Politics: Lyons has short man’s syndrome
Take a look at the video from HOINews. Then come back here.
Done? Good.
For those who didn’t look, I’ll recap. It was taken at a candidates forum. Darin LaHood, a candidate for Peoria County State’s attorney, says that if he is elected, he would diversity the office. He noted that while 70 percent of people prosecuted by the state’s attorney’s office are African American, but none of the office’s 31 attorneys are black.
When LaHood is finished, current State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons grabbed the microphone and angrily demanded the right to defend himself. The reason there’s no black attorneys on staff is because the former chief of felonies is now a judge. And he brags that the first face people see when they want into the state’s attorney’s office is a black face. And he said the person who manages the entire office is also black. I’m assuming that this refers to two people, because I doubt the office manager also is the receptionist.
All the while, he is angrily stabbing the air with his finger, coming very close to poking LaHood in the back on several occasions.
And then he half-tossed, half-dropped the microphone onto the table. And LaHood is sitting there, looking amused.
There’s nothing shocking about this. It is entirely within Lyons’ character. The man simply cannot abide being challenged, and it was inevitable during this campaign.
Years ago, I started calling Kevin Lyons “Catch and Release Kevin.” This was because of the complaints expressed by more than one member of the Peoria Police department that Lyons has a tendency to agree to release without charges many of the knuckleheads and neighborhood thugs that officers take into custody. It’s a cliche, but quite often officers would finish their paperwork and hit the streets to find that the person they arrested were back in the neighborhoods. This drove police officers AND members of Peoria’s neighborhood organizations crazy with frustration.
But Lyons has another nickname: “King Kevin.” It refers to his autocratic attitude. I attended a neighborhood meeting several years ago in which Lyons deigned to explain to members of Peoria’s neighborhood groups how his office works. He ended up telling them that he is best suited to decide what’s a crime, not cops and certainly not neighborhood activists. He excused away his refusal to participate in Mayor Jim Ardis’s crime task force as a waste of time. He came off as petulant and condescending.
People who deal with him on a regular basis say the man is arrogant and not a little belligerent with anyone who disagrees with him. Others who work with him compliment his legal skills and his fairness, and I have no reason to doubt them.
I’m not the first person to come to the conclusion Lyons suffers from short man’s syndrome. The guy is simply over compensating. Now, that’s not a bad thing if it leads to more convictions of bad guys. But Lyons directs much of this belligerency toward those who want to help improve Peoria’s crime problem.
He reminds me of that one person at your work who resists any and all change. He or she is a master of the process as it stands now. Anything different is wrong, because that’s not the way it’s always been done.
Lyons may be a good attorney. He certainly has his defenders. But I don’t think he’s a very good public servant, which requires a different set of skills than Lyons has demonstrated in the past, and in this video as well.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Billy, Billy, Billy,
Let’s see here……one man more or less states another man is a racist for not hiring enough minorities and when the other man defends himself you accuse him of having “short man’s syndrome.”
LaHood’s remarks were cheap shots, especially coming from a republican. Which is really funny because one part of the platform for the Republican party is to ignore affirmative action.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Scotty, Scotty, Scotty: You are quick to jump to conclude that LaHood accused Lyons of racism. He did no such thing. I don’t think Lyons is a racist. And LaHood is a hypocrite for wanting to make the office more diverse, because all Republicans must, at heart, be racists? Good lord. Even Lyons, in his rant, never accused LaHood of calling him a racist. He just over-reacted when someone pointed out his office lacks diversity in that none of its attorneys are black.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
But Lyons has another nickname: “King Kevin.†It refers to his autocratic attitude. I attended a neighborhood meeting several years ago in which Lyons deigned to explain to members of Peoria’s neighborhood groups how his office works. He ended up telling them that he is best suited to decide what’s a crime, not cops and certainly not neighborhood activists. He excused away his refusal to participate in Mayor Jim Ardis’s crime task force as a waste of time. He came off as petulant and condescending.
People who deal with him on a regular basis say the man is arrogant and not a little belligerent with anyone who disagrees with him. Others who work with him compliment his legal skills and his fairness, and I have no reason to doubt them.
It sounds like you could be talking about Ken Hinton.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Be careful what you ask for………there are not a lot of black attorneys who want to come to Peoria, and those who do want to work in the nice corporate law offices with people whom they have something in common, not dealing with the sort of people that they see as giving their race a bad name.
Judge Al Perham……was a pretty easy going guy and you could say they were lucky to find him. Collier was equally an easy going guy, I just had my issues with him, because he was the beneficiary of affirmative action and his go along, get along personality. But that’s why he ended up as Judge and I ended up disbarred.
I’m no Lyons fan, but anyone knows he doesn’t care if a prosecutor is white or black. The problem is that you have to really do the outreach and extra effort to identify and recruit black prosecutors.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Billy,
Then what exactly was LaHood referring to? He makes a long statement about how there appears to be a lack of diversity in an office and it means what? Seems pretty obvious to me.
Evidently Lyons’ reaction wasn’t clear enough as well to show how he obviously took LaHood’s remarks.
And who is jumping to conclusions about diversity and LaHood’s intention? My point was an issue with how Republican’s typically view any sort of affirmative action, which LaHood seems to be wanting to do. It’s a political-philosophical thing.
