As a politician, I assume that if you do no wrong, you have nothing to worry about. Unless of course you are planning a huge tax cut and want to surprise everyone before the Holiday Season or election day.

Lisa Donovan of the Chicago Sun-Times reported last week that Cook County Board President Todd Stroger’s office underwent a hush-hush after-hours security inspection Wednesday night, but top aides are denying a report that Stroger’s 5th Floor executive offices at 118 N. Clark St. were swept for bugging devices. “There was no scanning or screening for electronic devices,” said Marcel Bright, a Stroger spokesman.

As a trained countermeasures tech, it is often times that you will do a sweep at a facility where the staff is not around to arouse suspicion. The last thing you want is to have the staff see you are worried about an FBI surveillance bug in the office. After all, aren’t you simply serving the people as best you can in an honest attempt to better your city, county, state or country? Maybe outside of Cook County you are.

It was reported that David Ramos, Executive Director of Cook County’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Office was accompanied by a North Side security firm whose owners — identified as former FBI agents specializing in countersurveillance, according to a visitor’s log for the county building. According to the sheriff’s visitor’s log Ramos was accompanied by the owners of the Chicago security firm Dennis & Salp Consultants Inc. Jim Salp and Mike Dennis, along with two other men identified as Dennis Wysong and Bryan Johnson.

About 9:30 p.m., Cook County Sheriff’s deputies, in charge of security at the building, spotted several people “removing items” from Stroger’s 5th floor offices, said Steve Patterson, a spokesman for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart. Deputies asked Ramos —whom they know has an office on the 7th floor — about what was unfolding, but he politely declined to answer their questions.

“When we asked Director Ramos to explain what was going on, he gave his business card to the deputy, he said if anyone had any questions the sheriff himself should call himself. Director Ramos didn’t believe he had to give any further explanation,” Patterson said. Ramos did not return multiple calls from the Sun-Times seeking comment.
But Stroger’s spokesman, Bright, said Ramos was conducting a security inspection. “He was simply inspecting and preparing for some security issues that will be addressed in the coming weeks,” Bright said of Ramos. Pressed for details, Bright said: “I can’t discuss that right now.”

When contacted at the firm’s Northwest Side office, Mike Dennis denied being at the county Wednesday night and offered only vague answers about whether his firm was working on security in Stroger’s office: “Could be.” He declined further comment, but one website says of its owners “As Special Agents for the FBI, Mike Dennis and Jim Salp received the highest level of sophisticated training and experience in the fields of electronic surveillance and countermeasures.”
While Bright said Wednesday night’s inspection had been scheduled weeks in advance, he wasn’t sure why it was after-hours. Ramos and the other four signed in at 6 p.m.

“I imagine it’s easier to do when the offices are closed,” Bright said.
But at one point, sources say, that proved difficult for Ramos.
Between roughly 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., Ramos was reaching out to building management to unlock some of the doors in the suites. He asked building staff to unlock doors to Stroger’s office and the suite once inhabited by former Deputy Chief of Staff Carla Oglesby, who is now awaiting trial on charges she took $300,000 in taxpayer money in a contracting scheme, sources said. Indeed, the investigation is ongoing — but Ramos has been named by law enforcement as a key witness in the case. The Cook County state’s attorney’s office, which is investigating the contracting scheme, was notified about Wednesday’s so-called security inspection.

In Friday’s editions, Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed reported Stroger’s executive offices had been swept for eavesdropping devices on Wednesday night, prompting investigators to come in a day later — concerned that computer files may have been removed in the sweep. Boxes of hard drives and photo electronic devices were haulted out after hours Thursday, Sneed reported.

But officials kept mum about any link between the reported sweep Wednesday and investigators swooping in on Thursday. Cook County Inspector General Patrick Blanchard confirmed his investigators were working in the executive offices Thursday afternoon as part of the ongoing probe in to the contracting scheme. “Yes, we did have investigators on the 5th floor collecting information, but it was not under the cover of darkness.” He wouldn’t say exactly what was collected. But Stroger spokesman Bright said: “They didn’t confiscate a computer or anything like that.”

It’s a sad state of affairs here in Cook County. We are seeing elected public officials more concerned about getting busted by a sting or investigation than they are about getting us out of the economic hole we are in. It’s very likely tax payer money was spent on this debugging operation. Did Stoger invent something he didn’t want the Republicans to steal? Did he create a way to clone himself and stay in office even when he’s gone? Unfortunately, this is Cook County at its normalcy. Hopefully the norm will change and we will get some people who care about the people and not saving their own ass from an FBI sting or a State Police investigation.