Caseyville Township trustees seize supervisor’s computer

Caseyville Township trustees removed the hard drive from a computer in Supervisor Bruce Canty’s office Thursday night’s township meeting and locked it in the township safe over concerns that township documents may have been tampered with.

Trustees halted Thursday’s meeting and compared the serial number on the computer in Canty’s office to the serial number on a township invoice connected to a computer issued him. The numbers did not match.

The board removed the hard drive from the computer in Canty’s office to determine what files it contains. The whereabouts of the computer referrenced in the invoice, which was to be used for township business and may contain township files, remains unknown.

The computer in Canty’s office was not plugged in. Canty told the board the computer hasn’t been used “probably in two and a half years.”

Trustee Jim Lemansky challenged Canty, saying that on previous occasions Canty has said he does not have a computer in his office and instead used his personal laptop.

“Where has that computer been? I never saw it,” Lemansky said.

“It’s been in my office,” Canty said.

“I didn’t understand how you were to do your job as supervisor and the boss and the leader without it,” Lemansky said.

After the meeting, Canty said he could not explain why the serial number on the computer in his office and the one on the invoice do not match.

Questions about empty hard drives

Hard drives have been a hot topic in the township for more than a month.

According to Jack Hickman, the computer engineer hired to audit the township’s computer system, four of the five hard drives discovered in a dessert container at the bottom of a box of Halloween decorations in October had been professionally erased.

“A hard drive accumulates a lot of files. A hard drive that has been used for several years by the township for official uses should be full,” Hickman said. “None of that was there. You can see the traces where things have been but there’s nothing there now.”

Hickman said the tools he used to perform the examination detected evidence that files had been transferred to floppy disks. Trustees said they had no knowledge of any floppy disks that contain township files. Hickman did detect a few files, but he said they had all been overwritten with zeroes.

“That’s the way the government deletes files so that they’re unrecoverable. Your average person would never know how to do that,” he said. “My impression is nobody associated with the township or the elected officials has those skills or knowledge. The way these were deleted was not the work of an amateur.”

The fifth hard drive, Hickman said, was “filled up to here” with what he believed were normal township files.

Police report

Trustees and Township Clerk David Jacknewitz approached Fairview Heights police regarding the discovery of the hard drives last month.

“The review of the information shows at this time no criminal activity had occurred and that (the board) would be conducting an internal investigation,” Fairview Heights Police Lt. Mike Hoguet said. “If criminal activity is noted during this internal investigation,” the board would notify police.

In light of Hickman’s assessment that four of the five hard drives have been professionally erased, Trustee Rick Donovan said after Thursday’s meeting that he anticipated the board would again bring the matter before police.

During a previous public meeting, Donovan accused Canty of removing the hard drives in order to hide their contents. Canty told board members and the News-Democrat in November that he instructed a now-former custodial employee to remove the hard drives because the computers were to be replaced.

Illinois’ public records law states the intentional transfer, concealment or destruction of public records is a class 4 felony. Canty said he did not know what happened to the hard drives after he ordered them removed.

The board next meets at 7 p.m. Dec. 17.

This story was originally published December 4, 2015 at 5:34 PM with the headline "Caseyville Township trustees seize supervisor’s computer."