Funny how the Delavan Enterprise ran with a front page story WEEKS ago and this paper.....NOTHING. Why? Did Mikey threaten a lawsuit if the truth was printed? Or did he offer money to keep quiet? I guess we will never know.

Small towns should have term limits on good old boy polititians. Oldsters have no clue how to be creative with taxpayer money.

The Delavan Enterprise has a nice article on the front page about why this guy finally is gone and how proud Zipp and Company must be that they have botched this up from Day ONE.

Amen to lifesawheel! You got it right! Amy, I am sorry if this reads like a soap opera to you.. I personally KNOW all parties involved and I have seen firsthand how this has effected Chief DeVoy and his family. Hell it caused one board member to have a stroke! It is not right and AMAZES me at how well alive the good ol boy network is!

The drunks and drug dealers of Darien should now rest uneasy. Maltese had no idea how to arrest any of them and was scared to death of them!
They were as close as the back door of the police department I heard....

Maybe the Gazette should do a story, on the real story behind why he left. I am sure it would read like "The Days of Our Life" soap opera or "Reno 911".

The high speed chase incident that Officer Maltese was comical and down right dangerous in my opinion. I wish the Village Board Members that supported him and his agenda would publicly admit that they made a mistake and apologize to the taxpayers for ruining the reputation of the Police Department over him. You all made a mistake, so admit it.

Oh Yah! I totally forgot about also about how Chief DeVoy reported then village president Metzner defrauding FEMA during those big floods that happened way back in June that year. All these families having hardships and political Metzner knows that FEMA is out and about with a checkbook writing all these checks to affected communities. Wouldn't you know that Maltese is working a shift one day and for some unknown reason has to leave right in the middle of it. A part timer comes in to handle the rest of Maltese's shift and finds the men's room urinal over flowing. DPW is called and the leak is fixed. Metzner claims the whole village hall and PD flooded. Chief DeVoy knows that it didn't. Metzner hires Rainbow Cleaners to come in and clean up nothing, for OVERTIME HOLIDAY RATES over 4th of July weekend. Metzner puts a note on the locked front door that the air is contaminated and dangerous for the public to enter but allows the PD to continue normal operations. He even sits in his village president chair and watches the circus show wearing a DUST MASK. Seriously. Phil Putnam even shows up and gets in a verbal altercation yelling at Metzner that he knows he is lying (but that soon politically went nowhere as Phil got silenced) Chief DeVoy reports the fraud to FEMA. It goes no where because Metzner knew that he could lie to get money for a cash strapped village from a federal agency dying to get rid of money to get equal or more the next year. FEMA forgot all about it but the village board set its sights on this do gooder DeVoy and listened to every word Maltese was spinning.

NO ONE on the board found this strange. They were too caught up in getting rid of Chief DeVoy in exchange for promoting Maltese up to his original claim “I’m gonna be chief here before long.” So now Chief DeVoy has proof that ‘someone’ has been going through his files and office while he is away. He has so much proof that he asks the Walworth County Sheriff’s Department to install hidden cameras to catch this evil doer. The secretary who has turned onto Maltese’s side against Chief DeVoy finds one of the cameras and blows the whistle on him to the board. THAT VERY NIGHT, Chief DeVoy shows up for a board meeting and is escorted off of the property. That was December 2, 2008. Chief DeVoy never works again for the Village of Darien. ‘Innocent’ Maltese just stands by and lets his plan unfold. Oh but wait folks, there is a snag. What’s that you say? Those aren’t Chief DeVoy’s cameras? We thought we could reprimand him by installing cameras in a ‘public’ place without our approval. Oh. They belong to the Sheriff’s Dept? Uh oh, we can’t let him win NOW. We have come TOO CLOSE. Let’s just smear his name and bleed him dry using taxpayer money. It’s so easy, we will have more money than he will ever be able to come up with! People won’t like it but screw’em. We are the good ol boys and we can do whatever we want. It has been obvious so far. Besides, this Maltese is telling us everything we want to hear. Should we ask other members of the department? NO. We can’t believe anything they say, they like Chief DeVoy and not our boy Mikey. Hey, let’s even put a GAG ORDER on them so they can’t even TALK to Chief DeVoy. Super. So Chief DeVoy is out of money and they make Maltese ‘acting chief’. But wait, this guy can’t even sit at the chief’s chair in regular board meetings. This guy hides in the back of the room, afraid to take credit for his plan unfolding. We got what we wanted but let’s not make this guy Chief. Now that DeVoy is gone, we now see that there really IS something wrong with this guy. Soon after a competent professional Gilmore is hired, he puts cameras in the squads and WAIT, - the PD too. EVERYWHERE, lobby, squad room, garage, etc. Didn’t the board have issues with cameras in ‘public places’?!?! Not anymore I guess. Maltese gets demoted to officer with evidence he is all lies and no officer skills. Soon after, we have this. Nice work Zipp and company. You have no idea how much of what you stepped in. A letter of thanks: Thanks to Robert Metzner, Kurt Zipp, Phil Putman, Jim Abbott, Cheryl Kaufenberg and Robert Wenzel. A simple verbal reprimand and common sense could have saved this village THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of dollars and unrecoverable pride.

