An East Dundee teen has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for setting a March house fire on Elgin’s west side, officials said Thursday.

Salvatore Riso, 18, pleaded guilty Wednesday to residential arson, a Class 1 felony, and was sentenced in a plea deal accepted by Kane County Judge Thomas E. Mueller.

Riso was one of three teenagers charged in a March 23 fire that destroyed a two-story house on the 500 block of Ashland Avenue in Elgin, two days after police were called there to break up a fight.

Also convicted in connection with the fire were Carpentersville residents Anthony M. Huff and Jessica A. Fliginger, both 18. Huff pleaded guilty to residential arson in September and was sentenced to eight years in prison, and Fliginger pleaded guilty to reckless property damage earlier this month was put on two years of probation.

The teens were accused of using a flammable liquid to start the intense fire, which spread quickly from the basement to the attic, while they knew people were inside.

Though no one was hurt, about two dozen firefighters spent several hours battling flames and rescuing five pets from the building.

In addition to the arson charge, Riso, who has been in the county jail since his arrest in March, pleaded guilty Wednesday to resisting a peace officer and was sentenced to an additional year for scuffling with jail guards carrying out a search of his cell in August. By statute, Riso must serve at least half of the two consecutive sentences, or about 5½ years altogether.

Copyright © 2009 Paddock Publications, Inc.

A second Kane County teenager has been convicted of setting a devastating house fire on Elgin’s west side in March.

Jessica A. Fliginger, 18, of the 200 block of North Green Street, Carpentersville, pleaded guilty to reckless property damage Wednesday in exchange for two years probation and 42 days in jail, court records show.

Fliginger was one of three 18-year-olds arrested after the March 23 fire on the 500 block of Ashland Avenue. Co-defendant Anthony Huff of Carpentersville also took a plea deal and was sentenced last month to eight years in prison for residential arson, according to court records.

Police have said the fire was set two days after officers were called to the house to break up a fight, and the incidents probably were related.

A flammable liquid was used to start the intense fire, which spread from the basement to the attic of the two-story house, leaving it uninhabitable.

According to the charges, Fliginger, Huff and a third co-defendant, Salvatore Riso of East Dundee, knew people were in the house when they set the fire, though no one was hurt. About two dozen firefighters spent hours battling the blaze in high winds and rescued five pets.

Riso, whose next court date is Oct. 16, remains in the Kane County jail on $120,000 bond. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of aggravated arson, residential arson and aggravated criminal damage to property.

Copyright © 2009 Daily Herald Inc.

Stopped by police? Depending on where you were pulled over, you are either guaranteed to get a ticket — or you could drive away scot-free.

In south suburban University Park, for instance, don’t even think about asking for mercy. Every motorist stopped there in 2008 received a ticket.

In fact, according to state data analyzed by the Chicago Sun-Times, there are 35 suburbs where at least nine out of 10 stopped motorists got a ticket in 2008.

But things aren’t so rough everywhere. In Elgin, only 53 percent of drivers stopped by police end up with tickets. And statewide, the average is even lower: 61 percent.

Verbal or written warnings did not count as tickets in the state data.

The Sun-Times analyzed the records from every traffic stop in Illinois, which police are required by state law to record, whether a ticket is issued or not. The analysis included data on more than 2.5 million stops by 950 police agencies in Illinois.

Elgin Deputy Police Chief Jeffrey Swoboda said it is left to an individual officer’s discretion at the time of a stop whether to issue a ticket, or administer a written or verbal warning when other violations — such as driving under the influence — are not a factor.

“We don’t take the approach that every stop will result in a ticket,” Swoboda said. “Our general feeling is that we write tickets to change behavior in an effort to reduce crashes. If an officer feels he or she can accomplish that goal by talking with the person and explaining to them what they did wrong, and they feel that’s sufficient, then we would support the officer in not writing a ticket.”

Aggrieved motorists claim the tougher towns are writing tickets to bring money into town coffers. But officials in those cities said they do so to ensure safe roads. Others said the state’s data might be inaccurate.

