THOMAS DELANY JR. / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Lake County Sheriff's Deputy Darlene Rivera searches Sheila Peasand of Zion during Operation Early Bird, conducted Friday by the Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group. Peasant was charged with unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia.

Operation Early Bird

Nineteen Arrested Around County In Warrant Sweep

By Chris Brenner Staff Writer

Saturday, December 02, 2000

More than 60 law-enforcement officers Friday arrested 19 people in Lake County who were wanted on outstanding arrest warrants, most of them on drug charges.

Operation Early Bird was an organized and cooperative effort by federal, state, county and local law-enforcement officers to locate and apprehend drug law fugitives, said Metropolitan Enforcement Group Deputy Director Mark Piccoli.

"We arrested some people who have been fugitives from the judicial system for quite some time," Piccoli said. "Many of those arrested face lengthy prison terms, which is one of the reasons these offenders have chosen to evade the justice system."

Lake County Sheriff Gary Del Re and Lake County State's Attorney Michael Waller assisted in coordinating the warrant sweep.

Del Re said the sweep was the seventh similar operation, adding the sweeps "have consistently resulted in removing wanted persons from the streets of Lake County."

Waller noted: "Our efforts against drug dealers continue from investigation to assuring fugitives are brought to justice."

Piccoli said those fugitives arrested Friday "have made the decision not to accept responsibility for their actions and instead ignore the justice system. Our goal is to get these fugitives before the court to answer to their charges."

Sgt. Bert Foster, Lake County Sheriff's Department Warrants Division supervisor, said the warrant sweeps will continue unannounced in Lake County.

"We will target those offenders who continue to break the law and attempt to avoid the system, he said.

Lake County Law enforcement agencies participating in the sweep included Fox Lake, Grayslake, Lake Zurich, Libertyville, Mundelein, Buffalo Grove, Antioch, Waukegan, Round Lake Beach, Round Lake Park, Round Lake Heights, Park City, Vernon Hills, Lake Villa, Highland Park, Wauconda, Tower Lakes, Hawthorn Woods, Lincolnshire, Deerfield and Winthrop Harbor.

Also, the Lake County Sheriff's Department, the Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group, the Internal Revenue Service, Illinois State Police, Federal Bureau of Investigation and DuPage Metropolitan Enforcement Group, .

Arrested were:

Pedro Munoz, 28, Waukegan, unlawful possession of marijuana.

Erasto Guadarrama, 36, Waukegan, unlawful possession of a controlled substance.

Mario Garcia, 22, Waukegan, unlawful possession of a controlled substance.

Jaylen Nix, 21, North Chicago, unlawful possession of a controlled substance.

Melinda Snow, 26, Waukegan, unlawful possession of a controlled substance.

Sheila Peasand, 39, Zion, unlawful possession of drug equipment.

Heriberto Cortez, 20, Waukegan, unlawful possession of marijuana.

Larry Morrical, 32, Zion, unlawful possession of drug equipment.

Richard Moore, 23, Round Lake Beach, unlawful possession of a controlled substance.

Leonard Casey, 47, Zion, unlawful possession of marijuana.

Cesar Carillo, 27, Waukegan, unlawful possession of a controlled substance.

Charles Patton, 23, Zion, unlawful possession of marijuana.

George Taylor, 42, Zion, unlawful possession of drug equipment.

Danielle Zito, 22, Vernon Hills, unlawful possession of marijuana.

Lawrence Hailey, 22, North Chicago, unlawful possession of marijuana.

Roger Johnson, 42, Park City, unlawful possession of marijuana.

Edward Towers, 28, North Chicago, domestic battery.

Nicholas Nave, 29, Wauconda, traffic.

Geovanni Gomez, 27, Lake Zurich, unlawful possession of marijuana.

LAKE COUNTY FUGITIVES GET POLICE WAKE-UP CALL

By John Flink

Saturday, December 2, 2000

An early morning police sweep Friday targeting people wanted on warrants for drug-related charges resulted in the arrest of 19 people.

Officers from the Lake County sheriff's office, the Metropolitan Enforcement Group and 25 local, state and federal law-enforcement agencies, made the arrests as part of Operation Early Bird.

More than 60 officers set out from the sheriff's Waukegan headquarters at 5 a.m. Friday. The hour was chosen because of the higher probability of finding people at home, authorities said.

