ST. CLAIR CO.—The police chief of Caseyville, Ill., died this morning of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Reports out of Belleville indicate that chief J.D. Roth, 55, who has been on suspension from his duties as chief since March of this year and under further scrutiny in May when a grand jury indicted him on official misconduct, was the victim of a single gunshot wound to the head, and that media on-scene at his home in Fairview Heights were “charged at” by Roth’s daughter, understandably upset that there was such a response to the incident.
The late Caseyville police chief JD Roth
Roth was accused of inappropriate conduct regarding a 2003 Dodge Dakota Ram 1500 pickup truck, seized by Caseyville police in a drug case, in that he allegedly drove that truck for personal and business purposes. The truck was later put up for auction by the village board, but instead of auctioning it, they told Roth to get bids for the truck from local car dealers. This process, too, became the subject of scrutiny when it was discovered that the dealership bought the truck for $7,500…and less than a month later, Roth bought the truck from the dealership, in violation of state law that prohibits individual public officials from buying or benefiting from seized property.
Interestingly, that’s exactly what Lawrenceville police chief Mike Mefford did with a drug-seized truck just a few years ago…but after some verbal paddling from the city council (lead by then-mayor Brian Straub), Mefford was allowed to keep the truck.
A second count of official misconduct as indicted by the grand jury has to do with Roth purchasing luggage, of all things, with village funds; he later used the luggage for personal, and not business, purposes.
Apparently, Roth believed the answer to these miseries, instead of either fighting the accusations, or admitting guilt and moving on, was to take his own life.
The amount of official misconduct going uncharged in Illinois is mind-boggling, but the amount going on in southern Illinois is astronomical, as you can see by the reference to Mefford. This kind of thing is a natural state of being for many governmental bodies who have “always done it that way” for so long that the people are completely inured to the way it’s SUPPOSED to be done.
We’re getting ready to put up a post about something unbelievable in Edgar County in the north part of our region, and of course if you’re paying attention to what’s going on in the current issue, the level of surreptitiousness being infused into Hardin County by their newly-elected state’s attorney Tara Wallace is growing DAILY.
Will more public officials accused of wrongdoing react in the manner Roth did? That remains to be seen. These public people sometimes don’t understand that they’re public, and as such, their every move is subject to scrutiny because WE THE PEOPLE are paying for those moves, be they on the job or in their private lives, and therefore they are more accountable for them than we are…yet they make us more and more accountable for every move we make in OUR private lives, as evidenced by the world news lately about the NSA issue and Ed Snowden. If they can’t take the scrutiny, they need to get out of public life…and do it the decent way, by resigning, not the tragic way, like Roth just did.