Disputing numbers

One community where the numbers are in dispute is the village of Gilberts, which was listed as having the highest ticket rate throughout the Fox Valley at 99.9 percent.

Interim Police Chief Nicholas Weiss said that for 2008, Gilberts police recorded 1,481 moving violations out of 1,824 stops, a ticket rate of only about 81.2 percent.

“I’m not aware of any police department that issues a citation every time there’s a traffic stop,” he said.

Another problem with the figures, according to Weiss, is that they may not differentiate between tickets issued during routine traffic stops and those given as a result of investigation after a vehicle crash has occurred.

“It’s not unusual, particularly for accidents, to have multiple citations issued,” he said. “But we don’t issue tickets 99 percent of the time that we make a traffic stop.”

Paperwork problems?

Richton Park Police Chief Vito Mannino said he found that officers were neglecting to record stops when they didn’t issue tickets, leading the data to show that 99.8 percent of those pulled over were ticketed there. The percentage is actually lower, he says. The situation has since been corrected.

Mannino speculated that other towns, swamped by paperwork required by the state, also may be making the same mistake, resulting in misleading data.

Hazel Crest Police Chief Gary Jones said that over the last two months, his officers only ticketed about 55 percent of stopped motorists. He says state figures showing 100 percent receiving citations in 2008 are wrong.

“We make the data stop card on every stop, but I’ve been here a year and a half, and at least half of our stops are warnings. We have an aggressive stop policy, but most of those stops are educational stops.”

In Maple Park in DeKalb County, Mayor Kathleen Curtis did not dispute that 100 percent of stops resulted in tickets. But she attributed most of the town’s 274 tickets to one police officer who has since quit.

“You will probably see the ratios change because he was a tougher officer,” Curtis said. “Of course, we want a ticket given if a law is broken, but we are now approaching it from a warning-first type of situation.”

‘Gone proactive’

In some locations, police say the tougher stance is intentional. University Park Police Chief Melvin Easley said residents asked police to crack down on lead-foot drivers.

“Yes, we have gone proactive,” he said. “We had requests by our citizens to deal with speeders. Obviously that became a priority, and we made a lot of stops.”

Easley said many routine traffic stops uncover more-serious violations like driving without a license.

In Rosemont, where 98.8 percent of stopped drivers got a ticket, “officers observe violations and take appropriate enforcement action to enhance the safety of the driving public,” Rosemont Police Sgt. Keith Kania said. “The enforcement action they choose to take is consistently fair.”

Staff writer Steven Ross Johnson contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2009 Digital Chicago, Inc.

One of Kane County’s most dangerous intersections has seen a double-digit percentage decrease in accidents since state officials installed improved left-turn signals.

Last summer, the Illinois Department of Transportation spent $133,000 on new streetlights and better traffic signals at Route 72 and Randall Road in Elgin.

Before, motorists could turn left on a green arrow and then creep into the intersection after the arrow went away.

Now the left-turn arrow turns red – effectively prohibiting motorists from moving forward into the intersection and turning after the light turns red.

Fatal crashes at the intersection occurred in 2005, 2006 and 2007, and the area has been tops in Kane County for overall accidents since 2006.

According to figures from the Elgin Police Department, there were 106 accidents in 2006 and 2007 at that intersection. In 2008, that number dipped to 76.

As of Aug. 11, 2009, there have been 34 crashes there this year – none of them fatal.

“Generally speaking, any time you have a protected left (turn), that would assist in decreasing accidents,” Elgin Deputy Police Chief Jeff Swoboda said.

The year-to-date figures are more telling.

From Jan. 1, 2006, through July 31, 2006, there were 64 crashes. That same time frame in 2007 and 2008 yielded 50 and 46 crashes, respectively.

For 2009, the 34 crashes represent a dip of nearly 30 percent compared to the same time frame in 2008 and nearly a 50 percent drop from 2006.

