WILLIAMSON CO.—A famous name was being tossed around Marion and Williamson County in early July after a late June incident, the reality of which public officials are keeping extremely quiet over.
It remains unclear exactly what has happened with former cop Jim Fosse, who had, up until the end of June, worked as a private process server as well as a process server for the Williamson County Sheriff’s Department.
However, reports are that he was given the choice of either resigning or being fired from the sheriff’s department, this, ostensibly, over misconduct.
Whether there was actual misconduct that occurred, however, remains at issue.
Fosse, Marion sources report, was, at some point in time prior to the whole thing blowing up, in the process of serving papers while on the clock for the county.
During this, he was calling dispatch and asking for 100-28s (license plate checks) on the people he was seeking to serve papers to for the county; that way, he could check addresses.
When he was on his way home (and still on the clock for the county), he happened to see a person he was trying to locate for one of his private process services (generally used for attorneys in the area) walking down the street, so Fosse proceeded to serve that person.
Somehow, a complaint arose from this; and from that, other incidents under similar circumstances were brought to light.
Fosse was reportedly given ten days to resign, according to county-level sources.
There is no truth to the rumor that went around in early July about Sheriff Bennie Vick “wanting to get rid of Jim Fosse because he had a friend he wanted to hire in his place.” Disclosure’s Williamson County stringer has verified this, at least.
Fosse has retirement coming from his many years as a city policeman; this might have been the gripe some had that generated some of the falsehoods surrounding the situation.
Whatever the case, it’s raised hackles on both sides and has caused undue attention to be brought onto Fosse, whose famous brother, Ray Fosse, was a major-league baseball player after whom the park in Marion is named.
While a month later (at the end of July) rumors were still floating that Jim Fosse was being investigated by the Illinois State Police for “diverting civil papers from the county sheriff’s department to his own private business,” thus “costing the county thousands in civil process fees” (amounting to official misconduct), no one from ISP would even hint at this being the case.
If anything develops to this effect, Disclosure will keep the public informed.