Darn, and I had some good coupons left in the 2009 Entertainment Book for Arlington Heights…
Saw this on the front page over at the Tribune, Police enter building searching for armed escapee. Sounds like the escapee was on his way to a court appearance in Rolling Meadows this morning before 10 am. Not to make light of it but it sounds like a well-executed escape:
Rolling Meadows Deputy Police Chief David Scanlan told reporters that Maday was handcuffed in the car, but it was unclear how he subdued the investigators.
He took both officers’ weapons, forced one of them to strip and put on the officer’s pants and shoes, said Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.
After abandoning the officers’ car, he then allegedly carjacked another car at gunpoint and drove to a parking of a Boston Blackie’s restaurant in Arlington Heights, 222 E. Algonquin Rd. A worker at the restaurant said police found the second car there and were searching in the area for the escapee.
The escape occurred near 1701 W. Golf Road in Rolling Meadows, authorities said. Simonton said she did not know how Maday overpowered the officers, who were not injured.
Sort of scary, that’s right in my main stomping grounds.
We have some pretty serious court security problems in Cook County, don’t we? (Note this guy was not actually in the courthouse as yet.) I can surely think of times where I haven’t felt safe when in court and dealing with incarcerated parties. I think 32 W. Randolph (Cook County’s parentage courthouse) is generally acknowledged as the worst. Any prisoners going to that courthouse go into the Daley Center through the underground garage at Daley, into the lock-up on one of the concourse floors at Daley, and then they’re literally walked across the street intersection at Dearborn and Randolph, into the main lobby and elevatored up to the 14th Floor.
And I actually think the problem is worse in the civil court system where they’re not set-up for dealing with prisoners. I’m doing a rare criminal case currently up in Waukegan and I have my one case down at 26th and California currently and those courthouses are essentially attached to jails so the prisoner more or less just takes an elevator up to the courtroom, walks into court and then walks out, down the elevator, and back to jail. The civil courthouses are not convenient to the jails so there’s a lot of transporting both to the courthouses and then walking down corridors in the courthouses which seems to be where the problems arise.