Elgin police were unable to break down how many of the crashes were people turning left on red or being rear-ended.

Jim Baxter, president of the National Motorists Association in Washington, D.C., said the left-turn arrow is one factor in the intersection becoming safer. The recession has decreased traffic fatality rates as fewer people are engaging in discretionary travel, Baxter said. He also pointed to higher unemployment resulting in fewer cars on the road.

“You can’t look at those numbers in isolation. There’s other factors that may play into this,” he said. “It’s complicated, but it’s not a mystery.”

Copyright © 2009 Daily Herald Inc.

SOUTH ELGIN — For Steve Roman, it all began with an idea to help a local eating establishment drum up more business.

“The owner of the restaurant wanted to have a special event at his location so that he could create some clientele for his business,” said Roman, a member of an organization called Our Neighborhood Empowered.

The decision was made to hold a car show in the parking lot of Tequilas Mexican Restaurant, 1101 N. LaFox St. Prior to the June 21 show, Roman said, he contacted the South Elgin Police Department and other village officials to inquire about what permits, if any, were needed to hold the event.

“I told them what we were planning on doing, and they said per their ordinance that no permit was required,” he said.

Roman said the group continued to prepare for the show, believing any issues regarding village approval were resolved.

“The day of the show comes and we’re setting up outside, testing the P.A. system prior to any vehicles being there,” he said. “At that time, we had a few officers show up probably around 10:30 (a.m.) saying they received a call about loud music.”

That first visit was one of several Roman said police made throughout the day in response to noise complaints they said they received from neighboring residents. That ultimately led to police citing Tequilas owner German Lemoy with violating the village’s ordinance against disorderly premises.

The village ordinances regarding car shows state that a permit is not required as long as all cars are parked in individual spaces and all entrances and exits from the parking lot are left unblocked.

After the June car show, Roman said he talked with village officials about the situation, to apprise them of plans the group had to hold a second show at the same location Aug. 2, and to avoid any similar problems. Police Sgt. Randy Endean said of that show, only one complaint was received and that no citations were given.

“The police have to respond any time we have a complaint from a citizen,” Endean said.

Regarding the June 21 show, he said the issue had to do with complaints of loud music that came in a “sound-off” competition to determine the loudest car stereos.

Neighborhoods as far west as McLean Boulevard — about a mile away — complained, Endean added.

Under the current ordinance, the maximum sound level permitted at any time is 84 decibels, or the sound of regular city traffic. During a sound-off competition, levels can get as high 140 decibels, the same levels often produced at a rock concert.

Overall, Roman felt a breakdown in communication may have led to the problems that occurred.

“We went to the village to inquire about permits, and none were needed,” he said. “What we wanted to do was avoid any problems.”

The issue over the noise is reminiscent of complaints in Elgin last year over loud music coming from a car show that led to confrontations between police and attendees.

The incident became one of the livelier topics during a July 2008 Elgin City Council meeting, when close to 50 people were on hand to protest what they alleged was “harassment” by police officers.

The real difference between the incidents, according to Roman, has been the way each town addressed the organization’s concerns. Members of Our Neighborhood Empowered have credited officials and police in Elgin with establishing an open dialogue that helped reduce misunderstandings and created a workable solution for all involved.

Elgin Police Sgt. Brad Entler said discussions eventually led to a change in city ordinance designed to specifically address the problem with noise at car shows.

He said the other logistical concerns — traffic congestion, crowds, security and parking — are worked out prior to the event.

“I think maybe both sides had some miscommunication,” he said. “Sitting down and laying everything out on the table and being honest with each other” made it a “win-win for everybody.”

The new approach has already reaped positive results from the organization, which said a car show held in May took place without incident. A second event is scheduled for Aug. 16, in front of the city hall, 150 Dexter Court.

Entler said the ordinance change also sets a single standard for all venues. “Everybody is treated fairly across the board and given the same criteria,” he said.

© Copyright 2009 Digital Chicago, Inc.

Elgin police Friday detonated a homemade explosive device made out of an unlikely substance – dry ice.

