Elgin Police Chief Lisa Womack Resigns
2 April 2010
RS
7 Comments
Via WGN:
Lisa Womack, who became Elgin’s first female police chief in 2005, has resigned, city officials confirmed.
The city council had given Womack until 5 p.m. today to accept a deal to resign or face termination.
The leader of the 180-officer department was placed on administrative leave March 10 and had 21 days to respond to the city’s request for her to resign, though city officials have said little about what prompted that move or their reasons for wanting Womack out.
Also see the Daily Herald story from Wednesday in which they have former councilman John Walters commenting that a female chief was possibly bad for morale. What a strange thing to say.
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“What a strange thing to say”
“Strange” in connection with Walters? Or “strange” in connection with the Daily Herald and the odd fact that it would track down Walters for his opinions?
Any way, another shooting in Elgin this afternoon… Hope they get this police leadership mess cleared up PDQ.
Editorial in today’s DH about what a “good deal” it is for the city of Elgin to pay Womack $70,000 to go away. The DH implies that it is a “good deal” because the $70,000 prevents Womack from suing the city of Elgin. The DH fails to mention any basis for Womack suing the city.
For 5 years Womack was doing an okay job, evidently. Suddenly, she isn’t doing an okay job!
Let’s call the $70,000 payment what it really is - a bribe - to make Womack go away. At a time when the city is cutting Elgin citizen services left and right; at a time when the city is firing many city employees who I assume were providing Elgin citizen services; our elected officials find yet again tens of thousands of taxpayer money to piss away.
Don’t mind me. Just tilting at windmills. I was the only lonely soul objecting to the 3/4 million dollar bribe to the seniors for the senior vote. And maybe I’m the only one thinking spending $70,000 to make city officials mistake go away is NOT a “good deal”. Maybe I’m the only one to correlate expenditures here with cuts in services there! Maybe no one really cares!
I had high hopes for businessman Prigge. Moderate hopes for city employee Dunne. And no hope for go along to get along Warren.
What happened? Do they lose their sense of right and wrong? Do they now believe their responsiblity is to the city management and not to the taxpayers? I’ve has intelligent people tell me we need to throw the “bums” out of office - bums being all elected incumbents. Does it really matter? Would new “bums” be better than old “bums”?
It sounds like they gave her an out to resign so her replacement could go in faster than to wait for a court case to be settled. I don’t see where she failed and don’t think she was a bad chief. But, I didn’t work for her, either.
Since management people are hired and fired at will this really is not a shock. At this level, she does not have to do anything wrong to be fired or asked to resign. It’s possible Mrs. Womack didn’t like her job or her bosses anymore for whatever reason and wanted out. Elgin needs a chief soon.
How could we have saved Ms. Womack? Only the city manager has the answer to this question. I’m sure it would be interesting to find out the real reason.
I am not surprised although I didn’t think it would happen so soon but felt it would happen after the appointment of the New city manager perhaps he should tell the whole story as to why she was let go. perhaps they had a strong personality clash since he is the top dog he and his henchmen can do whatever they like the citizens of this town don’t challenge anything that is done to us. go figure this is just a minor flexing of the powerful mayoral council form of governments muscle.
In order to challenge the henchmen’s agenda, you have to have intelligent people in charge. Elgin is lacking any such individuals from the top down. So you just live with what they give you. Just accept the things you have no control over. Whcih equals all city business. Remember the Verbic, Hansen, Schmidt, and Yearman years? They sent Nelson packing, and this group will do the same with the current city manager. It is just a matter of time.