Latest / WIXN AM 1460 - Shaw Local Radio / Talk Line: Charlene Bielema shares the latest stories from Shaw Local News

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Talk Line: Charlene Bielema shares the latest stories from Shaw Local News · WIXN AM 1460 - Shaw Local Radio

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, there's soak Valley. It's eight point fifteen on your
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Thursday morning, and you know what that means. It's time
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: for talk line. And this morning I'm joined in the
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: booth once again by my good friend and colleague, the
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: one and only the managing editor of the Gazette and
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: the Telegraph, Charlene Bielima Shar How are you.
• 0:17
  Speaker 3: I'm good? Thanks?
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's we were having such a great conversation of
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: some of which we're going to get into, others of
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: which this is just what I love about this line
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: of work, and we'll leave it there. We're going to
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: start off this morning talking with what if you had
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: to have been hiding under a rock and not knowing
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: why you were there? Tornadoes? You guys have seen a
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: lot of damage and we're doing a lot of coverage
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: on this intense weather we've been having.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: We did, you know, whenever you have kind of in
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: the morning, you go to work and you know, like
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: we're all on point if we know the National Weather
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Service is forecasting the possibility of storms across all of
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: our newspapers. We are talking about that the editors all
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: day every day. We have a special Slack channel. We're
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: talking about this back and forth. So usually what happens
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: is we have an editor or one of our reporters
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: that's writing a story about, Hey, this is what could
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: happen in the area. As it gets closer, then we
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: start saying, Okay, you need to watch closer. Make sure
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: we have a photographer on point. I'll say to the reporters, Hey,
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: we may have some bad weather coming through tonight, just
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: so you're aware of that. We may have to get involved.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: Now it becomes important here for us because in the
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: northern Illinois area, if there's a storm coming from the west,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: what's it going to hit our coverage area first? Because
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: it's Whiteside Lee County and that actually is a different
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: National Weather Service for us that's out of the Quad City,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: So we'll.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Keep an eye.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: I'll keep an eye on there, and then the Chicago
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: office pretty much from Lee County over. So personally with storms,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: I'm I've always been scared to death of storms. I
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: think I've become more comfortable over the years because now
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: they're an event and not you know, for me, it's
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: it's like, what is what does this mean? I kind
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: of study an issue and then I'm not scared of
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: it anymore. And my husband was a volunteer firefighter for years,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: and so that kind of turns it into something different
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: rather than just, you know, to flee, because that's.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: What I've heard.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: My first instinct is a seek shelter. Now, so you know,
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: in this case, last week, we were keeping a really
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: close eye in the storms living in Morrison, and we didn't.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: Get much over there.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: But then I saw Sam's post, Sam Ramirez this post
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: about what he saw in Palmyra.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Palmyra Pub is that where he was at ilive.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: So yeah, and how dark it got, and so it
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: was like, okay, so we have kind of a path.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: And interestingly, you know, right away we had the police
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: sheep coming out on Facebook that night saying we know
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: we've had tornado damage north of town in Lee County.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: And then a couple of days later we know that
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: they were doing assessments that led to the Ogle County
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: damage assessments. I don't know, if you're familiar with you
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: go on to National Weather Service website and they'll have
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: like an events tab at the top for all of
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: you guys that like to study weather and don't know
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: you can go in there and click on it and
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: it will actually give you kind of what they found
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: out if there was a damage that was confirmed to
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: be a tornado based in the debris field, but they
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: think peak winds were reports that they got and so
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: then we learned that there had been the two tornadoes.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: And now, of course it looks like it was an
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: e F on e F one and then got to
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Holcombe and then by that time it was an EF
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: zero weaker wins.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: But still you know there was the damage. They had
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: plenty of damage. I know Arlene Hinton.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Who was who was a reporter for us, well she
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: got a whold of us and she isn't on the
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: spot reporter like she knows what's going on. She was like, oh,
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: there's a there's an elevator down on the railroad. Tracks
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: are up by by Hulcombe and so Alex, our photographer,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: I just said, hey, get in the car and find
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: out where that damage takes you, because usually it's oh yeah,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: oh yeah, but over.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Here, yep, and over here. I remember the drive home
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: after getting out of the studio on that day and
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: just kind of seeing a slight path. It wasn't the
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: I'm sure there were there were worse spots, but pieces
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: of farm equipment or you know, paneling that had been
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: gown off telephone lines that were hanging on.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: For life, right yeah, telephone, yeah exactly, they take the
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: hit and well then and then it developed over the weekend.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: There were some questions about like some wins that had
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: hit near Sterling and that was confirmed also to be
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: a tornado, and they had a really like a smaller
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: path one up in Savannah that was zero point two
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: five miles and it was flat like flipped to shed
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: but they still said it was tornatic activity. So, you know,
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: we're starting off storm season and coincidentally, we're working We
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: talked about public safety team a couple of weeks ago.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Our public safety team is working on a story led
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: by our DECALB reporter about storm chasing. That's a whole
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: different way, you know. For us, it was always oh
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: what we got ore, We're listening to the radio about
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: the storm as it's playing out, or I'm watching TV.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: They broke in, maybe a local mediaorologist in the Quad Cities.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: In this case, chasers and people will go to their
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: YouTube channels and watch them live. Now I've heard of it,
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Do I have?
