IN THE NEWS

Richmond drops DUI charge against cop

By KRISTEN TURNER
November 16, 2004

WOODSTOCK - The village of Richmond has dropped a drunken-driving charge against one of its police officers only four days after he was pulled over.

Brian L. Quilici, 32, of Richmond, is back at work, Richmond Police Chief Roger Szewczyk said.

Quilici was pulled over by fellow Officer William Fedderly at 3:30 a.m. Nov. 8 near Prospect Street and Route 12, according to court records.

Quilici was charged with driving under the influence and paid $100 to be released.

Village President Kevin Brusek would not elaborate on specifics but said that there was tension between the officers and that Quilici should not have been arrested.

"From my understanding, it was a bad ticket, and that no matter who it was written on, it would have been dropped - that there wasn't enough evidence to substantiate the reason for the ticket," Brusek said.

Quilici was given a court date of Dec. 13, but he was in court Friday when the charge was dropped on the motion of the village prosecutor.

During the Friday hearing, Richmond prosecutor Ryan Schmidt moved to drop the charge against Quilici and to rescind the suspension of Quilici's driver's license. Driver's licenses typically are suspended when a defendant refuses to submit to Breathalyzer tests.

McHenry County Presiding Judge Ward Arnold approved the motion and signed the order dropping the charge.

Some Richmond officials and representatives either did not answer questions or did not return phone calls seeking information about why the charge was dropped and why the case was disposed of so quickly.

Szewczyk referred questions to village attorney Lisa Waggoner. Waggoner, who typically handles business and zoning matters for the village, not criminal cases, referred questions to Schmidt.

Schmidt said Quilici refused to take a field sobriety or Breathalyzer test. He also said Fedderly failed to follow police procedures and had insufficient cause to stop Quilici in the first place.

Schmidt said he did not believe that he could make the charge stick.

On Monday morning, a lawyer with the Crystal Lake law firm Rolls and Kililis filed a motion to expunge the drunken-driving charge from the court records.

Quilici was honored in 2003 by a local Mothers Against Drunk Driving chapter as one of the 10 police officers in the county who made the most drunken-driving arrests. Quilici made 36 DUI arrests last year.

He has been with the Richmond Police Department for about three years and previously worked for the Spring Grove Police Department.

A search of DUI charges by Richmond police in 2004 showed that such cases usually last months, not days. Cases such as Quilici's, in which charges are dropped by prosecutors, have taken anywhere from two to eight months to work through the court system. Many DUI charges pressed in 2004, even earlier in the year, still are awaiting outcomes.

Community Editor Cyndi Klapperich contributed to this report.