In March 1992, a Chicago transit police officer spotted Reynaldo Jara jumping the turnstile at a CTA station on West 69th Street and arrested him.

When officers searched him, they found five packets of cocaine and nearly three ounces of marijuana, a police report said. The report valued the drugs at more than $1,400. Jara pleaded guilty to felony drug possession and was sentenced to probation.

Five years after completing his sentence, Jara found himself on the other side of the law. The Cook County Sheriff's Office hired him as a corrections officer.

A Daily News investigation found Jara is not the only Sheriff's Office employee with a questionable background. At least 21 others have been hired since Sheriff Michael Sheahan took office in 1991, despite problems ranging from criminal offenses to serious disciplinary infractions in other police jobs.

The Homewood Board of Fire and Police Commissioners fired patrolman Andrew C. Jeleniewski after he was accused of sexually assaulting a female motorist during a traffic stop.

He was hired by the Sheriff's Office in 2001 as a corrections officer.

Jesus Barajas pleaded guilty in Cook County Court to illegally carrying a loaded revolver in his car. He was hired in 1994 as a corrections officer.

And Kevin Barrales was involved in two battery cases. In one, in Cook County Court, he pleaded guilty in 1996. In the other, the case was dropped after the victim won a settlement payment in civil court. Barrales was hired in 1998 as a corrections officer.

The Sheriff's Office hiring policies stand in stark contrast to those of other large law enforcement agencies, which typically bar hiring candidates with serious criminal offenses in their past.

In many cases, those policies are rooted in concern that officers who have misbehaved in the past will do so again in the future, and that their prior misconduct could raise liability issues or compromise them under cross examination in court.

Patrick Judge, executive director of the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training, said any department hiring someone who has previously committed a crime or compiled an unfavorable record in another law enforcement agency 'is out of their mind. '

'It's a nightmare,' he said.

The hiring raises questions about the qualifications of some members of the Sheriff's Office, as well as about the department's adherence to state law, which requires law enforcement officers to be of good moral character.

The hires reviewed by the Daily News highlight some of the difficulties faced by the agency as it tries to recruit qualified candidates for often low-paying and dangerous jobs. Sheriff's officials note that the department employs more than 6,200 deputies, so those with questionable backgrounds represent a small fraction of the number hired since Sheahan took office.

'Everybody here has had a thorough background investigation done,' said Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Sally Daly. 'There is nobody here who has had a career in crime.'

And Daly said none of the officers identified by the Daily News had been involved in disciplinary proceedings at the Sheriff's Office, indicating that they have turned out to be good employees regardless of their backgrounds.

The Daily News investigation identified 12 Sheriff's Office employees who have been charged with crimes. In all but one of those cases, the employee either pleaded guilty or was found by the court to have committed a crime.

In some cases, including those involving Barajas and Jara, the officers entered into plea arrangements that allowed them to avoid being formally convicted, although they acknowledged committing the crimes they were charged with.

Ten more employees have been disciplined in or fired from prior law-enforcement jobs.

Some officers have since left the Sheriff's Office for reasons unrelated to their prior difficulties.

The Daily News tally almost certainly understates the true number of officers with problems in their past. Some police departments refused to release information on the disciplinary records of former employees who now work for the Sheriff's Office. And we checked only Cook County criminal court records, meaning that officers with criminal records in other jurisdictions were not included in the analysis.

Jara declined to comment on his arrest and subsequent hiring by the Sheriff's Office.

Among the other Sheriff's Office employees with a record of past misconduct is Jeleniewski.

While working the night shift as a Homewood police officer in 1991, Jeleniewski pulled over a female motorist, who later filed a complaint alleging he had sexually assaulted her.

The village's fire and police commission investigated and found Jeleniewski drove the woman to an area near a park, directed her to undress and had sex with her. In testimony that the merit board ruled 'credible,' the woman said she had been driving drunk, that Jeleniewski sexually assaulted her, and that he failed to arrest her for drunken driving after the incident.

There were no witnesses to the incident. But the board found 'significant corroborating evidence' that the woman was telling the truth, including radio logs from the night of the incident, which indicated Jeleniewski had pulled over a car registered to the woman.

'The facts proven at the hearing demonstrate gross misconduct and an abuse of the office of police officer,' the board's ruling said. 'In addition to the evident damage done to the victim in this case, the officer's misconduct damages the integrity of the Homewood Police Department -- The only appropriate sanction under these circumstances is termination.'

The charges were referred to the state's attorney's office for criminal prosecution, but the victim did not want to cooperate with investigators, and Jeleniewski was not charged with a crime.

Jeleniewski is on a leave of absence from the Sheriff's Office under a policy that allows deputies to maintain their employment status with the county while they work for other area police agencies.

