Tyler McCoy makes an unfortunate poster child for those who don’t think so. In some quarters, MEG agents are portrayed as gritty undercover drug warriors. In others, MEG is a bunch of slacker cowboys with public checkbooks, accountable to no one.<\/p>\n
“It’s like Switzerland,” scoffs one Illinois state trooper. “It’s like an untouchable.”<\/p>\n
Until recently, 32-year-old Peoria County Sheriff’s Deputy Tyler McCoy was a MEG agent. Last September, Deputy\/Agent McCoy was involved in an early-morning one-vehicle crash involving an elusive band of deer and even more elusive alcohol testing and official reporting.<\/p>\n
He said he’d been drinking before he swerved off Truitt Road near Illinois Route 40 to avoid the<\/p>\n
animals. He was not tested or ticketed. But there was video, and an Internet posting of the stumbling and weaving Deputy\/Agent McCoy became an instant sensation. The tangled investigation and prosecution were no doubt embarrassing to Sheriff McCoy, who was up for re-election, and it isn’t over yet. The DUI trial is set for later in the spring.<\/p>\n
This started here with an anonymous letter asking some very pointed questions a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Jr. somewhere out in God’s country on Route 40?” he\/she wrote. “Where was he coming from? Why are we, as taxpayers, footing the bill for this deputy to drive a county owned vehicle for personal use?”<\/p>\n
That could be a big question these days. Generally speaking, take-home vehicles are a sore spot for a lot of public bodies. Under the best of circumstances, it’s a tough sell to taxpayers whose private employers consider it near-charity to reimburse mileage, much less provide a car. So it’s worth checking out. The city has cut 36 take-home vehicles in the last couple of years, which brings its total down to 42, not including the fire department. Overall, the county has 85 employees who drive public vehicles, and most of them are sheriff’s deputies. But Deputy\/Agent Tyler McCoy was not one of them.<\/p>\n
“He was driving a MEG vehicle, and the county does not put money toward that vehicle,” Peoria County Director of Strategic Communications Jenny Zinkel said via e-mail. “The cost of the vehicle, maintenance, repairs, etc. are not paid by Peoria County.”<\/p>\n
Apparently, MEG has its own chain of command. Calls about this to MEG Director Larry Hawkins, a retired Peoria County sheriff’s deputy, were referred back to Sheriff McCoy. As a MEG vehicle, Deputy\/Agent McCoy’s 2004 Jeep Grand Cherokee was either purchased or seized in a drug raid, the sheriff said. (He drives a used 2007 Tahoe, if you’re wondering.) Sheriff McCoy explained the MEG set-up.<\/p>\n
“We pay a little over $16,000 a year to belong to MEG, plus a guy,” he said. “Here’s the reason: We don’t have a drug unit. . . . We get all the expertise. It’s a good deal, because it’s information-sharing also.”<\/p>\n
Which is fine, as far as it goes. But at that same time, the city of Peoria was pulling out of MEG. It does have a drug unit. Peoria has a lot of drugs. It also has a horrendous budget crunch. Put those things together, and Peoria Police Chief Steven Settingsgaard ends up sending a very polite letter to Hawkins that the city would no longer staff MEG as of Jan. 3.<\/p>\n
And that’s where you scrape past questions about “the incident” and into questions about the indigent. MEG is funded by federal grant money, the Illinois State Police, nearby counties and communities. If Peoria’s budget is too tight – when a third of MEG arrests take place there – what will other communities say? How does MEG prove its value?<\/p>\n
As it turns out, Peoria County State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons was asking these questions at MEG meetings before Tyler McCoy ran his Cherokee off the road. When questions about the younger McCoy led to questions about MEG money, Lyons said he wanted to address them within the group. So the new MEG board head, Tazewell County Sheriff Robert Huston, got a Freedom of Information Act request in early January: Without divulging any case-sensitive information: What’s the budget? The salaries? The cars? The phone? The gas? And the payoff: How many arrests?<\/p>\n
“That’s always been a question mark,” Huston says, quickly adding that he can vouch for the value of a push against methamphetamine in Pekin a couple of years back. “It’s kind of hard to measure how much you’re getting for your effort. Law enforcement costs money. It doesn’t make money.”<\/p>\n