Several arrests were made while the fugitives were on the job. Additional arrests are expected next week, authorities said.

Officers approached the individuals' homes in groups of four to six. Each group of officers generally included representatives from local, state and federal agencies.

The sweep "once again demonstrates the high level of cooperation and teamwork between the various Lake County law enforcement agencies," Lake County Sheriff Gary Del Re said. "This is the seventh time we have conducted operations of this nature, and these warrant sweeps have consistently resulted in removing wanted persons from the streets of Lake County."

Periodic sweeps to track down fugitives are one of the most effective tools available to authorities to stay on top of the continual flow of warrants issued by the Lake County state's attorney's office, Del Re said.

Most of the 12,000 or so warrants typically in force in Lake County are for relatively minor offenses. If someone forgets to show up in court for a traffic offense, a warrant will be generated.

But some, like those targeted in Friday's sweep, are for more serious charges, such as drug violations.

Seventeen of Friday's arrests were for drug-related charges. The other two arrested--one for a traffic offense and one for a domestic battery charge--happened to be caught in the net, authorities said.

"This sweep went well, and nobody put up any resistance," said Lake County Sgt. Bert Foster, who coordinated the sweep. "One woman, the mother of a girl we arrested in Vernon Hills, was outraged that we brought so many officers to arrest her daughter. She said that her daughter is a nice girl, but we don't know that. We have a job to do and we have to do it safely."

People wanted on warrants can be difficult to find because they tend to move around, officials said.

Sometimes officers are able to arrest them at their places of employment, which can be embarrassing and provide a powerful incentive to heed their next calls to court, Foster said.

Surrenders are common in the days following sweeps because word gets around that police are on the prowl.

Lake County Warrant Sweep Rounds Up 19 Drug Fugitives

By Tony Gordon 

Daily Herald Staff Writer

Saturday,  December 02, 2000

The Grinch carried a badge on Friday.

The holiday plans of 19 fugitives, sought mainly on drug crimes, were disrupted with arrests by teams of officers from almost every Lake County police department and two federal agencies.

Dubbed "Operation Early Bird," the warrant sweep, coordinated by the Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group and Lake County sheriff's office, was aimed at suspects who had been released on bond, then failed to appear in court.

"These are people who committed offenses then made conscious decisions to ignore the judicial system," MEG Deputy Director Mark Piccoli said. "Our goal is to find them and return them to the system."

Just after 5 a.m., more than 65 officers divided into teams of five and spread throughout the county in search of 70 fugitives wanted for failing to appear in court this year and in 1999.

One team, comprised of MEG Special Agent Chris Thompson, FBI Agents Daniel McCune and Michael Biegalski, Hawthorn Woods Patrolman Armondo Escamilla and Lincolnshire Patrolman T.J. Beale, found the early going rough.

A woman at a house in North Chicago said the person being sought lived there at one time but no longer did. The grandparents of a second fugitive in Waukegan said he had moved to California.

And on and on and on.

"It is always a gamble when you are seeking someone on a warrant, especially on drug charges," Thompson said. "These people change addresses like most people change clothes."

Erasto Guadarrama was at least one address change short because he opened the door to the house at 3100 Ezekiel Ave. in Zion where police had been told to find him.

Piccoli said Guadarrama, 36, has been wanted since last March when he missed a court appearance for possession of cocaine and was ordered held on $15,000 bond after his arrest.

Some people sought in the warrant sweep ended up having their legal woes multiply.

Jaylen Nix, 21, of 2841 18th St. in North Chicago, was already facing a misdemeanor charge of possession of marijuana when he missed a court date in July.

When police located him at the Buffalo Grove electronics firm where he works, they say Nix had about 10 grams of marijuana in his pocket and a new misdemeanor charge of possession was added to his file. His bond was set at $5,000.

Sgt. Bert Foster, head of the warrants division of the Lake County Sheriff's office, said the warrants served Friday come from a stockpile dating to 1979 between 13,000 and 14,000 on a given day, although many suspects have multiple warrants waiting for them.

Sheriff Gary Del Re said he authorized the seventh warrant sweep in the past two years to go forward on Friday in spite of recent overcrowding problems at the jail.

"We were confident that we would be able to accommodate any and all people picked up," Del Re said. "The fact that we have at times a crowded jail does not mean we are not going to take wanted criminals off the streets."