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March 28, 2024

Why haven't the Deputies Served Darrel Cox?

By Kirk Allen & John Kraft

On March 10, 2014

ECWD- 110 State Representative Race

Looks like Darrel Cox’s troubles have gone from bad to worse and one can only wonder why his own deputies didn’t serve him yet with papers on the wrongful death suit currently filed in the federal courts against him.

Will he be served this week?

Are they waiting until after the election?

Regardless, the breaking story is the Coles County Sheriff and Candidate for State Representative is now named in a wrongful death suit in Federal Court.

Specifically, according to the court filings, Darrel Cox:

  • Failed to have a psychiatric evaluation performed on Plaintiff’s decedent (deceased person) to determine whether a suicide watch should be effectuated.
  • Failed to place the Plaintiff’s decedent under a suicide watch at the Coles County Safety and Detention Center when Defendant knew, or should have known, that Plaintiff’s decedent required such a course of action;
  • Failed to have in place effective policies for determining the history of a suicidal inmate and insuring that appropriate safeguards were placed to address the potential harm to Plaintiff’s decedent.
  • Failed to appropriately insure inspection rounds were being performed.

(Court Document filed can be read here)

What is rather interesting with this case is items C and D listed above as they both referenced a lack of any effective policies in place, which is easy enough to confirm by simply reading the very policy manual that was provided to us after our FOIA was submitted in our Gun Running investigation that broke today in this article

We were looking for any policy on disposal of weapons and turns out there was none, until a month later when the questions proved too much for them to answer and by all indications they created one and claimed it was part of the original policy, which it clearly was not.  

Interestingly in this case, the State Police is quoted as saying “We have no reason to believe the jailers didn’t do their cell checks and do them properly,” Williams said. “It looks like everything was done to policy.”

Reading the policy manual I couldn’t find a single referenced to cell checks so one can only wonder how things were done to policy when no such policy is in the manual?

(Coles County Sheriff’s Office SOP Manual)

Sexual groping of his coworker, lying under oath, conflict of interest by billing his own office for work done by his private gunsmith business, failure to comply with mandatory drug testing criteria, illegal gun sales, and now being sued for the wrongful death of a prisoner under his control! 

And yes, he wants you to vote for him!

Can the taxpayers afford Darrel Cox as their next State Representative?

Wrongful Death article

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2 Comments
  • Don't Believe Everything ISP Says
    Posted at 23:11h, 10 March

    I would LOVE to see you hold the state police’s feet to the fire on that report excerpt. Sounds like the blue code to me. Why did the ISP “Special Agent” write that the deputies operated per policy if there was NO policy?
    The “Special Agent’s” report had to be reviewed by a supervisor – in fact probably SIGNED by a supervisor, indicating he / she read and approved the report. Why did that supervisor approve the report?
    There is a deep ripple in your report that goes far beyond Darrell Cox.
    Follow this one back to the ISP, please. Lots of good men and women in the ISP but there are none-the-less too many people in ISP positions that have no business what so ever being in those positions. People who make up the facts in police reports have no business being police officers. And,it indicates underlying problems with selection, training and supervision of those officers who would misrepresent the facts.

    • DJ
      Posted at 10:19h, 15 March

      I believe that the Il County Jail Standards mandates 30 min cell checks, (15 min on suicide watch) If it is in the statewide policy manual, it doesn’t need to be in the county’s manual to be considered done according to policy.

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