But he was quick to seek and provide that information from MEG. Compressing the FOIA report:<\/p>\n
– There are 18 MEG vehicles with a combination of almost 1.2 million miles. That includes a 1991 Chevy purchased new for $32,638, which has just 20,410 miles because it is a specialized vehicle. Cross-checking, Deputy\/Agent McCoy’s 2004 Jeep Cherokee apparently was purchased used for $4,436.41, and had 41,500 miles on it.<\/p>\n
– MEG has $346,493 in funding, a combination of $40,000 in federal forfeitures, a $71,179 federal grant, $105,300 from the Illinois State Police; and $130,014 from MEG funding by other groups.<\/p>\n
– In return, it made 318 arrests last year, which is roughly $1,090 apiece.<\/p>\n
That doesn’t sound so bad. But it is only a sketch of the full picture. It doesn’t include most of the salaries and overtime, which are paid by the home departments, and it doesn’t break down where and how that money was spent. At last week’s MEG meeting, with the city of Peoria already out, some of the other police chiefs were probing further about the return on their investment. Officially, they were told, “the incident” and other issues with MEG oversight are being addressed.<\/p>\n
“I don’t agree with your assessment,” Lyons finally said in the meeting. “I don’t think they’re fixed. I don’t think there is any intention of fixing them.”<\/p>\n
There was a 40-minute executive session, ending in lunch without further comment. Asked about the financial issues later, Lyons agreed to fill in the FOIA sketch, using information he has painstakingly dragged from MEG over the last couple of years. Again, this is compressed:<\/p>\n
– In 2008, MEG agents’ salaries ranged from $38,180 to $112,320. Director Hawkins was far from the highest-paid, at $63,000, although he is also drawing a pension. Overtime was zero for Hawkins but blew up to $33,185.30 for one agent and totaled $103,151.14 for the unit.<\/p>\n
– On top of the pay, the OT, the cars and the cell phones, MEG agents get a credit card to gas up. The lowest annual charge was $2,827.17; the highest was $7,437.26. Altogether, fuel reimbursement came to $69,647.03.<\/p>\n
– According to Lyons’ figures, in 2008, taxpayers paid $959,659.17 for a total of 286 arrests. That translates to $3,355 per arrest, and less than one per day.<\/p>\n
By contrast, according to Peoria Police Capt. Mike Scally, in 2008, the city’s narcotics division made 225 drug arrests. Scally points out that arrest numbers can vary if there are special investigations going on. In 2009, for example, Peoria made just 86 drug arrests.<\/p>\n
Still, according to Lyons’ figures, the MEG unit average for 2006-2008 is about two-thirds of an arrest per day.<\/p>\n
“All last year I called them a dinosaur, a vestige of Haight-Ashbury and that their get-up-and-go had got-up-and-went about 1995,” the state’s attorney says via e-mail.<\/p>\n
“Keep in mind these figures cover THREE counties and include Peoria, Galesburg, Bartonville (ZERO arrests by MEG in B’ville last year), Morton, E. Peo, Chillicothe, Pekin etc.” he says. “Each year at … (we call it FelonyFest) at 3 Sisters Park, police arrest about 50 people, where it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Though a joint police effort, MEG uses the figures as theirs. Thus, of the paltry MEG arrest figures . . . 50 arrests come from a mere three days in May.”<\/p>\n
Add “the incident” on top of those numbers – and a recession where every local budget is stretched to its limit – and MEG Director Hawkins might consider a better answer to these questions than the one he gave his board on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
“If we’re not in this together,” he said. “I wonder if we should even have the unit.”<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
TERRY BIBO is a columnist for the Journal Star. She can be reached at tbibo@pjstar.com, 686-3189, or (800) 225-5757, Ext. 3189. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n Read the original article from Journal Star<\/a>.<\/p>\n Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n Nobody mentioned the name Tyler McCoy. Instead, Peoria’s Multi-County Narcotics Enforcement Group board members delicately referred to “the incident involving a MEG vehicle in Peoria County.” Perhaps that’s because Peoria County Sheriff Mike McCoy – Tyler’s dad – headed up the MEG board for years. And the elder McCoy was sitting in the front row […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371829\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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