'Dogfight': Ex-Coroner's Canine Retirement, Spending Scrutinized

WAUKEGAN, IL — Days before former Lake County Coroner Howard Cooper retired his office's cadaver-sniffing canine, his chief deputy billed the county for $7,800 in dog food and several memory foam dog beds.

The invoice for a year's supply of raw food never ended up getting paid by taxpayers, but another dog-related expense —a $600 prepayment for veterinary services — was paid and later refunded, according to Coroner Jennifer Banek, Cooper's successor.

"This dog was going to eat better than most people," Banek said.

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The expenses associated with a retiring county-owned dog were not the only spending that Banek found suspicious after taking over in December, according to interviews, written records and board committee meetings.

Cooper also used another employee's county credit card, or p-card, to spend more than $9,400 on nine Panasonic Toughbook laptops outside of the information technology department's normal procurement policies, she said. And the coroner's office had been signing off on a $13,000-a-month agreement to rent a hanger at the Waukegan airport for an overflow morgue that never once held a body.

Empty Morgue

Banek said she learned of the expense — amounting to about $130,000 in federal taxpayer money provided by the CARES Act — in February and by mid-March had come to an arrangement with Lakes Crematory in Lake Villa to offer to cover the county's potential body storage needs.

Cooper said he did not pick the airport site, county emergency management officials did, and County Board Chair Sandy Hart signed off on the deal. He said Banek was making ridiculous accusations against him because she had failed to inform herself about the office and blaming him for the hanger deal was “mind-boggling.”

"It's pure lunacy, and it's political bullshit and it's wrong to make accusations about me when she doesn't even know what she's talking about," Cooper said.

The former coroner said the Lake County Health Department predicted last spring that there would be 4,000 dead people in the county in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than the county's morgue could handle. (As of Friday, 958 Lake County residents have died from the coronavirus over the previous 13 months, according to the health department.)

"I have 30 years background in mass fatality, OK? That's where I come from," Cooper said. "I was in 9/11, I was in Katrina, I have more than ample experience in what happens in a mass fatality disaster."

Cooper emphasized that the federal CARES Act reimbursement meant Lake County taxpayers were not on the hook for the unused morgue space. He said he had renewed the contract through the fall in anticipation of a predicted second wave of coronavirus casualties.

Banek described the deal as "hemorrhaging money" and said the expense should have been revaluated before December.

"I believe it's $130,000 that was wasted, that could have been used for other resources," Banek said. "It's still taxpayer money, even if it came from the federal government. It was given to local municipalities — it's still taxpayer money."

Unused Computers

Cooper's $9,400 laptop purchase was not reimbursed through any grants. Banek said she found the laptops in a conference room still in their packaging when she arrived. On Feb. 1, Banek sent Cooper a letter about the laptops.

"I have spoken with my staff, and no one seems to know why this purchase was made. We also conferred with IT, as this purchase was made outside of the Lake County purchasing guidelines," Banek said. "They also were unaware of the purchase and the purpose of the laptops. I am hoping you might be able to shed some light on the intent of this purchase."

Cooper confirmed he received the letter, which he described as "threatening," and did not respond. He said he forwarded it to a lawyer instead.

The former coroner told Patch he had planned to use the laptops to outfit all deputy coroners with special vehicle-mounted laptops so they would have the same in-car computer capabilities as the sheriff's office. He said the IT department had purchased four other Toughbook laptops and everyone in the office should have known about it.

"Clearly everybody knew. So I don't get the games. To go in front of a board and discredit me when I'm not there, and based on computers that everybody has been waiting for, just to make me look bad? It makes no sense to me," Cooper said.

"Had she sat down with me at the beginning when I asked her to, she would have already known all this stuff, because that's what I would have gone over with her: 'This is what we have coming in, this is what we need to do, you should follow-up with IT, make sure that we get this for the cars,' because that was the next thing we needed to do."

Banek said the laptops in her office did not need to be replaced, and she did not think it was necessary to have them mounted in cars. Because the Toughbooks were purchased outside of normal procurement avenues, they could not be returned for more than a few thousand dollars in store credit, she said, so they were given to the health department to aid with vaccination operations as they ramped up.

Banek said she had visited Cooper's office the Friday after the results of the November election were certified.

"In my opinion, that was the time that we were to talk about transition," Banek said. The coroner said Cooper provided only limited information and never mentioned the hanger had never been used, the new laptops, a union contact that had expired more than a year earlier — or the impending retirement of the office's 3-year-old dog.

