By Crescenzo Vellucci
The Vanguard Sacramento Bureau Chief
CHICAGO, IL – An Illinois cop is getting another chance here despite the rejection of her application to work for the police department in Riverside—just a dozen miles from Chicago—when the Illinois Law Enforcement Standards and Training Board cited her arrests for a $14.99 theft of a T-shirt in 2008 and another theft in 2003, when she was 17 years old.
But this week the board reversed its decision about the former Cicero, Illinois, officer’s application, allowing Zenna Ramos to work again as a police officer, according to a Chicago Tribune story.
However, Patrick Hahn, the Training and Standard Board’s attorney, disagreed, charging Ramos “can be almost anything she wants to be. She just shouldn’t be a police officer.”
Hahn “defended the original decision to not certify Ramos, arguing the SAFE-T Act empowered the board to consider Ramos’ expunged conviction and dropped charges,” wrote the Tribune.
“The bar is high because we entrust these men and women with awesome powers. Powers to arrest. Powers to detain. Powers to shoot and kill when necessary,” Hahn said. “They have to be trusted to use sound judgment under special situations.”
“Moments after Riverside public safety Director Matthew Buckley lauded Ramos for turning her life around and described her struggle to overcome her brother’s shooting death, Hahn also praised Ramos for her post-arrest actions. She is a testament to the corrective power of law,” he said to the Tribune.
Hahn also noted Ramos’ record in Cicero, citing documents that he said showed she had been let go by the department for performance issues.
“This is a clash of cops helping cops get jobs…we can do better,” Hahn was quoted as saying.
But Ramos, now 37, won an appeal Thursday when the board’s waiver review committee voted to rescind its previous decision to block Ramos’ certification. The reversal paves the way for Ramos to again patrol suburban streets.
“I can’t believe it,” she said, still crying as she leaned on a wall in the hallway moments after the decision. “This is what I’ve always wanted to do. I wanted to be the police. I’m so grateful.”
Ramos’s certification was blocked two months after Riverside hired her in February.
She had previously studied criminal justice, worked several non-police jobs in law enforcement and worked as a Cicero police officer for a year.
Following the board’s denial of Ramos’ certification, Riverside leaders rallied around her, arguing she deserved a second chance, said the Tribune in its story.
Riverside’s attorney, Yvette Heintzelman, argued Ramos’ expunged convictions from 2003 and 2008 didn’t disqualify her from becoming a police officer in Illinois under the state’s new public safety law, the SAFE-T Act.
Ramos’ offenses weren’t listed in the SAFE-T’s lengthened list of disqualifying misdemeanors and didn’t count as convictions because of the expungements, Heintzelman said. The new law shouldn’t be retroactively applied, she added.
“You can’t use 2023 eyes to look at what happened in 2008,” Heintzelman said. “It’s just not fair.”
The Tribune wrote, “Buckley acknowledged certain struggles Ramos faced while policing in Cicero, but added that the Cicero department recommended Ramos. The slower-paced Riverside department would be a better fit for the policing skills of Ramos, who excelled in the department’s testing and interviews, he said.
“After private deliberation, the decision was read by Brendan Kelly, the Illinois State Police director who chairs the waiver review committee. The committee determined Ramos wasn’t automatically disqualified from policing because of the past thefts, but maintained the training and standards board did have the discretion to block her certification.”
The committee found Ramos’ certification as a police officer wouldn’t threaten public trust in police, as it had previously ruled, Kelly said. Ramos should undergo training designed to address any issues she had while working as an officer in Cicero, Kelly added, said the Tribune.
Kelly also stated that the parts of the SAFE-T Act that could have potentially blocked Ramos’ certification can apply retroactively.
Earlier in the hearing, Tamara Cummings, general counsel for the Fraternal Order of Police’s Illinois Labor Council, told the Tribune she feared a decision to interpret the SAFE-T Act as retroactively applying could hinder currently certified officers with expunged convictions or dropped charges from transferring departments.