According to police reports, a woman discovered the bomb – a plastic bottle with chunks of dry ice – at 8:30 a.m. in the front yard of her house in the 100 block of North Liberty Street.

The woman took the bomb inside, not knowing it was an explosive, and it began to expand, with smoke seeping out from the top, reports said.

At that point, she took the device outside and her husband, after discovering on the Internet that it was a bomb, phoned police and the Elgin Fire Department.

After testing to make sure there were no objects in the bottle that could be potential shrapnel, an officer detonated the bomb.

Nobody was injured, nor was there any property damage, after the bomb went off.

Police said they run into these sorts of bombs once in a blue moon.

“It’s pretty rare, but we do come across them occasionally,” said Elgin Police Deputy Chief Jeff Swoboda.

Reports said the bottle had a small amount of liquid inside the same color as apple juice and that there was no obvious odor. The bottle had a label reading, “Sidral mundet,” with a picture of an apple.

It’s hard to say how powerful these bombs are, because it depends on how big they are, Swoboda said.

Police have launched an investigation and while they have made no arrests, they did find fingerprints on the bottle. Police encourage residents to phone them if they find similar bombs in the area.

The person responsible for the prank could face felony charges once apprehended, including possession of an explosive device and unlawful use of a weapon, Swoboda said.

“People who do this get in a lot of trouble,” he said.

LINK: http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=306485

Thousands of cars file daily off Biesterfield Road onto I-290 southbound in Elk Grove Village.

Rushing to work and home, those motorists provide a steady stream of $100 red-light tickets for the village and camera company, mostly caught for not coming to a complete stop before turning right off Biesterfield.

Elk Grove Village officials say the money is all about safety.

But in the three years before that camera went up, not one broadside and just three turning-related crashes – those normally associated with red-light running – occurred on average at that intersection.

Clashing with the championed motive for red-light cameras – safety – a Daily Herald investigation reveals numerous cameras are going up at intersections in the West, North and Northwest suburbs where few crashes occur due to red-light running.

The revelation is another outgrowth of the newspaper’s “Seeing Red” series examining the spread of red-light cameras in the suburbs. The series first pointed out how most $100 tickets are going to right-turn violations, which some experts say are not a serious safety concern.

Meanwhile, 20 out of 106 suburban intersections that have or may get cameras had fewer than four red-light running related crashes a year, on average, an analysis of available crash data show.

Of those, three intersections had a yearly average of one or less crash likely related to red-light running.

While no set standard exists for where red-light cameras should be installed to improve safety, federal guidelines say broadly that a “high” number of related crashes are needed to justify such enforcement.

Experts say the low number of crashes found by the Daily Herald at several intersections with red-light cameras only underscores the need for clearer standards. They also say a single authority is required to oversee camera installation and ensure it is being used judiciously.

“You need to require a safety justification for these cameras,” says Joseph Schwieterman, director of DePaul University’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development in Chicago. “It helps keep the system from spinning out of control or being overused.”

Richard Retting, author of several red-light camera studies and a proponent of their use, equated sending out hundreds of tickets at a low-crash intersection to “putting someone on a diet who already weighs 90 pounds.”

However, police chiefs and mayors who push for those cameras argue that low crash rates should not exclude the use of cameras to catch violators. They say a high number of violations alone can justify a camera issuing $100 tickets 24 hours a day.

“I don’t think you need to make the correlation” between violations and crashes, says Rolling Meadows Police Chief Steven Williams, one of the suburbs’ biggest red-light supporters. “If we change that bad behavior, ultimately we make the intersection safer.”

Rolling Meadows put its first camera at the intersection of Rohlwing and Kirchoff roads, which had a three-year average of three broadside or turning crashes.

Williams said the camera was still warranted, in part, because of a high number of violations recorded by the vendor, RedSpeed, in a survey. The camera companies commonly survey intersections for violations and then use that information as a selling point to village officials.

