Sauk Village police chief back on the job

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Sauk Village Police Chief Robert Fox was asked to leave the station Monday because village trustees believed his appointment had expired. Fox returned to work Tuesday after a court ruling affirmed his appointment. | Matthew Grotto~Sun-Times Media

Updated: February 26, 2012 8:11AM

A day after Sauk Village trustees changed the locks at the police station to keep him out, Police Chief Robert Fox was back at work Tuesday.

A Cook County Circuit Court judge sided with Mayor Lewis Towers in a lawsuit regarding the mayor’s appointment of Fox. After the hearing, which he attended, Fox said he was headed to work to “serve the people.”

“Policing doesn’t change because of the (court decision),” Fox said. “That’s politics. Policing stays the same.”

Fox, whom Towers appointed in November, still has no salary and no contract, and trustees have said the village doesn’t have the money to pay a full-time police chief.

“Towers went out and appointed an outside person with no money from the village, and he put that person in that position and now he wants us to pay for him,” Trustee Derrick Burgess said. “Where do you want to get this money from?”

But Trustee David Hanks said he would support the court’s decision.

Hanks and Burgess had confronted Fox on Monday at the police station, asking him to leave because they believed his appointed term had expired. Hanks defended those actions after Tuesday’s ruling.

“It was nothing against the mayor or the chief,” Hanks said. “Chief Fox is a leader, and he should have stepped down while waiting for courts to rule, to show villages employees that they are obligated to follow the laws and ordinances of this community.”

After Fox was appointed without board approval, the board crafted a local law limiting Towers’ appointment powers to two 30-day periods. Towers sued to have the law rescinded. Meanwhile, Fox’s second 30-day period expired Sunday, and trustees ordered the change of locks to keep him out of the police department after he left for lunch Monday.

Towers’ attorney, John Murphy, said Tuesday’s ruling by Cook County Circuit Judge Kathleen Pantle makes it clear that Fox is the chief.

“Hopefully, the locks will come off,” he said. “The wheels of government, especially at the local government, have to turn all the time, not once every two weeks when the board meets.”

Towers said it was “nonsense” that trustees locked Fox out of the station prior to the judge’s decision. Now that a ruling has been made, he urged them to formally approve his candidate and pay him.

“They continue to stall the progress of the village,” Towers said. “We’re not moving forward at all.”

Although the board never approved a salary for Fox, he was issued a $4,600 check last month at the mayor’s request. The board responded by putting Treasurer Genorise Carmichael and village manager Henrietta Turner on paid administrative leave for a week for paying him.

Carmichael and Turner have returned to their jobs. Fox never cashed the check and has not been issued another, according to both sides.

Fox previously suggested the village board was squabbling over his contract because Towers didn’t appoint the board’s preferred candidate, Tim Holevis, who was acting chief at the time.

Holevis, who was bumped back to sergeant, had been acting chief since May 2010, when former police chief and current Country Club Hills Ald. Frank Martin was fired.

Martin was the village’s first black police chief. But his tenure lasted less than six months as he was fired in the wake of a lawsuit filed by three officers, including Holevis, alleging racial discrimination in the department’s hiring practices.

“We have a lot of wounds and I’m hoping this village can heal,” Burgess said. “I’m hoping that will happen.”