Dog Giveaway

Jason Patt, who did not respond to messages seeking comment, was the handler for K9 Bones since Cooper's office acquired him in 2018.

Patt, author of the self-published "The Road Death Traveled" and the 2014 Democratic nominee for Lake County Sheriff, has said previously the coroner's office was one of just three in the nation to have a body-sniffing dog on staff.

County administrators estimated trained working dogs cost upwards of $50,000.

Mary Ross-Cunningham, the Waukegan Democrat who chairs the Lake County Board's Law and Justice Committee, described the dog's departure as problematic.

"This is devastating to the county, to the taxpayer's dollar. This is the taxpayer's dollar that has upkept this dog over there, and someone's just going to take it and walk away with it," Ross-Cunningham said. "To me it's wrong."

Cooper said the county never paid anything for the dog. He said he covered the dog's insurance out of his own pocket. He and Patt covered the cost of Bones' food for the first year, and after that it was paid for by grants, Cooper said.

The former coroner said Banek fired Patt and the dog had to go with him because it suffered from "separation anxiety." The current coroner said Patt resigned one day after notifying her that her predecessor had retired Bones.

"There was no choice in the matter," Cooper said. "I retired him so he could be with his handler. It would have been detrimental to the dog to separate those two."

According to a timeline provided by Banek, Bones received a prescription for an anti-depressant in October 2020, with a veterinarian at Grayslake Animal Hospital making a note about anxious behavior.

In November, Banek, a Green Oaks Democrat and nurse anesthesiologist, defeated Cooper, a Bannockburn Republican and dentist, by nearly 6 percentage points and 20,000 votes.

Banek spoke with Patt about K9 Bones shortly after the results were finalized, and Patt submitted a request to renew the grant that funds the dog on Nov. 20. He made no mention of its recently diagnosed mental health issues.

Three days later, he attempted to charge the county for $7,800 worth of dog food from a provider in Wisconsin.

"The food was going to be individually prepared in vacuum-sealed packages, it was going to be sent to Mr. Patt's home," Banek said. "I believe it was a year's worth of dog food."

On Nov. 30, Patt told Banek that Bones was retiring. On Dec. 1, Banek was sworn in and Patt submitted his letter of resignation, effective two weeks later. He then rescinded his grant request.

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Patt refused a request to return the coroner's office's dog on Dec. 15, instead responding with a letter from a lawyer, Banek said.

Assistant County Administrator Cassandra Torstenson said the county would have had to pursue Patt in court to get possession of the dog. Then county officials would need to determine if the dog was usable or too depressed to work again.

"We did investigate what our options would be, and the last remaining option would have been having to pursue him legally with the assistance of the state's attorney's office," Tortenson said at a committee meeting in January. "With the vet's note that the dog was suffering from anxiety, we could potentially receive the dog back and then we could potentially find out through further analysis of the dog that it did suffer for anxiety and it may or may not have been useful moving forward."

Lake County State's Attorney Eric Rinehart said at the committee meeting that there was no issue that was too small for his office to analyze and he was open to discussing the matter with anyone who wants to talk about it. No criminal charges or civil lawsuits have been filed in connection with the former coroner's spending or dog-related decision-making.

#DEA #Chicago greets @LakeCountyIL Coroner's Office Chief Patt, Dr. Cooper, and K9 "Bones," their newest Deputy at Lake County Coroner’s Office. Working together to attack the #opioidcrisis & keep #drugs off the streets. @DEACHICAGODiv. #fentanyl #heroin #pills #OpioidEpidemic pic.twitter.com/a563JXFokY
— DEAChicago (@DEACHICAGODiv) October 31, 2018

Lake County Board Chair Sandy Hart, a Lake Bluff Democrat, described the former coroner's spending as extremely concerning.

"It actually infuriates me that purchases like this were made," Hart said. "This is so egregious, to do it after, with no direction about why those products were even necessary. We have the issue with the dog. That was thousands of dollars. We have the issue with the computers.

"I know when you [Banek] went in there was no furniture for you in your office because the prior coroner had purchased furniture with his own money. That's fine. But you know what? You can't dispose of the furniture that was there — it has to go through a process."

Cooper said he spent more than $30,000 out of his own pocket on the coroner's office during his term, furnishing his office with art and furniture that he took with him when he left.

"We didn't have money in our budget. We didn't have things that I felt we needed, and for me it was not an issue. If we needed something, then I got it. You can't always get everything through your budget. That's just how it works," Cooper said.

"But to me, what was important is that my deputies have every tool that they needed, and the people of our county had everything they needed, so they could get the services they deserve."