EDGAR CO.—Nothing like thinking you’ve taken out a debilitating virus from an ailing body…only to have that virus be injected back into the body by force.
Such is the case in Edgar County with pipsqueak former cop Dee Burgin.
Burgin has been gone from the county sheriff’s department as a deputy for over a year now, after a loss in federal court in Urbana in a case filed by a woman whose civil rights he violated during a traffic stop. He subsequently sued for back pay in a ridiculous case involving K9 handlers; he also took his dismissal to the union, who began fighting to reinstate Burgin and another officer who was let go. The local media have been al glowy about the two “being reinstated,” but the county’s sheriff, Ed Motley, is fighting to keep the two off the payroll for his own, very valid reasons, which you can read about in the story, “State law doesn’t apply in Edgar County“:
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EDGAR CO.— Battle lines have been drawn in Edgar County with sheriff Ed Motley on one side and the county board and the rest of the good old boys on the other.
The final straw came when the county lost a binding arbitration case centered around a pair of deputies who were not certified by the police merit board.
Arbitrator Steve Bierig wrote a decision July 22 in which he stated that Motley lacked just cause to terminate deputies Dee Burgin and Roger Hopper.
Bierig ordered Burgin and Hopper returned to duty, paid all back pay from their dates of termination and to have their seniority restored.
Both Hopper and Burgin have been praised by the local good old boys, even though both have threatened area business owners who dared to sell Disclosure because of stories published about their misdeeds.
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