By James Fuller, Chicago Daily Herald
Kane County, Ill. — Both injury and technology may be hindering the effectiveness of police operations for Kane County sheriff’s officers.

Chief Deputy David Wagner told a county board committee Friday the sheriff was originally authorized to have 90 sworn officers, but only 78 are serving. And those 78 officers are pulling in more overtime than Sheriff Pat Perez would like to see.

The problem arises in large part because four officers are out with injuries suffered on the job. Another officer recently retired, while still another officer was fired after not producing a letter from a doctor to substantiate her ongoing medical claims.

Wagner said several officers in the investigation division have been moved to patrol to pick up the slack. But the change will create a new lag in all investigations.

County board members said they want to take a closer look at the rules for on-the-job injuries and time off in terms of what ongoing benefits sheriff’s officers receive. The idea is to see if any tightening of the rules can be made that would encourage officers to get back on the job as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, some officers have found at least one aspect of being on the job more difficult than it should be. Wagner also reported public safety deputies filed a formal grievance with him Thursday, which will now go to county board Chairman Karen McConnaughay. The grievance claims there are major flaws with the radio system the deputies use while out in the field.

“They didn’t provide any specifics about what they don’t like about the system or why it’s not working properly,” Wagner said. “They claim they have problems with the transmission to the 911 center and that they can’t hear the transmission coming back to them. They are going to claim it’s an infrastructure problem. However, if Sheriff Perez or I thought the system was putting our officers in jeopardy, we would’ve been making a lot of noise.”

KaneComm is the emergency communications center for the sheriff and more than a dozen other police and fire departments in the area.

KaneComm Director Jennifer Baustian said the county’s public safety deputies are the only group to ever complain about the system not working. However, they’ve complained about it several times, she said.

“They have mentioned that they think there is some malfunction,” Baustian said. “But we have been having difficulty getting any evidence of that.”

Baustian said the complaints always lack any detail about the time and location of the problem. That makes it impossible to see if topography or weather is responsible for a transmission problem, she said.

“When they do come and say we need several million dollars to revamp the radio system, we do have to have some evidence of what the problem is first,” Baustian said.

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