Oak Lawn’s mayor said officials were “blindsided” by last week’s federal indictment of a Cook County political operative on charges he conspired to bribe the relative of a village trustee in order to secure the trustee’s assistance with the installation of red-light cameras.
In a statement released Friday, shortly after the three-count indictment against Patrick Doherty was made public, Mayor Sandra Bury said officials were “shocked and appalled” by the allegations and had opened an investigation into the matter.
“Every resource at our disposal will be deployed,” she said in the statement. “Our residents deserve nothing less.”
The mayor said Tuesday she remained stunned that Oak Lawn had been connected to the wide-ranging political corruption probe that has honed in on numerous state power players and clouted business interests in recent months.
“Our impression was that we were the good guys here,” Bury said, referring to the village’s recent termination of its relationship with SafeSpeed, a red-light camera vendor, amid an ongoing federal probe into the company’s municipal dealings.
“We’re trying to do the right thing.”
While the seven-page indictment does not identify the red-light camera company Doherty had allegedly been working on behalf of to influence official action in Oak Lawn, details in the charges show it is SafeSpeed.
SafeSpeed and owner Nikki Zollar have denied wrongdoing, saying in a statement Friday that Doherty was an “independent contractor” recruited to consult on sales and was not authorized to take action to bind the company.
Bury said Oak Lawn officials had pushed back against the company’s “aggressive” tactics rather than allowing SafeSpeed representatives to influence the location of red-light cameras or the number of red-light tickets being written.
“We didn’t really do what they wanted us to do, what they demanded,” Bury said. “We held the line, our revenue shows we were not aggressive with these cameras compared to other communities.”
She said village officials had asked the FBI to help them better understand the scope of the issues outlined in the indictment and were waiting for a response before diving into their own internal investigation of the claims.
“We are relying on the FBI to give us some indication of what we need to be looking at because we don’t have any clear idea of what’s going on,” Bury said. “If we have a deeper problem, we would sure appreciate knowing about it or what they’re looking at.”
The federal indictment made public Friday alleges Doherty, who serves as chief of staff to Cook County Commissioner Jeff Tobolski and as a sales agent for SafeSpeed, had in 2017 conspired with other company officials to pay $4,000 in bribes in exchange for an Oak Lawn trustee’s support to add red-light cameras at additional village intersections.
The indictment alleged Doherty made the first of eight $500 payments to the trustee’s relative on June 15, 2017, but does not say whether any subsequent payments were made. Oak Lawn did not expand the number of red-light cameras in the village, as Doherty had allegedly sought, but did renew its contract with SafeSpeed in 2018.
The trustee whose relative Doherty allegedly paid the bribe is not named in the indictment and their identity has not been made public.
Bury, whose statement Friday asserted that village officials did not know the identity of the trustee, declined Wednesday to elaborate what more, if anything, she’d since learned about the trustee’s identity.
“It’s an evolving situation and I’m waiting for guidance from the feds on what I can discuss publicly,” she said.
SafeSpeed had operated red-light cameras at three village approaches from late 2015 until the end of last year, when officials decided not to renew the company’s contract, records show.
Bury said she did not recall trustees ever discussing increasing the number of SafeSpeed cameras or being pressured by SafeSpeed representatives to do so.
“I was asking trustees if we ever talked about adding more cameras and no one can recall that being discussed,” she said. “It’s really not something we had an interest in.”
zkoeske@tribpub.com
Twitter @ZakKoeske