Likewise, Elk Grove Village police officials say the I-290/Biesterfield Road camera is important for safety because it is a difficult spot for officers to monitor, it is an ambulance route and it’s notorious for near-crashes.

In fact, Deputy Police Chief Dion Zinnel said a serious rollover recently occurred at the intersection.

“When you have that kind of traffic volume going through the intersection, the potential is always there for a traffic crash,” Zinnel said. “Whether you get one or not is another story.”

For comparison, Elk Grove Village has cameras running at two other busy intersections, one with an average of nearly seven red-light running related crashes a year and another with more than 30.

With seven cameras running between November of last year and March, the village sent out about 10,000 tickets, amounting to nearly $1 million in fines, the proceeds of which are split between the camera company and the village. Statistics on the I-290/Biesterfield camera tickets are not yet available.

Potential for abuse

Some experts say the wide disparity in where red-light cameras are allowed in the suburbs leaves great potential for governments to use them as a cash cow, even in places where they are likely to have little measurable safety benefit.

And some police officials do agree that an oversight board for using red-light cameras would be helpful, if at least to improve public perception.

“Even the appearance is better when you have someone looking over it,” Schaumburg Deputy Chief Paul Rizzo said.

Schaumburg is set to abandon its red-light camera program after outrage from residents slapped with right-turn violations near Woodfield Shopping Center. Village officials believe the number of tickets didn’t justify the possibility of improving safety at that intersection.

Yet many police chiefs and mayors the Daily Herald questioned felt the high number of violations at intersections with apparently low crash rates provides enough justification for a red-light camera even if those violations are drivers crawling through a right turn on red.

The law is the law, they say.

“If we can do anything to curtail crashes, that is a positive effect,” Wayne Police Chief Dan Callahan said. “(The camera) makes the motoring public safe, and it doesn’t tie up my officers.”

The village of Wayne placed a camera along busy Route 59 at Smith Road, where about three turning or broadside crashes occur a year on average. The camera generates about 100 tickets a month.

Callahan said the site is the scene of numerous right-turn violations, and it has the most crashes of any intersection in the small community.

Red-light camera companies also pose the argument that violations alone can justify a camera.

“We see a tremendous amount of just-missed crashes in those locations,” says Gatso USA President Andrew Noble of sites with low crash rates but high violations.

Massachusetts-based Gatso operates cameras in Hanover Park, Streamwood and Lake Zurich, where one red-light camera intersection, Rand Road and June Terrace, has an average of 1.9 crashes a year likely related to red-light running.

On the other hand, the Daily Herald pointed out in its first article in the “Seeing Red” investigative series that right-turn-on-red violations are not necessarily a considerable safety hazard when drivers are crawling along.

At six suburban intersections with cameras where the Daily Herald analysis showed relatively low crash rates, the majority of the tickets issued in those communities are for right turns, police officials say. At three intersections, the villages do not ticket right turns on red because they do not see them as a primary safety issue.

Still, some experts say cameras may not be justified at intersections with low crash rates even if there is a high number of violations, particularly turning right on red.

“There are locations where it is possible to issue a very large number of tickets and not have a large impact on safety if there was not a problem to begin with,” said Retting, a former researcher for the Insurance Institute of Highway Safety.

Schaumburg officials agree.

After supporting cameras for months, village officials are moving to drop the program. A review of crash data indicated there were few crashes at local intersections directly related to red-light running when officials looked closer at the use of cameras recently.

The review found not one of the suburb’s busy intersections last year had more than three crashes directly related to red-light running, even though some of those sites had about 15 crashes a year, on average.

Schaumburg officials concluded that a red-light camera at Woodfield and Meacham roads, which had been set up as a test site and issued 10,251 right-turn tickets over just three months, was not warranted.

The real solution?

Instead, they found an engineering change was a better way to reduce crashes and they added a right-turn arrow to help traffic flow.

That is exactly the kind of thinking pushed by engineers across the country.

