“EMPLOYEES GET ARRESTED ALL THE TIME”

“EMPLOYEES GET ARRESTED ALL THE TIME” Cook County President Todd Stroger Cook County Board president Todd Stroger, in defense of his Chief Financial officer ( and cousin) Donna Dunning’s bailing out of County Employee Tony Cole said to Carol Marin during an interview on WTTW, when asked why his cousin did not tell him that she bailed Cole out of jail said “I’m sure employees get arrested all the time.” I am a numbers person, so I wondered what “all the time” represented. I did some research. Unfortunately the web site that has arrest statistics stopped being updated in 2000, so I will be using old figures. Web site disclaimer—“The statistics presented here are based on data collected by the FBI as part of its Uniform Crime Reporting Program. These data represent offenses reported to and arrests made by State and local law enforcement agencies as reported to the FBI. These data do not include Federal law enforcement activity.” Anyway, in the year 2000 there were 253,967 arrests in Cook County which had a population, at that time, of 5,345,619. To keep the numbers easy to understand, arrests as a percentage of population are approximately 5%. Tony Cole, the Cook County employee who Donna Dunning bailed out was a Shakman exempt employee. The latest statistics I could undercover on the number of Shakman exempt employees was from the Cook County media reporting site which indicated that in 2007 there were 414 exempt employees. If we go back to our earlier statistics that showed that approximately 5% of a group gets arrested, that would mean that one should expect that approximately 20 Shakman exempt employees would get arrested in a year. How is that “all the time?” I have thousands of friends and acquaintances, and besides the few arrests for speeding, do not personally know anybody who has been arrested. (I am not counting politicians like George Ryan and Blago in my list of friends and acquaintances.) I don’t think I have any friends who have served hard time in prison—but according to the statistics I should! I guess if I follow the Todd Stroger logic of people getting arrested all the time, I need a fresh group of friends because my pals are not holding up their end of the bargain!