Hosey: When you’re special, you do what you want

From the minute State’s Attorney James Glasgow tossed the case off to a special prosecutor, you had to know it was going to end up this way.

Glasgow had to know it too, which is why this comes back more on him than anybody else. Even more than on Joliet Mayor Bob O’Dekirk, who was caught on video grabbing a man and dragging him away, apparently because he didn’t like the direction he wanted to walk.

O’Dekirk had an explanation for this. Actually, he had several.

At one point, O’Dekirk said the man he grabbed, 24-year-old Victor Williams, pushed him. At another, he said Williams “went to push” him but he knocked his hands away. At yet one more, he claimed he believed his “personhood was threatened.” And then, in a July 14, 2020, interview with agents from the Illinois State Police, O’Dekirk told how he saw Williams “run at him with his hands clenched into fists,” according to a state police report.

O’Dekirk, a former police officer who is now an attorney, then “saw Williams’ right fist approach his face, and he thought he was going to receive a battery,” according to the state police report. “O’Dekirk said his ‘police training’ kicked in, and he defended himself from receiving a battery when he pushed Williams’ hands down with both of his hands and grabbed Williams’ jacket.”

Those are all interesting accounts of the same event, and one of them may even have some truth to it. Only there’s a video and it doesn’t show Williams pushing anyone, or trying to push somebody, or threatening anybody’s personhood, or even running around with his fists clenched.

What the video does show, according to the state police and anybody honest with eyes that see, is O’Dekirk grabbing “Williams near the chest area of the jacket” and then “while he still holds Williams, spin and push him to his (O’Dekirk) left.”

“To me, the video speaks for itself,” said Al Roechner, who was the police chief when all this happened and is now retired.

“And what would happen if it wasn’t the mayor?” Roechner added.

If it wasn’t the mayor, or someone of somewhat similar consideration, Glasgow’s office might not have dropped the case on a special prosecutor. And once the prosecutor’s not special, who can say how things might play out? An ordinary prosecutor might even go so far as to file criminal charges.

Roechner ended up talking to the state agents as well, which makes sense when you consider he was there the same night in May 2020 that O’Dekirk grabbed Williams, and also that, as the chief of police, he actually should have been there, as a Black Lives Matter rally that day devolved into rioting, looting and arson around town.

Roechner recalled walking with the mayor near a yard on Wilcox Street where five to eight African American males were standing, then hearing O’Dekirk say, “(expletive) you monkeys,” according to the state police reports.

Roechner also told the agents he twice warned O’Dekirk not to get “involved” with protesters, the report said. After the second time, according to the report, O’Dekirk replied, “I am the mayor; I can do whatever I want.”

And if O’Dekirk actually did say that, it looks like he has a point. So long as Glasgow thinks he’s special, there just might be nothing the mayor can’t do.

• 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.