Did Burr Oak scandal or slur sideline detective?

Did Burr Oak scandal or slur sideline detective?


Burr Oak scandal leads to contested workers' compensation claim

By Annie Sweeney, Chicago Tribune reporter
7:03 AM CST, March 2, 2012

In the days following the discovery of a grisly grave-reselling scandal at Burr Oak Cemetery in the summer of 2009, Cook County sheriff's Detective Robert Carroll walked into his sergeant's office and handed over his gun and badge.

By then, Carroll says, he had tripped over a half-buried pelvis, been slapped and spit on by family members of the deceased and found himself face-to-face with a decaying corpse in a blue burial suit.

Carroll has alleged in a federal lawsuit that the gruesome scene triggeredpost-traumatic stress disorderfrom his service in the first Gulf War two decades earlier.

Carroll's lawyers contend the sheriff's office refused his request for desk duty and then retaliated by trying to move him to patrol duty on an overnight shift.

The sheriff's office questions if his work at the historic African-American cemetery near Alsip sparked the stress disorder and maintains that his problems with supervisors began after he used a racial slur there in front of a co-worker.

Carroll, 45, who has been with the sheriff's office for 21 years, declined to be interviewed for this article, citing department rules he said prohibit officers from talking to reporters. But transcripts from a hearing over his workers' compensation claim provide a look at the first days of the cemetery tragedy as its scope became clear in the summer heat.

The Burr Oak probe began as a routine inquiry into a suspected theft. Then a witness made a disturbing disclosure: He had seen gravediggers unearth bodies and dump them in the back of the cemetery.

Carroll was among the officers dispatched to the cemetery to check out the story.

"As we walked through there, we had realized that bodies were not reburied. They were dumped," a transcript of the workers' comp hearing quoted Carroll as testifying. "And at one point I tripped and fell because I had caught my ankle in a half-buried pelvis."

An undetermined number of bodies had been dug up and discarded in an isolated, weedy area of the cemetery. Prosecutors charged four employees with felonies for their roles in reselling burial plots for profit.

Carroll testified that he made it clear every day he was at the cemetery that he felt uncomfortable, although he did not mention how it stirred up his war memories. But his commander denied at the hearing that Carroll indicated that he wanted out. But as Carroll recalled it, his commander told him, "Cowboy the (expletive) up."

Carroll said he spent long days at the cemetery helping inspect human remains and keeping an inventory of evidence. He also informed family members about the desecration.

"There was … just this nagging feeling ... I mean this is bad and it's only going to get worse," he testified at the workers' comp hearing. "And I don't want to be here. OK. I — consciously I didn't know why. I just knew I needed to get the hell out of there."

After nine days at Burr Oak, Carroll turned in his gun and badge. He said one of his last duties was to help cemetery workers use a probe to poke through some of the graves, leaving him feeling like he had defiled the dead.

"I didn't think I was fit to perform my duties anymore," Carroll testified.

But Carroll returned to work a few weeks later to assist on a homicide with the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force. However, he then refused an assignment to patrol duties on the midnight shift. A psychiatrist had determined he was fit only for desk duty, according to his lawyers.

Carroll filed the workers' compensation claim, arguing he sustained psychological injuries at Burr Oak, said Stephen Smalling, his attorney on that matter. Carroll believes the rubble and bones at Burr Oak triggered memories from Operation Desert Storm in 1991 when a Scud missile hit, killing many and knocking over his Humvee.

Sheriff's officials, however, maintained that Carroll's alleged psychiatric troubles started only after he was accused of using the n-word at the cemetery. A black officer reported that Carroll, who is white, turned to him and declared, "No offense ... but these ain't nothing but a bunch of low-life or low-class (expletive) trying to make a buck."

Sgt. Nathan Camer testified that when Carroll came to his office to turn in his badge, he never discussed being stressed out from the grisly work but instead talked about marital problems and some frustrations about the Burr Oak assignment — such as paying money out of his own pocket for supplies. Camer said Carroll also confided that he had made a racist remark to another officer.

Other officers also testified that Carroll had expressed concern to them that he might have harmed his career by making the comment.

At the workers' comp hearing, Carroll denied making the racist remark or admitting to others that he had.

The department sustained the allegation and recommended that Carroll serve a 30-day suspension.

Carroll's attorney, Jeffery Kulwin, said the allegations that Carroll used a racial slur do not change the fact that his bosses made no reasonable accommodations for Carroll's disability after they were given documentation of hispost-traumatic stress disorder. The documentation includes a diagnosis by the Veterans Administration, which is paying him disability benefits.

"I don't think there is any dispute Bob is disabled. He wants to return to work," Kulwin said of Carroll, who has been off work without pay for more than two years. "They won't give him an assurance of a (job change)."

Frank Bilecki, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, said that three months had passed after Carroll left work before he even told doctors about the impact of the gruesome cemetery scene on his psyche.

"The racial remark was the start of his problems," Bilecki said.

Please read this most disturbing article in its complete form at link below:


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-post-traumatic-stress-burr-oak-20120302,0,388638.story

Editor's note: What a shit way to treat a U.S. Military Vet! Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, Probate