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» posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 2:15 pm by E. Scott Brown

 

Winfield Police Broadsided

Sometime prior to January 13 Winfield Village President Deborah Birutis contacted the DuPage County Sheriff’s office requesting a meeting regarding shared services. On January 13th a staff meeting was held at the Winfield Police Department where both Village President Buritis and Village Manager Barrett were invited, only Mr. Barrett attended the meeting. Also present at the meeting were Police Chief Bellisario and Deputy Chief Reever. At that meeting Mr. Barrett explained he was only recently made aware of the rumors which had been circulating regarding Village President Birutis’ attempt to disband the Winfield Police Department. Mr. Barrett confirmed Ms. Birutis did in fact have a meeting with DuPage County Sheriff’s office. Mr. Barrett stated he had no prior knowledge of Ms. Birutis’ intentions to hire the Sheriff’s Office to provide police protection in the village. Mr. Barrett further stated, as far he knew Ms. Birutis acted without the knowledge of the Police Chief or any other elected officials when she made her request for police services to the Sheriff. He stated this was not uncommon and he was unsure whether it was actually going to happen.  However, Mr. Barrett did confirmed a meeting had taken place and a preliminary numbers did change hands.

Mr. Barrett would not elaborate on the particulars of the document, only to say he, Chief Bellisario and Deputy Chief Reever were working on a response to the document explaining why it would not work and why it was a bad idea.

On January 14 the Police Sergeants and Deputy Chief Reever began informing the employees of Ms. Birutis’ request for a proposal regarding the DuPage County Sheriff’s take over of police services in the village. This obviously took a very heavy toll on every single employee within the police department. On January 16 the Daily Herald contacted Ms. Birutis regarding her request for the  DuPage County Sheriff’s Department services in Winfield  — she referred the reporter to Chief Bellisario.  Then on January 18 an article was published online by the Daily Herald, most all of the information contained in the article was inconsistent  with what the sergeants told the employees during the staff meeting.  The police officers all felt betrayed because they believe they were lied too. This only further fueled the fear and distrust every member of the police department was feeling.

 

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2 Responses to “Winfield Police Broadsided”

  1. Zap2it said:

    Jan 21, 2010 6:42 pm

    As my friend said when he emailed this to me “Freaking world is going mad”. Isn’t that the truth? As I always say “I get it, I really do” but all these towns better slow it down with the layoffs and considering bringing in outsiders to do their policing. I am not an economist and I can’t keep money in my checking account but I know what is important and what is not. You disband your police department you might as well just hand over the keys to village/city hall to the county and call it a day.

    As an administrator you will lose control of your town. Let the county come in and start handing out tickets to all the residents and watch how fast these mayors find themselves out of office. All these villages better start looking for alternative revenue sources, and bringing more business into their towns to help out with money rather than taking it out on the citizens as they are doing by cutting services and laying people off or worse, cutting a whole police department.

  2. SweetHomeWinfield said:

    Feb 07, 2010 9:13 am

    Tony Reyes knew Birutis’ real record along with her “death grip” alliance with Stan Zegel’s Winfield Register and Steve Romanelli’s Winfield United. The Register was fully funded by Steve Romanelli’s Winfield United. Mr. Reyes try to expose Zegel’s and Romanelli’s favorite fake “fiscal conservative,” Deborah Birutis as a tax and do nothing puppet for Winfield United. Unfortunately a much orchestrated smear campaign by the Winfield Register diverted attention away from the real issues that the WU candidates were weak and incompetent.

    It is so hard to expose the truth about Birutis who, frankly, deceived many of the residents. Back by the politically charged and heavily funded political action committee, Winfield United, whose petting zoos and kids jumping toys swayed unsuspecting voters to Birutis, has left the town in financial devastation. Reyes’ evaluation of the financial mess Birutis had created over her previous 4 years was well documented and the linchpin of his campaign to expose Birutis’ incredible lack of financial insight, sellouts, conveniently-timed newspapers articles, and glaring management ineptness.

    Maybe one day the sleepy residents of Winfield will wake and realize their wallets and bank accounts are being emptied by a small group of self-serving and selfish individuals who are only concerned about their corner of the town. Five years of regressive thinking, wasteful and unwarranted spending has led to higher fees, new taxes and a town that is moving backward instead of forward.

    On the other hand if getting rid of the PD would save millions of dollars — just think of how many millions we could generate by ridding ourselves of Birutis, Zegel, Romanelli, and their village board and still keep our Police Department.

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