Crime & Safety
Snow Storm Won't Stop Joliet's Firing Of Officer Sanchez?
As of 10 a.m. Wednesday, the city clerk's office informed Joliet Patch that the 5 p.m. meeting is still on the public calendar.
JOLIET — While practically everybody is working from home on Wednesday because we're expected to get three hundred inches of snow today — OK, not that much, the city of Joliet is still going forward with a board of police and fire commissioners special meeting at 5 p.m. to decide the fate of Joliet police officer Alfonso Sanchez.
The five-person board will consider firing Sanchez, the young Joliet police's whose decisions resulted in a January 2024 wreck near Interstate 55 and Plainfield Road involving two other vehicles that has now left the city of Joliet's legal department facing three separate lawsuits.
That night, Joliet police supervisors went over the police radio to advise everyone that they had called off a police pursuit on the far west side, but when Officer Sanchez later spotted the vehicle, he turned around and chased after it. He turned off his lights in the dark and tried bumping the car along a frontage road near Interstate 55, video footage of his police car's dash camera showed.
Find out what's happening in Jolietfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Eventually, the fleeing suspect trying to get away from Officer Sanchez's squad car crashed into another motorist on Route 30, causing serious injuries at the time to the young man and woman who were coming from a movie at the Louis Joliet Mall. The fleeing suspect was captured after the crash near the I-55 exit ramp, and he still faces 10 criminal charges at the courthouse.
Meanwhile, the three pending lawsuits against the city of Joliet all point out that Sanchez apparently did not have a valid driver's license from the state of Illinois at the time of his on-duty January 2024 Joliet police pursuit.
Find out what's happening in Jolietfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Prior to being recommended for termination last October from the Joliet police chief, Sanchez also had numerous traffic infractions on his driving record, including one while off-duty in the summer of 2023 when he was out riding a motorcycle near Newark in Kendall County.
His off-duty motorcycle traffic citations from another police agency resulted in a three-day work suspension for Sanchez in 2023.
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