Critic calls sheriff's towing policy racial
NWI Times
Dec 15, 2016
GARY — City and county officials are debating whether the sheriff has any business towing residents' cars from this city's streets.
The U.S. Attorney's office is charging Lake County Sheriff John Buncich with soliciting bribes and campaign contributions from towing firms that removed cars for county police.
Buncich, who is pleading not guilty, is alleged to have awarded two bribe-paying towing firms a lucrative share in removing from Gary streets vehicles in violation of city ordinances, a job typically done by city police.
"I'm offended," Councilwoman LaVetta Sparks-Wade, D-6th, said in talking about county police targeting her impoverished constituents. "This looks like racial profiling." Gary is 90 percent black.
Lalosa Burns, a spokeswoman for Mayor Karen Freeman Wilson, said the Lake County Sheriff's Department has "the authority to tow," and the city had a memorandum of understanding with the sheriff about towing.
City council members Herb Smith, D-at large, and Ragen Hatcher, D-at large, who took office earlier this year and are rewriting the city's towing ordinances, expressed surprise that towing companies not authorized by city police were working city streets for county police.
"No one ever told me that," Smith said earlier this month. Hatcher said she was told only city police and private Gary firms were involved in towing.
Gary City Court Judge Deidre L. Monroe said her court wasn't connected to any towing by the sheriff's department.
Lake County Attorney John Dull said the sheriff can enforce state laws anywhere in the county.
County ordinance gives sheriff towing discretion?
The indictment, made public last month, alleges a county ordinance gives Buncich "exclusive control and authority to determine who provided towing services when officers working for the sheriff had the need to tow a vehicle."
It states Buncich's tow list contained between 10 and 12 firms at various times. Each firm operated in a specific region of the county.
U.S. Attorney David Capp alleges William "Willie" Szarmach, who operates CSA Towing, of Lake Station, and Scott Jurgensen, owner of Merrillville-based Samson’s Towing, made payments to Buncich and received a larger share of work in Gary and elsewhere, removing semi-tractor trailers.
Szarmach faces criminal charges in the case, but Jurgensen isn't accused of wrongdoing. The U.S. Attorney's office said he is a cooperating witness.
The indictment alleges bribes and campaign contributions, including $6,000 on or about April 22 this year. It states that within a week of the payment, Buncich "directed others within the Sheriff's Department to enforce ordinance violations in the city of Gary."
"After the original officer assigned to ordinance violations in Gary was injured, and Szarmach and (Jurgensen) began complaining about a decline in ordinance towing in Gary, Buncich assigned another Lake County patrol officer to enforce ordinance violations in Gary," the indictment said.
The sheriff's department hasn't responded to Times requests for: its general towing policies, district towing maps, district towing logs, a list of the sheriff's authorized towing companies, phone and dispatch call data for those towing companies, emails and any other electronic communications related to Lake County towing from 2010 to the present.
Lake County Councilman Kyle Allen, who was serving on the Gary City Council until earlier this year, said, "The sheriff would help the city police department with patrolling in Glen Park, Calumet Township, Ridge Road and the general area around (Indiana University Northwest) to supplement patrol responsibilities for the city police department."
Change in policy coming?
Sparks-Wade, whose district includes the city's Glen Park section, said although city officials appreciate the added presence of the sheriff's department when homicides were surging in the past, "I believe our police department is capable of doing the job to keep us safe."
She said county police "are pulling people over, and sometimes they don't get their car back. I had one constituent tell me they didn't know where their car was, and they couldn't afford the $75 the sheriff's department imposed on them to grant a release to the car and tell them where it was," she said.
The Lake County Council imposes a $75 fee on car owners and a $50 fee on towing firms for each car ordered removed by county police.
The fees collected across the county, which amounted to about $200,000 last year and at least $160,000 this year, support county police salaries. The amount of fees collected in Gary isn't known.
Allen said, "You could get pulled over by the Gary police Department and they could call a tow truck, too. I think that was the only reason the sheriff started towing cars, because he was assisting Gary police department with patrol.
"Nothing wrong with that, especially when you invite them in. Gary citizens pay taxes to county government, so they should derive some benefit from them if the benefit is public safety and the public good.
"I don't have a problem with any sheriff doing that as long as what is being done, is proper, legal and ethical," Allen said.
Sparks-Wade said she wants to review the memorandum of understanding behind the city's invitation to the sheriff.
"I heard there was one under (former) police Chief Wade Ingram and the sheriff," she said. But no one among the city's corporation counsel and Chief Larry McKinley and the Board of Works can find a written memorandum.
Sparks-Wade said, "My concern is Wade Ingram has been gone for nearly two years, so it should have been revisited with the new chief.
"Our police department is totally capable of writing ordinance violations and determining whether a car needs to be towed," she said. "Those fees and records need to be kept to ensure the city of Gary is receiving the fees they are due."
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