spending on administrative salaries and travel, saying he would cut back in those areas and divert costs toward hiring more deputies.
Patt is a political newcomer whose sole management experience comes from his Navy service, from 1996 to 2004, when he oversaw a division as lead petty officer, he said.
The challenger has touted his own law enforcement experience, citing his work for the coroner’s office and the three previous years he spent as a correctional officer at the Lake County Jail. He asserts that he, unlike Curran, has “worked on the street.”
But Curran, in addition to his two terms as sheriff, was a former Lake County senior felony prosecutor and later worked as chief of the gang crimes unit in the Illinois attorney general’s office.
First elected in 2006, Curran oversees the office of more than 500 employees and a $64 million budget. He has come in under budget every year while in office, a county finance director confirmed. Curran touts his record in hiring women and minorities, and says problematic employees were hired by his predecessors.
“These are public-sector jobs,” said Curran of Libertyville. “You cannot just fire people.”
Curran has traveled nationally as a speaker for Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Bibles, Badges and Business, which promotes immigration reform. He is open about his Christian faith, which, he says, helps guide his decisions in office.
At one local tea party event in 2010, for instance, he described himself as a “conservative on social issues” who formerly supported mass deportations of people in this country illegally but changed his position after a meeting with Cardinal George. Curran said that, on average, about 20 percent of jail inmates are in the U.S. illegally.
In a videotape of the event, he decried the secularization of the nation, moral relativism and abortion, telling the audience that “God will not bless a country that does that.”
Bibles, Badges and Business pays for Curran’s transportation when he speaks at its events, the group’s founder said. But Patt argues that Curran’s activity is inappropriate for a county sheriff, he said.
“I believe in absolute separation of church and state,” Patt said. “We need decisions based on law enforcement and knowledge.”
Since an internal investigation in 2013, Curran has replaced top administrators and hired former Mundelein police Chief Raymond Rose as undersheriff.
Curran has said the leadership shuffle and other personnel changes were made in part to reform the “evil culture” of the department after discovering some employees had distributed off-color pictures and jokes with their county-owned phones.
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He tried to fire a lieutenant, Scott Morrison, who ended up keeping his job but at a lower rank, during a contentious public hearing this year during which some employees described the sheriff’s office as a hostile workplace marred by internal politics and preferential treatment.
Other controversies — sometimes more costly — have plagued the office.
Early this year, the county agreed to pay nearly $2 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by the family of Eugene Gruber, who died several months after being paralyzed during a 2011 altercation with correctional officers at the jail.
Following a county-commissioned investigation that stretched on for more than two years, three correctional officers were ultimately fired, a supervisor was demoted and 10 officers and sergeants were suspended. That included a 30-day suspension for the officer who broke Gruber’s neck with a “takedown” maneuver when several guards struggled to control him as he resisted, officials said.
A second federal lawsuit is pending, filed on behalf of a mentally ill woman, Lyvita Gomes, who died in 2012 after refusing food and drink while incarcerated.
Over the past year, the sheriff’s office has instituted new training measures, hired a new medical service provider, changed its procedures to respond to injured inmates and will install a $1 million camera system in the jail, Rose said. The sheriff is also working to obtain accreditation by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, while the jail has received multiple accreditations from the American Correctional Association.
In February, a federal jury in another lawsuit found that the sheriff’s office discriminated against one of its deputies because she is a woman. The county later agreed to a $1.2 million settlement for the deputy, Heather Aldridge, who no longer works for the sheriff’s office.
Questions also arose over the departure of a former Lake County sheriff’s lieutenant who, while under criminal investigation amid allegations that he had sexual contact with a boy, was placed on paid leave for two months before he retired in December 2012. The officer, who once specialized in busting online sexual predators, was not charged with a crime in connection with the accusation. The sheriff’s office said he was placed on paid leave immediately after his superiors learned of the allegation.
Another high-ranking officer has remained on paid leave while Curran reviews a complaint that the officer made a threat to deputies during a meeting in June.
Some Republican supporters said they were reassured by Curran’s hiring of Rose.
“They are a good team,” said County Board member Carol Calabresa.
Patt has said that, if elected, he would first restructure the command staff, and demote some of the higher-paid officers so more money could be used to hire additional deputies and correctional officers.
He recently announced that he would replace Rose as undersheriff with Patrick Firman, former chief of corrections for Lake County. Firman holds a similar position in McHenry County.
“Even though Patrick has a Republican background, Jason feels that politics should not be a factor when selecting the right person for a law enforcement position,” according to Patt’s news release.
“I think change is important right now,” Patt said in an interview. “I bring the knowledge, the skills, the training. My entire adult life has been dedicated to serving my country and my community.”