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: I watched that?
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: Now? It doesn't seem to be something that I do,
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: and then they were like, this is a big thing.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: So he's actually talked to a few of those and
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: I weather geeked it and got into some data and
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: was able to go to Noah's website and take a
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: look at all of the tornadic activity back until nineteen fifty.
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: So I went to every county that's in our coverage
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: area and said, what were like the ones that were
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: bigger F three. I looked at F three and above
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: and wrote down those dates of those storms, and then
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: also looked at the number of injuries and number of deaths.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: And obviously there's some big storms out there that may
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: have started in a county and they didn't see death
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: or a lot of damage, but it were ramped up
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: and you could see that in the plane Field tornado,
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: which honestly I didn't know the history of the Plainfield
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: tornado and the loss that was a.
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: Nineteen ninety event.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: And then looking at our records, because our reporter from
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Tacaba was like, I don't want to miss the big
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: storms looking back and newer to the area. So two
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: thousand and four Utica, where we had people that were
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: in a basement or in a I should say, in
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: a bar in you to avoid a storm, and there
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: were people.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: That were killed in a collapse. Apps.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: We had a Fairdale tornado a couple of years ago
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: and that had some Roshelle involvement, and there were some
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: deaths there, a sixty seven year old and a sixty
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: nine year old. So there are pockets of storms that'll
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: also be included, you know, in our data.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: So it's you know, always always a sad thing. I mean,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I'm still thankful for out of all the different areas
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: of the country that you know, usually with a basement
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: and a shelter, you know, you kind of have a
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: hack for the one big natural disaster so to speak,
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: that can face us here in the you know what
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: is otherwise boring Midwest if you've grown up here and
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: you complain, it's you know, at least there's no hurricanes
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: and earthquakes.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I had found that interestingly too. I
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: looked at because the information that's presented all as a grid,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: so you're able to easily look on Noah's site as
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: to whether there's been deaths or injuries because everything's listed,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: and I could not find that there had been any
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: deaths in Whiteside County from a tornado, which was interesting
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: to me because that something that I always feared. I
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: can remember that we had a very bad windstorm. It
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: was not a tornado that I can find. We had
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: a windstorm back in nineteen seventy four and the winds
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: were so strong they came over the Mississippi River, damaged,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: a line of trees took off, just plowed through the
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: middle of homes that were on the river, went up
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: basically the hill. And our neighbors had a brick chimney
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: and their chimney was a ripped off and landed in
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: our front yard and that was a full block away
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: and seeing those winds. So I always respect the storm.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: I never look at it and say, oh, it's gonna
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: be It'll be fine, because you just don't know. In
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: a minute'ess notice those those quick changes that happened. So
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: we did a story within SHAW a couple of months
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: ago about the difference between a warning and a watch. Surprisingly,
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: people will like my mom will do that too. Shows
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: A watch means they've seen one. I'm like, now, watch
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: means conditions are favorable. Favorable warning means get your shoes on.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: It's touchdown, yeah.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Or confirmed, I always say, or tornado shoes, make sure
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: they're new. Y your bed at night and you have
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: closed laid out because you don't know, so no ready.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, it doesn't take long. And if I
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: mean it's touching down near you, you probably got less
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: than a minute.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: It's it's a it could be a scary situation.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: And here we are, so you know, had I had
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: an emergency medical director, emergency management director tell me in
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Clinton County several years ago, and he said, in the
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: United States, there are reportable tornadoes that happen every month
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: of the year. Don't think that is because it's winter
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: that we don't run the risk of that. Never forgotten
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: that threat.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so and I think many of us kind of
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: kind of do. We kind of dismissed that, right.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's winter.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: You don't think of a oh yeah, you don't think of.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you think of your snowstorms.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: So you also want to talk about the jury commission
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: in Whitesaid County.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: We've had a it's a longer story that we've really
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: been keeping an eye on because it's one that could
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: have implications for a long time. We kind of on
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: the front End were reporting about I think I may
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: have talked about this last time, about a man who
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: was in the Whiteside County jail charged with criminal sex
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: charges in a separate case, and then he was accused
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: of getting into a fight with some jailers and some
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: other inmates last September eleventh, and so that's the particular
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: trial that he's facing. But leading into it, you had
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: his defense attorney who said, I have some questions how
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: do they formulate a jury in Whiteside County, Which seems
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: like a basic question, but until it hits you to
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: ask it. And he found out from the circuit clerks
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: that the way they were doing it kind of called
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: into question if they were excluding jurors from the larger
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: juror pool. So we're talking about when it's like, okay,
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: we know that there's going to be a jury trial,
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: this is a date that it's set. The whites Say
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: County clerk is tasked with having a panel of people
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: that are ready to be pulled in and questioned, and
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: from there they pull their jurors.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: So you see it.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Goes from larger to smaller to where you get to
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: your final twelve with alternates and in this particular case
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: that they felt that they needed to ask the question
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: as to how do you get your found out that
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: there had been people if you were eighteen and younger,
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: if you were seven, if you were eighty and older,
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: that they they be in the circuit Clerk's office through
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: it process they'd handed down verbally over the years that
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: you would they would exclude them. And so then that
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: leads to the question of is that is that age
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: discrimination on the part of excluding jurors that maybe want
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: to serve maybe And then also if you had ever
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: had a case like if you were named a defendant,
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: do you have an ongoing case?
