MARION, Ill.—Whether it’s from all the recent turmoil within his department, or whether this is just a natural course of his law enforcement career, the outcome is the same: Beleaguered police chief John Eibeck is retiring.
John Eibeck
We learned late last night, after our correspondent returned from the regularly-scheduled city council meeting, of Eibeck’s retirement after 29 years on the force. He’s only been chief for a little over three years (January 2011); so his tenure has been one of the shorter ones in recent years.
Dusty Lingle and the flingle…Brittster
Eibeck’s term, however, has been marked with significant turmoil nearly the entire time. There’s been the police brutality involving Dusty Lingle and another officer, Brian Dematti, which resulted in a federal civil filing against Lingle and the ultimate resignation of both; the situation with the nepotistic Jesse Thompson, whose career for the last year has been marked by the federal criminal case involving his mother-in-law, Linda Heyde, and the subsequent discovery that Thompson, like Lingle, had been involved with local badge bunny Brittney Lane; the major meltdown Eibeck had last December over coverage of a former Marion cop Steve Waterbury and the simple fact that Disclosure couldn’t change a headline on its Facebook page; and a recent bout with a couple of FOIAs that showed Eibeck isn’t interested in transparency to the public, but instead, would rather resort to sleight-of-hand with who exactly handled a case as opposed to just coming right out and providing documents.
In reference to the latter, we bring up the current issue, where on the front page is contained an article, the handling of which we’ve been dickering with Eibeck over FOIAs about. We’ve been told by multiple well-placed sources in Marion that the situation that resulted in the arrest of Nicholas Hess back in November 2013 REALLY caused problems for Eibeck. What kind, we’re not clear on yet…but specifically we were told at the time that that particular situation was bringing a lot of scrutiny on the chief and how he was running the department, and he was feeling extremely uncomfortable. We’ll take this opportunity to let you read the lead on that article, which appears on the front page of the current issue, March-April 2014, entitled “Civil suit filed after bar brawl,” our first mention of the story in print since the situation happened in November…and the release of which just happens to coincide with Eibeck’s “retirement.”
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WILLIAMSON CO.—The son of a Marion podiatrist, up on an Aggravated Battery charge after an incident last November at a Marion bar, has now been sued in civil court.
Nicholas M. Hess, 26, was charged last year on December 4 with an alleged stabbing at the Just One More bar in Marion on November 28, 2013. In that incident, one Aaron Franks, 29, was stabbed.
It’s Franks, a petty criminal from Marion, who on March 5, 2014, brought the civil suit against Hess, as well as against the bar where the two were when the altercation broke out.
According to eyewitnesses at the scene, the matter went down when the two were in the bar with separate parties: Franks with his brother (reportedly named Aadam) and Hess with his girlfriend and another couple.
The table where Hess and his party were was the focal point of the matter, wherein one of the Franks brothers either bumped into or caused some kind of abruption in the socializing. An argument broke out, and that quickly escalated into a physical altercation. In the melee, which involved a lot of punches being thrown, a man by the name of Mike Simmons was actually bitten by one of the fighters.
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