An unarmed Marengo police detective was hospitalized with broken facial bones after an altercation in a DuPage County Jail interview room that an inmate said the officer provoked.
The incident, which was the first of its kind in the jail, has prompted an internal review of security procedures at the 20-year-old facility in Wheaton, where authorities are considering installing a video monitoring system.
“They are looking at several different things,” said DuPage County Sheriff’s Police Lt. Mark Edwalds.
The altercation occurred Friday in a 7-by-7-foot interview room in a highly trafficked area of the jail. The room has just one long rectangular window in the door that personnel periodically use to check inside.
Through that window, a female jailer spotted Charles R. Anthony, 23, whose last known address is in Marengo, standing in the corner about 4:30 p.m., Edwalds said. She could not see Marengo Detective Joseph Sangiradi, 42, who had returned to the room after Anthony told guards he wanted to say something to him. The two had ended an hourlong interview moments before.
When the jailer took a closer look, she discovered Sangiradi lying on the floor.
“There was blood in the room, on the wall and on the floor,” Edwalds said.
The jailer called for help. She and other personnel entered the room and grabbed Anthony, who had a mild abrasion over his right eye. Sangiradi was rushed to Central DuPage Hospital in Winfield, where he was admitted to the intensive care unit, and treated for facial and other injuries. He was released from the hospital Monday, Edwalds said.
A woman who answered the phone at the detective’s home declined to comment.
Anthony’s father, Ray, was stunned.
“That’s the first I’ve heard of anything,” the Marengo resident said. “It really kind of surprises me.”
Authorities said Anthony, who was in jail after being arrested Dec. 30 by Bensenville police for alleged possession of a stolen motor vehicle, claimed the detective started the altercation. Anthony was on probation after being convicted last fall in McHenry County for misuse of credit cards, said Sgt. John Lustro, Bensenville acting chief.
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Sangiradi said the attack “was out of the blue,” Edwalds said.
There are no audiotaping or videotaping devices in the room, which police officers use to conduct interviews in private, DuPage Sheriff John Zaruba said.
Bensenville police had found Anthony while responding to a report of a “suspicious occupied vehicle” on the 800 block of South Church Road, Lustro said. The Jeep Cherokee had been reported stolen 10 days earlier from Marengo, said Marengo Police Chief Larry Mason.
Anthony was being held in lieu of $50,000 bond when Sangiradi arrived at the jail to interview him about the Jeep and the “possibility of past criminal activity,” Zaruba said.
The two men did not know each other, and it was unknown what they discussed in the minutes leading up to the fight, Zaruba said.
“That’s a question I have,” he said.
Sangiradi, who recently was promoted to detective, is a “good-size guy in fairly good shape,” though he was not required to take a fitness test when Marengo hired him in 2001, Mason said. Police officers are trained in self-defense at the police academy but do not necessarily have follow-up courses during their career, he said. Sangiradi previously had worked for the Stickney and Gilberts Police Departments.
The incident prompted DuPage authorities to evaluate jail security procedures. Typically, jail staff will post a third person in an interview room if an officer asks for one and they will handcuff an inmate at an officer’s request or if jail personnel believe it is prudent.
Sangiradi did not make either request, and Anthony did not behave in a manner to indicate that handcuffs were necessary, Edwalds said.
“We have been in this facility for 20 years and nothing like this has ever happened,” he said.