Ex-officials say they were fired after claiming they were pushed into political work for Sheriff Tom Dart

Two former high-ranking officials at the Cook County Jail claim they were fired after alleging that they and dozens of co-workers were pushed into doing campaign work for Sheriff Tom Dart during his 2022 reelection bid.

Drake Carpenter and Aracelis Gotay were suspended without pay in March of 2022 amid a federal investigation into whether some employees in the sheriff’s office were illegally working second jobs. Two other administrators also were suspended and more than a dozen lower-ranking officers were transferred.

But after nearly two years without a paycheck and no indication from the sheriff’s office on exactly why they were suspended, Gotay and Carpenter sued the sheriff this past December.

Then, earlier this year, they amended their lawsuit to add the claim that they and coworkers were coerced by a supervisor to do election work for Dart. The two sought to be paid for the hours they said they spent checking nominating petitions and canvassing for Dart’s campaign in March 2022.

Little over a week after they filed the amended lawsuit, sheriff’s officers arrived at their doors with official paperwork dismissing them.

“This absolutely feels like retaliation, the timing of it,” Gotay said. “After all this time, nothing. And then all of a sudden, we’re fired.”

Gotay and Carpenter have again amended their lawsuit to include the allegation that they were dismissed out of retaliation, a claim denied by Dart’s office.

“No employees are — or ever have been — pressured to work on the sheriff’s campaign,” the department said in an email to the Sun-Times. “It is strictly voluntary, and the vast majority choose not to.”

A Dart spokesman said Gotay and Carpenter originally had been suspended for “several violations of sheriff’s office policies.” The spokesman would not say what policies allegedly were violated but said the FBI was called in.

Last December, the department was made aware by federal authorities that no charges were coming, so an internal investigation was resumed, Dart’s spokesman said.

That review ended in April when the office fired Gotay, Carpenter and two other jail administrators. An internal investigation of 13 lower-ranking officers remains “ongoing,” the spokesman said.

‘This is serious’

Gotay and Carpenter were senior administrators at the jail in March of 2022 when the two say they were summoned to the jail director’s office at the West Side jail complex. Placed in separate conference rooms, they eventually were told by internal affairs staff that they were targets of an investigation.

Gotay was sent home and the next day received notice that she had been suspended.

Carpenter spent some of his time in the conference room sitting beside the supervisor who had recruited him into working for Dart’s campaign.

Eventually, Carpenter was told he was being “de-deputized” and had to turn in his badge and gun. When he demanded to know why, an internal affairs investigator implied he was getting off easy.

“He said, 'Calm down. This is serious. People are going to get arrested behind this,’” Carpenter recalled during an interview at his lawyer’s office.

Records from the sheriff’s office indicate two other jail administrators were suspended, including the supervisor who allegedly coordinated a team of sheriff's office employees to challenge ballot petition signatures. In addition, 13 corrections officers were moved out of the jail command center because of “an official criminal and/or administrative investigation.”

Law enforcement sources said the probe centered on “double-dipping” by sheriff's employees. The term typically refers to public employees doing private work while on the clock, and sources close to the investigation indicated a private security firm in Des Plaines that employed numerous police and sheriff’s officers had been probed.

Carpenter and Gotay said they did not work second jobs, though sheriff’s department records show the two other supervisors who were suspended and seven of the 13 officers had sought permission for outside work.

The names of the firms the officers sought to work for were redacted on forms provided by the sheriff’s office, but two officers did request permission to work for a company in Des Plaines.

As the suspensions dragged on, Gotay and Carpenter hired a lawyer who had represented one of Dart’s primary opponents and filed a lawsuit claiming their due process rights had been violated. Then, in March, they filed an amended complaint that added a new demand: They wanted to be paid for the hours they spent challenging signatures on nominating petitions and working for Dart’s campaign.

‘When your boss asks you to do something, you do it’

Gotay and Carpenter said they were told by a supervisor that “the boss” needed them to help with the campaign work.

Carpenter said he was concerned about missing several days of work because the jail administration was struggling to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When your boss asks you to do something, you do it,” said Carpenter, who chalked the work up to being part of the “team” once he was promoted into an administrative role.

A sign-in sheet for signature challenges shows at least 30 employees of the sheriff’s department, from correctional officers to senior advisors, were present for one or more days of signature challenges from March 16 to March 19 of 2022, all weekdays.

Gotay and Carpenter said they spent eight-hour days at the clerk’s branch office in Cicero, logging them as vacation time. A sheriff’s spokesman said all employees listed on the sign-in sheet were off the clock.

Screenshots of phone messages included in the lawsuit show a long text thread from the supervisor directing staff to bring their personal laptops, cajoling them to be on time and expressing thanks from “the boss” for their work.

The supervisor did not respond to phone calls and texts from the Sun-Times.

Burt Odelson, a lawyer for Friends of Dart, said the campaign has not been served with the lawsuit but was aware of the claims by the two officers.

“Nobody was told to work (on the campaign) and everybody was told to sign out when doing campaign stuff. That’s what we insist on,” Odelson said. “Anyone is free to volunteer. Not many do when you consider the thousands of people that work under the Sheriff’s Department.”

Candidates for office must gather signatures on official nominating forms in order to have their names appear on the ballot. Challenging those signatures — to see if they match signatures on record with the clerk or have addresses in Cook County — is a time-honored and time-intensive process in Cook County politics.

Each year, at least a handful of candidates are blocked from the ballot because signature challenges knock so many names off their petitions.

None of Dart’s primary opponents were disqualified because of signature challenges.

However two of his three challengers, Gercone Navarro and Dolton Police officer LaTonya Ruffin, were eventually kicked off the ballot because of other legal challenges filed by Dart’s campaign.

In a two-way primary against Noland Rivera, Dart secured the Democratic nomination with 86% of the vote and won the general election by a 3-1 margin.

The week after the petition challenges were made, Gotay, Carpenter and two other jail administrators were placed on suspension. Thirteen non-supervisory officers were transferred out of their administrative jobs around the same time, including seven officers who signed in as petition objectors.

A few weeks later, a Dart spokesman announced that an internal investigation had been turned over to the FBI.

A year after she was suspended, Gotay says got a visit from FBI agents who asked general questions about the jail’s chain of command and the responsibilities of officers other than herself. She hasn’t heard from anyone since.

A Dart spokesman noted that Carpenter and Gotay were both “at-will employees” and could be terminated without cause.

The investigation into the other staff members who were transferred is “ongoing,” a jail spokesman said. Teamsters Local 700, which represents the transferred officers, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.