When former police Officer Zenna Ramos heard the decision that put her career back on track after facing the prospect of never working as a cop again, she began to sob.
The former Cicero officer’s career had been derailed in April when her certification was blocked by the Illinois Law Enforcement Standards and Training Board while applying to the Riverside Police Department. The board had cited the $14.99 theft of a T-shirt in 2008 and another theft in 2003, when Ramos was 17 years old.
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.
The village’s president, manager, lawyer and public safety director defended her at the review committee’s midday hearing at Chicago’s Bilandic Building on Thursday.
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.”
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/P3O7P3IBOFF5TA3PGML2F46LPQ.JPG)
But Patrick Hahn, the training and standard board’s attorney defended the original decision to not certify Ramos, arguing the SAFE-T Act empowered the board to consider Ramos’ expunged conviction and dropped charges.
“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.
“She can be almost anything she wants to be,” Hahn said. “She just shouldn’t be a police officer.”
Hahn also highlighted 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, running smack into the SAFE-T Act, which says we need to do better,” Hahn said.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/S3OYOMZ57RFXPNBKQMYMJRCL6A.JPG)
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.
Last week, Gov. J.B. Pritzker shared a statement calling on the training and standards board to certify Ramos after Riverside leaders held a news conference drawing attention to her plight.
“Officer Ramos is a model of someone who, despite making a mistake during a difficult time in her life, has rehabilitated and learned from that past — positioning her to be a strong public servant in the community,” said Pritzker, who appoints many of the board’s members as governor.
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.
However, 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.
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, argued the law was instead meant to prospectively apply. “There’s no question that was the legislative intent. Otherwise we would’ve never agreed to it,” she told the committee members.
As the committee privately deliberated, Cummings 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.
“It’s hugely problematic, because all the departments that I’m aware of are having a crisis in terms of hiring and retention, so people are ‘lateraling’ on a regular basis,” Cummings said.