Federal guidelines and the Institute for Transportation Engineers encourage communities to first see if intersection modifications will reduce violations and improve safety on their own. Options include extending yellow signal times, creating dedicated turn lanes and changing traffic signal timing.

“Our traffic laws are based on what is reasonable and proper,” said Thomas Brahms, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based ITE. “When you start to have a significant number violations, you have to look at what is causing that. Either it is not designed right or we have the problem of a mass violation based on changing socio attitudes.”

Engineering very well may be at the heart of problems at one intersection highlighted by the Daily Herald. In Wauconda, the intersection of Rand and Bonner roads was the scene of an average of one turning crash and zero broadside crashes in the three years before the suburb asked the state for a red-light camera.

State transportation officials questioned the need for a camera given the low rate of crashes, and they even issued a preliminary denial.

Part of the intersection’s problem, says Deputy Police Chief Tony Jacobson, is the lack of a dedicated right-turn lane, leading drivers to pull onto the shoulder in heavy traffic. He said it is “probably accurate” that fixing the road might make it safer, “but no one is going to have the money to do that.”

Meanwhile, the site is slated for a camera.

The Illinois Department of Transportation eventually relented in its refusal to grant a camera after Wauconda Police Superintendent Dan Quick contested the problem, arguing there was a significant number of violations at the site.

“To say that our crash rate is low is a good thing, but to deny placement of cameras without considering the number of red light violators at that location seems to miss the point – the cameras are an enforcement tool, not a crash prevention tool,” Quick wrote in a letter to IDOT.

Patchwork oversight

Part of the confusion and argument over where cameras should go can be traced to Illinois’ patchwork oversight.

No single authority oversees camera installation or use. The government that controls the intersection has the final say on whether cameras can be installed, and that could be a municipality, county or the state.

So, when suburbs like Wauconda, Elk Grove Village and Carol Stream want to put up cameras on state routes, the state requires they apply for a permit.

In eight such cases, the Daily Herald found IDOT officials raising questions about why low-crash-rate intersections would necessitate red-light cameras. In half of those cases, IDOT officials eventually relented after police chiefs argued high violation rates, pedestrian traffic or other reasons justified the use.

While sporadic, the state questioning appeared to focus on intersections that had fewer than four red-light-running-related crashes.

IDOT’s traffic operations chief for the Chicago region, Steve Travia, who oversees the permit process, said there are no definitive standards on how many crashes would justify a red light or how many violations would be considered “high.” Decisions to accept a camera are to a great degree made on a “judgment call” and the input of local officials, he said.

“At the end of the day, it is the officers who see things we don’t,” Travia said. “They know day in and day out what the situation really is on the street.”

State policy doesn’t specify a threshold of crashes for approval.

Meanwhile, standards at the county level appear just as flexible. Cook and DuPage counties do not yet have a permit application process, so they reject all applications for now.

Kane, Lake and McHenry counties require municipalities to detail the number of crashes related to red-light running, but no specific minimum standard is stipulated.

At the federal level, which has no formal authority over camera installation, guidelines say they should go in places where this is a “high” number of red-light-running-related crashes. Again, no number is specified.

Regulators say they find it difficult to put a specific number on crash requirements because of other factors involved, including the crash severity, traffic volume and the presence of pedestrians.

The lack of standards though has clearly led to the push for and placement of cameras where their is little crash data to justify them.

Carl Schoedel, head of Kane County’s transportation department, recently butted heads with the county’s sheriff, Pat Perez, over installing a camera at I-88 and Orchard Road. While the sheriff said a camera company survey found a significant number of violations, there was just one related crash in the past four years.

Schoedel and county officials opposed the plan, concluding a camera would not improve safety at an intersection with so few crashes.

“That is one of the things that frankly my staff is struggling with right now,” Schoedel said, referring to intersections that have high violations but few related crashes. “And it really comes down to the basic philosophy that there is a limited judicious use of red-light running enforcement and they do not belong at every signalized intersection.”

• Daily Herald research manager John Graham contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2009 Daily Herald Inc.