TINLEY PARK, ILLINOIS — (ECWd) –
In a mysterious development in the matter of Tinley Park Mayor Jacob “Jake” Vandenberg’s shameful behavior last month after the July 26th Paul McCartney concert, Freedom of Information Act requests made to the Village for video footage of the Mayor and his behavior that evening have turned up a recording of him entering the Tinley Park police station at around 1:10 am on July 27th; the Mayor is then spotted leaving the police station via the same door about one minute later, at 1:11 am. Several questions are raised by this fleeting appearance, which was posted to the website Vimeo and titled, “Vandenberg at Police Dept. After Party Bus Incident.”
What is most interesting with the video is how the time clock on the video (upper section in yellow), clicks off in normal time down to the seconds all the way to 1:09:24, then PRESTO, it jumps to 1:10:47 and the Mayor appears in the video. Why have 83 seconds of video been removed? Back up to the 1:06:49 mark of the video and you see a car pull up and park to the left side of the screen. You never see anyone get out of the vehicle, then, as if teleported from another place the mayor appears in the video. His departure is just as odd. He is seen walking out the door at the 1:11:25 mark and walks to the right then veers back towards the left as if walking towards the parked car with the lights on. Of interest again is the fact the video has been edited, as the time clock he is last visible is at the 1:11:39 mark then PRESTO, he is gone and the video clock jumps to 1:11:48. Where did the other 9 seconds of that video go? Did it show him getting into the vehicle parked to the left? That vehicle left at the 1:20:29 mark of the video.
He is wearing the same loud Hawaiian-print shirt that he was photographed wearing earlier in the evening while on the large white party bus that he has stated that he rented to ferry himself and friends to the Paul McCartney concert on July 26th.
What was Mayor Vandenberg doing in the police station for less than a minute so late at night after the concert? He didn’t appear to be carrying anything with him when he entered the building, so it would seem unlikely that he was just dropping off something.
If the statements made by a half dozen traffic officers are true and Vandenberg really was apparently intoxicated after the Paul McCartney concert (when he allegedly interfered with traffic management, seemingly moved cones so his large white party bus could roll through, and reportedly shouted about being the Mayor and “Mayor coming through!”), then how did he get himself to the police station at 1:10am? Several of the police statements observed Mayor Vandenberg apparently being so intoxicated after the concert that he slurred his words, swayed from side to side, and was incoherent when speaking with the traffic officers. How could he have possibly metabolized that much alcohol in just a few hours and — presuming he drove himself to the police station at 1:10 am — been sober enough to get behind the wheel at all that evening?
If he didn’t drive himself to the station, then who drove him and for what purpose? Alternatively, if he arrived at the police station on foot, then what was the Mayor doing wandering around so late at night in the rain, popping into government buildings briefly and then heading back out into the rain?
Was he sleepwalking?
What’s intriguing is that the Village police knew about this late-night visit by the Mayor and were, thus, able to produce this video footage of him at the police station that evening when the FOIA request was made for such footage. No computer search of records could have pulled up this footage; someone inside the police station had to have remembered that the Mayor came to the station late that night and that person or persons knew there would be a video record of it.
It appears that the FOIA requester was originally trying to obtain any body-cam or dash-cam footage of Mayor Vandenberg during his apparently intoxicated encounters with the traffic officers during the whole cone-moving spectacle, but someone at the police station volunteered to the person handling FOIA production that there was this video footage of the Mayor entering the station and then quickly leaving late that night. So his appearance at the station was memorable enough for someone to have made at least a mental note of it, which resulted in that clip being handed over in FOIA production.
His appearance in the video is so fleeting that without knowing to look for him there that night it’s hard to imagine someone stumbling on his visit to the station by accident.
What was Mayor Vandenberg doing at the station in the dead of night, why did he leave so quickly, and what did he do or how did he behave inside that made it so memorable when the Village was asked to produce any footage it had of the Mayor the night of the Paul McCartney concert?
.
