Will County Deputy Chief's Petty Punishment Won't Stop Reporter

JOLIET — Patch reporter John Ferak doesn't have time to worry about the slanderous untruths spewed about him on the local radio airwaves by Will County Sheriff's Department Deputy Chief Dan Jungles.

He's too busy writing stories that cops and politicians don't want readers and residents to know about.

So, I'll defend Ferak from Jungles' ridiculous rants on WJOL 1340 AM's Slocum In The Morning Show. The deputy chief actually accused Ferak of "interfering" with a homicide investigation by reporting details about a body that showed up at the morgue.

Jungles told host Scott Slocum that Ferak wouldn't comply with a request not to report details of the death of Lorenzo Gibbons. The 20-year-old died Monday, Aug. 16, after getting shot late that Sunday while driving on South Chicago Street and crashing into a car parked at an apartment complex on the outskirts of Joliet.

The sheriff's department didn't immediately put out a news release about the shooting because reporters didn't call asking about it, Jungles said on the radio show. He wanted Ferak to keep the very public killing on the down-low as a favor to investigators.

"Based on the evidence … we were 99-percent certain the offender in this case did not know he shot and killed Lorenzo Gibbons that night," he said. "That was the only thing we had going in this case, and it was taken away by a reporter that has zero scruples and no media ethics."

That's not exactly a case-breaking investigative lead. Especially since Gibbons' murder wasn't top secret. He got shot on a public street and his car crashed in an apartment complex parking lot.

A lady who heard the shots through an open window even wrote to ask Ferak asking why Patch — which "reports everything" — didn't immediately have a story about the murder in her parking lot. The Cook County Medical Examiner's Office had made Gibbons' death by homicide a public record before Ferak published the news without police permission.

We're supposed to believe it's a reporter's fault the sheriff's police haven't caught Gibbons' killer, when history tells us Will County investigators are perfectly capable of not solving homicides — and arresting the wrong guy — all on their own? Yeah, right.

On the Slocum show, Jungles told listeners he prefers working with reporters who are sometimes willing to cut deals to keep details about crimes out of news stories.

"I've had reporters in the past asking about cases and I tell 'em, 'Hey, I'd like to help you out on this, but if you report this it will jeopardize the case.' And what do those reporters do? They don't report it," Jungles said. "I tell 'em, 'I'll give you an exclusive.'"

The deputy chief's beef with Ferak appears to be over the Patch reporter's unwillingness to have the kind of "symbiotic relationship" with law enforcement that he said Slocum — the AM radio host and suburban Channahon trustee — and other unnamed reporters have with the sheriff's department.

Well, on that count, Patch readers should be thankful Ferak is not a go-along-to-get-along kind of reporter.

Reporters don't work for the cops. The best of us don't abide by the "Thin Blue Line" code of silence that harbors corruption, covers up misconduct and leads to wrongful convictions.

Attorney General Kwame Raoul may never have launched a widespread investigation into allegations of unlawful policing in the Joliet police department if reporters asked permission to publish stories about how the official narrative of Eric Lurry's death in police custody that didn't jibe with video leaked by a whistleblower cop facing felony charges for exposing the truth.

Reporters have their own job to do. We go to crime scenes, interview neighbors and review public records — like the medical examiner's daily log where Ferak found Gibbons' name and cause of death — to keep folks informed on what's happening in their communities.

That's what Ferak did when reporting on Gibbons' murder. He even waited until details of the murder were a matter of public record before publishing a story. For that, Jungles said he "was in the red."

In addition to calling Ferak a "keyboard warrior" and "dirt-cheap writer" who practices "tabloid" journalism, Jungles tweeted support for an online petition calling for Patch to fire the veteran reporter. He suggested on the radio that there might be "repercussions" from the Will County state's attorney, and inflicted his own petty punishment aimed at silencing Ferak.

Will County Sheriff's deputies recently confiscated Ferak's media credentials at the courthouse. It was an act of retaliation. Jungles admitted as much on the Slocum show, too.

"As far as I'm concerned, this is the third strike. He's out for me," Jungles said. "He has done this continuously. He is interfering in police investigations by putting this information out, making our job harder."

Ferek humbly shrugged off what I consider a blatant First Amendment violation carried out by a government agent as just a minor inconvenience.

Without media credentials, Ferak isn't allowed to bring his cell phone and laptop to use the court building's new press room. So, he takes notes on paper and types up stories from his car. Sometimes, Ferak writes a dozen in a day.

"I can still do my job at the courthouse. It's just a little harder," Ferak told me. "I have a ton of stories to keep busy, and I don't have a lot of time to be haggling with government bureaucrats to get my sheriff's pass reinstated."

If Will County detectives were as focused on getting their job done despite minor inconveniences caused by a pesky reporter, maybe they'd catch more murderers.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docuseries on CNN and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary "16 Shots."

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