Let’s see, some dirty e-mails on the work computer? The equivalent of those tired Xeroxed-xeroxed-xeroxed-xeroxed jokes on paper passed around the office for centuries before the age of e-mail? SO WHAT. At BEST, any reprimand for such a ‘horrible act’ would be reduced to a ‘written warning’ placed in his personnel file. But no. Not Kurt Zipp and company. Let’s ruin a man’s career. No matter he has served this village 23+ years. What’s that? Never really ever called in sick? Never really used all or most of his vacation days? Doesn’t matter. We have a Maltese telling us how horrible he is – and worse yet, we believe EVERY WORD. So now Chief DeVoy smells that something isn’t right. He is getting less respect by the minute by the board. He feels he is getting set up. He knows it for sure when he decides to make the Sergeant’s promotion an impartial process by getting area Chiefs and Lieutenants involved instead of himself because he knows the board will do the exact opposite of what he chooses. It looks worse on the board if they go against the professional opinions of those who have been in law enforcement as long as he has. Does it matter that Maltese is still on probation from his initial hire as a full time officer? Does it matter that the board ignored their recommendation to promote Officer Wilson instead of Maltese? Maltese answered every question in the interview PERFECTLY. Village president Metzner could NEVER have given him the questions ahead of time….No. Oh, yes, village president Metzner was SCORE KEEPER during the interviews and INSISTED on being privy to the interview questions and being a part of the process. And when the board meeting came up that the panel chose Wilson over Maltese, it was village president Metzner that threw a fit and made a motion to ignore Chief DeVoy’s and the panel of area Chiefs and Lieutenants and got a quick second by another crooked board member to drop the gable and promote Maltese to Sergeant while he was still on probation in his first year of full time employment.

Exactly, and let’s examine just about when they got so hell bent on getting rid of Chief DeVoy. Maltese gets hired part time and it is a FACT that even while still part time, is spouting to other officers of the Darien PD “I’m gonna be Chief of this department pretty soon” What kind of persona even THINKS that?!? So we have a village board that doesn’t like Chief DeVoy because he doesn’t let them do anything they want to do (something it is obvious they are used to). For example, while the construction on US HWY 14 was going on, the detour ran 35-45mph traffic right past Phil Putnam’s house in a 25mph residential zone. Causing a real stir with Phil-Boy. He didn’t like it. So he called upon a favor from the village board, the same kind of favor that had the Department of Public Works clear the trees from the lot in which he built his new house on this 25mph street on. Ahh, the good ol’ boys club. What was the brilliant idea by then village board lead by Metzner? Just go out there and change the speed limit to 15mph and fill up ticketbooks left and right with speeding tickets and the village will be rich! Those fools had signs in hand ready to post when Chief DeVoy said “Excuse me, but you can’t just change speed limit signs at a whim, that is against the law.” Well a board that likes to do and say whatever they want doesn’t like that kind of logic. Along comes Maltese who is crazy enough to think he should be Chief of a village he is only a part time officer in; a position he should have never even been granted in the first place. “Hey, you want to get rid of this Chief DeVoy guy? Perfect. I will tell you everything you want to hear, truth or not, to make this Chief character go away. All I ask is that you protect me through trials and tribulations and put me in his chair and I will snoop and backstab my way to get your results.” Deal. How much of a coincidence is it that the board got hell bent on getting rid of Chief DeVoy when Maltese came on scene?!? How gullible and hate driven does the board have to be to ignore EVERY SINGLE WARNING SIGN that read that this goes against all logic.