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: Now?
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Do you do you owe the clerk of court money?
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: And is it for fees or fines or that was
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: the next tier of what they would exclude. So a
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: judge said, okay, you know, there was the question of
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: do we dismiss the jury panel that's already been selected,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: because the defense attorney was like, I'm calling into question,
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: I'm saying that this has racial disparities and all sorts
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: of things.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: So that jury pool was dismissed.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Then there was another selection process people pulling from a
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: hat that didn't go over. Also, the defense attorney said,
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: we don't know. Let's go back farther. How are we
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: actually getting the list? It comes from the state and
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: it's on a disc and how many people are on there?
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: And is that randomized? Is are people excluded from there?
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Is it categorized based on social security and driver's license
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: if it's any of those. And we're saying every twentieth
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: juror every twentieth person gets picked. Are we picking people
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: that are predominantly with the last name that starts with
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: A to get to our magic number? And what is
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: our magic number? How many people are on the list.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: So all this mathematical questioning was going on. In the meantime,
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: we know that there was not a jury commission. For
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: several years there had been, and then over time that
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: appears to have been dissolved went from three to one
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: and then one to none. And so then you start
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: looking at county board minutes, and you know, why don't
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: we have a jury commission which helps with all of this.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Now one has been sworn in the fourteenth Circuit judges
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: did put one in, so we have that two fold issue.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: We have a jury act and now we have okay,
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: so going forward, maybe that process is cleaned up, you
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: don't have exclusion of yourors. But what about all the
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: people before that that had jury trials. They could come
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: back and say you ruled here that these were wrongfully excluded.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: What about my defendant that I represented? And we've already
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: seen the first filing in an unrelated case asking for
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: a new trial based on that. And that's the case
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: of Scott Hagerman who was convicted by trial last fall.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Remember the rock Falls beating. Yeah, okay, he was found
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: guilty and he was sentenced to I believe it was
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: just seven years in prison. And actually the sentencing happened
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: in March. There was time between the actual verdict and
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: him being sentenced, and his attorney is asking for a
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: new trial, and there's a hearing date that's set. So
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: that's the story I'm working on now. But those stories
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: aren't easy to write. They're not the oh, this this,
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: it's how did we get here? Why did we get here?
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: Because we got here because of this? And how did
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: we get there because of this? So that story's about ready, but.
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: It needs a little bit work.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: But it also comes down to what potential story, what
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: potential jurors juries that we know that we're called into
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: action that actually had to deliver a verdict. Now I'm
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: keeping an eye in those cases because yeah, any day
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: you could have somebody say, yeah, mine was thirty three
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: years ago.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it could go.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: Back thirty three years.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: It's kind of the number of kind of we've seen
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: where possibly this was going on based on testimony.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: So, and this is such a fascinating story for what
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: I think most people think of as a very simple concept.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's so much to this. I didn't know
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: just in a few minutes you've explained, and I think
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: the majority of people you get this idea. There must
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: be some computer that just randomize, goes through a list
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: of everybody boot boot boom, and there it is. There's
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: there's your jury. And it sounds like you need a
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: math degree.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Well there is some of that, because what do you
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: like in the process of it.
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, the discussion becomes is there a written process? Okay?
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: And if this is how we're doing it here, how
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: are other counties doing it without within our circuit and
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: within our state. So it really opens up a bigger
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: discussion about especially you know, not only the times we're
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: in everybody deserves that fair trial, But it does become
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: that question of does my jury really have my peers
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: in it if no one looks like me. I've seen
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: it happen in Iowa several years ago. I covered a
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: similar case where you had an attorney that came in
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: that said, my defendant is a black defendant, and how
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: are you picking your juries because no one on here
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: reflects what my defendant looks like.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and experience. So yeah, it's a very important part
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: of our justice system and having something it's not you know,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: it's not perfect, but we have to look at these
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: issues and address them and say how can we get
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: a little bit closer. So fortunately we don't have time
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: to solve that problem today, but I'm glad that you're
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: on the case. Shara. Thank you so much for coming
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: in and share case.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: That's a good question.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: My punds are getting a little bit better. Thanks.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you're welcome.