Whether it is done by a longtime cop from the outside or by an equally veteran officer from the inside, the Kane County Sheriff’s Department will likely be steered in a new direction next year.
Aurora Police Lt. Tom Lukas, a 22-year department veteran, and sheriff’s Lt. Ken Ramsey, who has spent 15 of his 20 years in law enforcement in the sheriff’s department, are competing for the Republican nomination to succeed retiring Sheriff John Randall.
The GOP nomination is tantamount to election in heavily Republican Kane. No Democrats have filed for the office in the March 15 primary, although the party could slate a candidate for the November general election.
Ramsey, 45, a former Batavia alderman and vice president of the Batavia Township GOP organization, has the endorsement of Randall and many party regulars, but lacks universal appeal within the department.
Lukas, 47, said a number of sheriff’s deputies encouraged his candidacy, and his support from within the department picked up when sheriff’s investigator Gary Walton of Gilberts withdrew and endorsed Lukas.
Lukas said the department has grown stale.
“They’re used to doing things one way, they don’t look for innovation,” he said.
Lukas also claimed the department kept the lid on a critical audit that indicated the sheriff’s office wastes up to $1 million a year. Ramsey called the totals erroneous.
Each candidate has proposed community-policing programs in gang-infested urban neighborhoods and in the county’s sparsely populated western townships.
“Traditional policing methods of reacting to crime and making arrests aren’t getting ahead of the problem,” Lukas said. “We have to try some new initiatives. Community policing is one.”
Lukas, who is making his first bid for elective office, also said he would transfer deputies serving in civilian positions to the streets.
Ramsey said he hopes to add as many as eight officers during his first year, many of whom would serve in the rural townships. Funding for three officers would come from additional grants, while the rest would be reassigned from other duties.
Ramsey, who said becoming sheriff has been his career goal since he joined the department, questions where Lukas would find the funds for additional officers.
“It’s easy to say we’re going to put police here and there,” Ramsey said. “What’s not easy is how we’re going to pay for them, where they’re going to come from.”
The candidates also have traded jabs over a proposed elite task force. Lukas proposed a violent-crime force in November, based on a similar organization in Lake County. Ramsey countered that it is a concept that county police chiefs have been working on for some time.
A task force is scheduled to be up and running before the November election.
Both men have extensive experience in several divisions of their respective departments, and both indicated a willingness to open the department doors to increased public accountability.