I couldn't agree more with yougottobekidding and lifeisawheel! This ALL could have been prevented if those board members weren't so hell bent on getting rid of the chief!

A letter of thanks: Thanks to Robert Metzner, Kurt Zipp, Phil Putman, Jim Abbott, Cheryl Kaufenberg and Robert Wenzel for causing our community more financial hardship! You were told by Chief DeVoy and a panel of his colleagues to not promote Mike Maltese to Sergeant because he was incompetent, among other things. Instead you believe in him over our former Chief of Police that was truly dedicated in looking out after the best interest of us. He maintained 24 hour police coverage and managed a flawless budget. Now we are faced with a reduced police force and the challenge of obtaining money to keep the department operating.
The real people that deserve a true and genuine thank you are Evelyn Etten, Craig McCue, Debi Olmstead and Alan Kenyon for having a true sense of responsibility to the tax payers of Darien. They all saw through the B.S. and stood firm on their beliefs. The aforementioned board members should be ashamed of themselves. If you were employees of the Village you’d all be fired and we would hire DeVoy back to do just that – fire all of you! It’s no wonder why you were all fined for wrong doing – things haven’t changed and you’re still doing it wrong.
Congratulations to Chief Gilmore in succeeding in getting rid of the true cancer of our community. I’m quite sure the only one that will miss you Mike is Robert Metzner. I know your law enforcement colleagues won’t. If the Gazette and the Town of Milton is smart, they’d comb the law enforcement community for the real truth. I’m sure you won’t get it from Darien.

How about checking with the Sheriff's Office. A Sergeant from SO filed a formal complaint against Maltese for alowing a 9th offense drunk driver go free somewhere around June 8th of this year. Maltese resigns just days later? That is what finally saved the village. And Maltese's pursuit that is recorded on the squad cam from last summer, was another HUGE reason to let him go. The Cheif still has that video on file. FINALLY he screwed up enough when the union said "Sorry, your on your own pal".

I do remember those comment pages and how out of control they got. I am glad he is gone. He should have been gone long before now. I am sad that again the taxpayers have to pay the bill again. I hope the true numbers come out and the good old boy club becomes exposed. The real story should be on how the Police Department has really been turned around and now not the laughing stock of the County.

I apologize for this being an after thought but kudos to Chief Gilmore and everyone else that made it possible. The village is a much better place because of you. Thank you.

Oh to remember the days when these articles used to spawn hundreds of posts that would cause Gazette management to disable the comments.....There are too many to count that are happy with the news of Maltese's demise. Unfortunately, his mark on the village will not be short lived as he has been financially preparing for his departure for some time. As "acting chief" still in the union, he was giving himself plenty of overtime and when or should I say IF the true numbers come out, Kurt Zipp and Co. will have to answer to why they protected what we all knew was a cancer. Zipp is hilarious, "When one person leaves it creates a much larger problem..." He didn't seem to care about that when he was spending the village's money on the DeVoy deal and making it clear to the rest of the officers of the department that he didn't care about what they thought or pushing them away to other departments. All the while, protecting the cancer that will end up putting the village further into the money pit. Good going. All they had to do was clear their mind of the DeVoy agenda and ask or even LISTEN to what we had been saying about what we knew all knew all along. It is a pure shame. Those that were on the board that let this happen should be remembered and never be permitted to "serve" in our best interests again.