October 25th, 2008 at 12:40 am
Turn off the sound and watch the video. Watch the body language of both candidates. Lyons comes off as a spoiled, petulant child that didn’t get the game played according to his rules and he doesn’t like it. Its always interesting to just watch body language of of speakers without listening to their words. You get a much clearer picture of the person.
October 25th, 2008 at 12:53 am
At least Lyons has not been nailed for prosecutor misconduct. At least not that I know of.
I just received a mailer from LaHood complaining about plea bargains in Lyons’s office. Does LaHood propose to take every case to trial? Does he realize what that will cost the taxpayers? Will it secure more justice?
Justice, not revenge, is the work of the State’s Attorney.
I have seen 2 debates between Lyons and LaHood. Lyons won both debates. LaHood is a demagogue running against crime and plea bargains, and promising to attend meaningless meetings. Lyons may not be perfect but he seems to know a lot more than LaHood about being an effective prosecutor.
LaHood is beholden to many who have endorsed him, including the cops. Will he prosecute them when necessary or look the other way?
October 25th, 2008 at 8:04 am
“I just received a mailer from LaHood complaining about plea bargains in Lyons’s office. Does LaHood propose to take every case to trial?”
Lyons plea bargains far more cases than most city prosecutors in the state, and allows cases to plea bargain that no other urban SA’s office I know of allows to plead out. When I talk to Cook County prosecutors, they’re appalled by a) the cases we don’t prosecute down here, that they would NEVER let go, even if they’re not “easy wins” and b) the number of plea bargains and the kinds of cases they’re allowed in.
No attorney is stupid enough to think plea bargains aren’t necessary to the system. But there’s such a thing as too much.
October 25th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Eyebrows, I agree with everything you said. However, the only policy I’ve heard from Lahood is “punish punish punish.” I don’t think it’s too much to ask for someone who is in between Kevin “The Pushover” Lyons and Darin “Grand Moff” Lahood.
October 25th, 2008 at 9:07 am
with all due respect to your annecdotal survey or Cook County prosecutors, I’m sure they can be taken as a valid. Do you have a statistical basis for your opinion or merely the bar room talk of some trial jocks who never saw a case they couldn’t win. How did you describe the cases, what facts didn’t you know the the prosecutors office here did etc. e.g. would you have charged monterious hinkle with 5 rapes? If so then you would have wrongfully charged him with one of them as the DNA showed.
BTW, in Cook County, they thought nothing of allowing police officers to torture false confessions for years (Commander Burge) without consequence. Almost all of those exonerated from death row were from Cook County. Perhaps the “prosecute now and let the appeals system sort it out” mentality prevelant in Cook County is NOT the model to be followed. Perhaps judgement in a prosecutor is a VIRTUE and not a VICE.
October 25th, 2008 at 9:10 am
and my viewing of the HOI tape showed a smug Lahood, proud of having gotten under Lyons skin like the brother in the back seat who touches his sibling without his parents seeing it.
October 25th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Elaine: after all of the years and a written apology to me from Nakia Perry and corroboration of the facts by Dennis Mosely, I am still waiting for a reporter to investigate and write the story of how Lyons had Joe Youngman (former LA County Officer and PPD Detective) make a report upon which Lyons based a second murder charge and held that over Perry’s head to make certain that he would make the false claims against me in front of the disciplinary commission.
While that reporter is at it, they might read the IL Supreme Court decision and ask how an attorney can even be accused of revealing privileged information when the following is the case:
1. the information was already given to the opposing side (police and prosecutor;
2. in order to suppress that confession we would have to have publicly acknowledged its existence;
Illinois is the only state I can find such an odd decision. But then it was a decision predicated on a hearing that was run the week before the 1996 election between Lyons and me.
Kevin Lyons has a lot of chickens that will come home to roost.
October 25th, 2008 at 10:21 am
gfalkes: So, what you are saying is that you watched the video and you concluded it was LaHOOD whose behavior was abnormal? Gotcha.
October 25th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Billy – some day I’d love to ask you your definition of “Short Man’s Syndrome”. We have lovingly accused my Dad of that his whole life. He was wildly successful in both his personal life and his career. If that’s what it is, sign me up.
October 25th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
billy, I’m saying that even if lyons overreacts, which arguably he does , even if the implication is that lyons has a problem with blacks because they won’t work for him, that Lahood was using a tactic to get under his skin. fault lyons for giving in to the temptation, but lets not make lahood out to be some crusading knight who’s above reproach here either. he reportedly told the Hinkle family that lyons didn’t care about cases coming from the south end. south end is code and we all know it.
lets turn this around for a second. his father represents these same constituents, and I’ve never seen a single black person working for him. If someone were to say that in Ray lahood’s office of 20 some people he has not a single black person to reach out to the sizeable African American population in his district, wouldn’t we see that as race baiting? What’s the difference here?
Lahood was playing to a political constituency where he thought he could drive a wedge. he did so by implying that if lyons cared about black people, he’d hire some. I think if you were responsible for promoting one of only two black judges in Peoria County history, giving him a leadership role in the office, to have someone imply that you don’t try to hire blacks because you don’t care might make you mad. but we both know that lyons could have an exemplary record of racial hiring and behaved entirely calmly and you’d still find something about him to criticize.
At least let it be based on something other than psycho babble. When its proven that Lahood did the poll about hinkle, which you find disturbing, would even THAT change your vote? I’m doubting it but you do surprise me from time to time.
October 26th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Lyons impresses me as being a hardass. I’m good with that.