Hosey: It’s the thought that counts in give and take

Another Christmas has come and gone, and we can only hope you got everything you wanted. Unless what you wanted was a Musical Lili Llama, which might kill you, according to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.

“The screws used to attach the spinning flowers to the sides of the toy can become loose and fall off, posing a choking hazard for young children,” it says in Raoul’s 2020 Safe Shopping guide.

So you want to stay away from the Musical Lili Llama, which was selling for $50 on the Manhattan Toy company’s website, and you can thank Raoul for providing us with this information in time for the Christmas season.

What Raoul has not given us for Christmas, or any other time in the last six months, are his thoughts on the death of Eric Lurry, who overdosed on drugs while handcuffed in the back of a squad car.

Mayor Bob O’Dekirk went to the trouble of writing a letter to Raoul in June asking for an “independent review” of a video that apparently shows Lurry overdosing and losing consciousness in the police car, and even managed to convince nearly half the city council to sign it, but now it’s nearly the New Year and they’re still waiting on the attorney general’s findings.

And the attorney general’s not the only one dragging his feet when it comes to conducting reviews of Joliet matters.

Before long, the state police will have taken seven months to investigate O’Dekirk, who grappled with a man on West Jefferson after a May 31 Black Lives Matter rally. The incident was caught on video, and it’s hard to imagine why it would take all this time for the state police to figure out one way or the other whether a crime had been committed. But here we are without any answers.

The state police have been looking at this for so long that in the meantime they ended up with yet another investigation of O’Dekirk, this one involving former Councilman Duck Dickinson and an accusation of intimidation involving the councilman’s nude photos.

If it’s taken the state police seven months and they still haven’t figured out what was going on in the video of O’Dekirk grabbing a pedestrian and dragging him away, there’s no telling how much time they will have to put in before they sort out what’s going on with O’Dekirk and Dickinson and who — if anyone — has his naked pictures.

Dickinson quit the city council not long after he filed his police report against O’Dekirk, and the mayor and city council gifted his spot to Herb Lande, the owner of Imperial Construction.

Councilman Lande happens to know a thing or two about giving generously, as he donated $16,501.20 to O’Dekirk’s campaign fund, which probably had nothing to do with the mayor bringing him before the council to replace Dickinson.

Lande also donated $3,500 to the campaign fund of Councilman Larry Hug, who voted for him to replace Dickinson. But then so did the rest of the council, except for Bettye Gavin, who abstained.

These recent displays of selflessness and good have been nothing short of inspiring, at least in sentiment. After all, It’s not like $3,500 or $16,501.20 can buy you the world, but it’s better than a Musical Lili Llama that might cost you your life. And at the end of the day after Christmas, it’s really the thought that counts.

• Joe Hosey is the editor of The Herald-News. You can reach him at 815-280-4094, at jhosey@shawmedia.com or on Twitter @JoeHosey.