He referred questions about the Homewood incident to his attorney, John Armellino.

Armellino said the case against Jeleniewski was flawed because the Homewood police did such a poor job of investigating the woman's allegations. 'They didn't talk to a lot of the witnesses who were available,' he said. 'They didn't search the car. All they did was take this woman's word for it. They thought that was corroboration enough. I didn't think it was. I don't believe it happened.'

Armellino said he has no concerns about Jeleniewski's continued employment in law enforcement.

'He's an extremely competent cop,' said Armellino.

Also among the sheriff's employees involved in criminal cases is Barrales, who was found guilty of misdemeanor battery in December 1996 in Cook County. He was sentenced to supervision.

He filed a petition to have the court file sealed after he finished serving his sentence, so no further information is available about his case.

That same year, Barrales was charged with felony assault by the St. Charles, Mo., police after an incident at Big A's tavern, where he worked as a doorman.

Early on the morning of Oct. 31, Barrales grabbed a patron and threw him out the door of the bar, according to court records. The man hit a street sign, broke his leg and incurred more than $13,000 in medical bills. The patron later sued the bar and Barrales, accusing him of having 'a tendency to treat customers at Big A's with excessive force.'

The civil case was settled for $50,000 on May 20, 1998. The criminal case was dropped.

Three months later, the Sheriff's Office hired Barrales as a corrections officer.

Barrales is currently a defendant in another lawsuit, accused with two men of placing a man in a chokehold and killing him during a brawl at a wedding reception in Countryside. That incident occurred in August 2000.

Barrales could not be reached for comment.

Another corrections officer who ran into trouble before his hiring was Jesus Barajas, arrested by Burbank police in December 1993 after an officer stopped his car and found a loaded Taurus .38-caliber revolver inside.

Barajas, who did not have a state-issued firearms card, was charged with two misdemeanor gun offenses. He pleaded guilty to one and served a two-year sentence of supervision.

He was hired by the Sheriff's Office in 1994 as a corrections officer, and began work while he was still on supervision for the weapons charge.

A Daily News analysis of police hiring records and the Cook County criminal court database suggests the Sheriff's Office hires a higher percentage of applicants involved in criminal court cases than most other Cook County law enforcement agencies. Some agencies - Arlington Heights, Bolingbrook and Elmhurst, for example -- appear to employ no officers with criminal records.

Sheriff's Office officials said that in all but a few cases, the officers identified by the Daily News were hired in full awareness of their criminal cases or previous employment troubles.

They cited a number of reasons for hiring candidates despite that information.

The department focuses on hiring minorities so that the staff resembles Cook County's diverse population.

'A significant number of Sheriff's Office employees come from or currently live in communities with high crime rates. Their likelihood of being arrested or having an encounter with police is significantly higher than non-minority employees living in communities with little or no crime,' Daly said in an e-mail. 'Due to these circumstances, we do not flatly reject every candidate based on a criminal conviction.'

In some cases, the department considered an applicant's crime to be minor, or irrelevant because it took so long ago.

Investigators also compile information on applicants that goes beyond the bare facts of court and employment records, and may encounter details that turn a problematic record into a promising one.

One officer involved in a criminal case reviewed by the Daily News was initially rejected when he applied to the department in 1995. Two years later, when he reapplied, background investigators for the sheriff found that he had become a strong candidate. The Sheriff's Office declined to release the person's name, but produced a summary of his employment file.

In it, a Sheriff's Office background investigator noted that the applicant: 'supports his sick father, mother and three brothers and sisters, has over 60 college credit hours and plans to continue going to college on a part time basis. He plans to attend Loyola next semester. He can speak, read, and write Spanish.

" -- His quality of work with all past employers was excellent. After talking to this applicant's employment reference, I have concluded that [he] would be a good candidate for the Sheriff's Department.'

Daly said the agency's size means it must fill many more openings than other law enforcement agencies. The majority of those openings are for corrections positions, which are typically deemed less desirable than police patrol positions. That requires the agency to cast a broad net for candidates, said Daly.

But representatives of the other large sheriff's offices serving significant minority populations said they would likely decline to hire some of the applicants identified by the Daily News.

The Harris County, Texas, Sheriff's Department has a written policy that prohibits hiring as deputy anyone who has been convicted of or pleaded guilty to a felony or serious misdemeanor. Most, if not all, of the crimes committed by the Cook officers appear to be cause for disqualification in Harris County.

The county, which surrounds Houston, has the country's fourth-biggest sheriff's office.

Other large sheriff's offices have policies against hiring those who have terminated from prior law-enforcement jobs.

'Our department has taken the stance that if a person has been declared unfit for another agency,' said Lt. James Wolak of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office. 'It would be rare that we would pick them up.'

Comments

---

Please log in or register to post your comment.