Illinois police with credibility issues have arrested hundreds of people and testified in court at least 1,700 times

This story is part of an investigative series coproduced by the Chicago Reader and Invisible Institute and is republished here with permission. Read the full series at chicagoreader.com.

Reporting by Max Blaisdell and Sam Stecklow

This story was produced as part of the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. Fellowship.

In 2024, Douglas Dyhrkopp, state’s attorney of Gallatin County in southern Illinois, began receiving complaints that a veteran law enforcement officer he’s repeatedly called to testify might be a problematic witness.

“Some folks did not like some things that were going on with some things that he was investigating,” Dyhrkopp told Invisible Institute.

The officer, Anthony Kendrick, has a history of official misconduct that includes lying to government officials and physically attacking residents. Over the past 20 years, Kendrick has bounced between police departments and sheriff’s offices in Williamson, Jackson, Hardin, and Massac counties, where he racked up at least six excessive-force lawsuits for allegedly beating residents. Kendrick, who declined to comment, has worked as a sheriff’s deputy for the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office for almost two years.

When Dyhrkopp discovered appellate court records showing Kendrick had testified falsely under oath more than a decade earlier, he immediately notified the county’s public defender. He had to.

“Clearly, I was surprised by this,” Dyhrkopp wrote in his letter to the public defender.

Prosecutors are constitutionally obligated to disclose to the defense any evidence that could undermine the credibility of a government witness. The U.S. Supreme Court cases Brady v. Maryland (1963) and Giglio v. United States (1972) established the practice of sticking police officers on Brady lists, which track cops with histories of dishonesty, bias, or misconduct, to help prosecutors fulfill this disclosure requirement.

That is important, in part, because judges and juries tend to trust cops’ testimony more than that of criminal defendants unless they have reasons to think otherwise.

Prosecutors flag officers for all sorts of bad behavior: lying to internal affairs investigators, omitting key details from police reports, providing inaccurate court testimony, committing crimes, or displaying biases — whether racist, misogynistic, or homophobic — that compromise their credibility. But this system, meant to protect the public from dishonest and disreputable cops testifying without defendants or juries knowing about their past misdeeds, is not working as it is supposed to. Invisible Institute found county prosecutors across Illinois seem unaware of dozens of officers with histories of dishonesty or other Brady-relevant misconduct, allowing problematic officers to testify without making the required disclosures.

Those findings come from a first-of-its-kind database Invisible Institute compiled from Brady records after requesting them from more than one hundred prosecutors’ offices statewide. Prosecutors flagged Kendrick as one of more than 580 active Illinois officers with credibility issues.

Collectively, this “Brady bunch” has made hundreds of arrests, and prosecutors have subpoenaed these potentially biased, untruthful officers to testify in court at least 1,700 times. These figures are certainly undercounts: Many prosecutors and police departments told reporters they don’t keep records or track when officers are subpoenaed to testify. Invisible Institute’s database is available online and includes many records made public for the first time.

Keith Grant, a supervising attorney for the Lake County public defender’s office and head of the Illinois Public Defender Association, said the newly public data will help defenders track histories of misconduct by officers testifying in their cases. While public defenders like him ask for police personnel files, which can include Brady information, “all the time” in discovery requests, courts sometimes block those requests if they are not supported by evidence of prior misconduct. But they know when prosecutors flag an officer, “there’s probably some digging that needs to be done.”

This rogues’ gallery of flagged officers includes William Wichern, a veteran Illinois Department of Natural Resources officer who repeatedly made racist, homophobic, and sexist statements to other officers; Crestwood police officer Arthur Roman, who was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison for assaulting two teens; and Emilio Marquez and Owen McGuinness, a pair of Rockford police officers who allegedly beat a man and fractured his rib while he lay facedown on the ground in handcuffs.

Wichern, Roman, Marquez, and McGuinness did not respond to requests for comment as of press time.

While calling on a Brady-listed officer to testify isn’t illegal, it raises the risk that prosecutors won’t disclose the officer’s history of misconduct or dishonesty. Failing to do so violates the Constitution, and putting officers known to be violent, prone to lying, or prejudiced on the stand without disclosure can lead to the imprisonment of the innocent, the acquittal of the guilty, and plea deals with longer sentences than would otherwise have been struck.

Prosecutors can, of course, act in bad faith and withhold Brady evidence from defendants simply because it helps them. Examples abound in Illinois. In Cook County, prosecutions have hinged on a state trooper whose allegedly copy-and-paste DUI arrest reports earned him recognition as the state’s top DUI cop, and then accusations of “fabricating evidence.” In DuPage County, three prosecutors were charged and later acquitted of conspiring to cook up evidence in a case that produced a wrongful conviction and landed three men on death row. And in Chicago, prosecutions based on false drug arrests carried out by a gang of Chicago cops led by convicted felon Ronald Watts led to mass exonerations and more than $126 million in settlements paid by taxpayers as of last year. Since 1989, the National Registry of Exonerations reports 116 exonerations in Illinois in which prosecutorial misconduct was a contributing factor.

Kim Foxx, former state’s attorney for Cook County, said that in many cases, prosecutors do not commit Brady violations on purpose. They simply do not know the rules of a legal standard that is not always clear-cut. In the dozen years she worked as an assistant state’s attorney in Cook County prior to her 2016 election, she was never once trained on her duty to disclose.

“Part of what you are seeing is, I think, a presumption that offices know what those obligations and responsibilities are and a presumption that folks are being trained around it,” she said.

Some prosecutors’ offices maintain Brady lists to keep track of these officers, a time-consuming task for time-strapped prosecutors. Not to mention, the information to maintain these lists comes from police departments that do not always cooperate, stymieing even the best-intentioned prosecutors. Invisible Institute found that Brady violations occurred even in counties that maintained lists, including DuPage, Lake, and Will.

Despite opposition from the local Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 7, Foxx built two of those lists in Cook County, but in 2025, her successor, Eileen O’Neill Burke, moved to eliminate Foxx’s public-facing “Do Not Call” list and axe the office’s private disclosure list in favor of an internal drive.

Burke’s shift on Brady policy was unexpected, but resistance from police unions is common. Adam Gershowitz, a William & Mary Law School professor who has studied “accidental” Brady violations, said police officers have little incentive to flag their own misconduct.

“If police have engaged in misconduct themselves, they’re not in the business of advertising that,” he said. “It’s really impossible for prosecutors to know all this stuff unless . . . the county itself has a really good procedure in place for making sure all these people are added to a list and shared with the prosecutor’s office. And a lot of places just don’t do that effectively or at all.”

Some do it better than Illinois. States like New Hampshire assist prosecutors by compiling statewide Brady lists. Others, such as Massachusetts, clearly define the credibility issues that require disclosure in their criminal procedure codes.

Lake County state’s attorney Eric Rinehart is calling for the former solution, saying that because prosecutors can’t access each other’s lists, they have limited ability to know the disciplinary histories of problematic officers before they start work in a new county.

“A statewide, centralized Brady list shared between prosecutor offices would greatly improve transparency,” he said in a statement. “Considering confidentiality concerns, statewide legislation authorizing and establishing such a list is preferable. I would be happy to advocate for such a bill.”

Assault at the Dairy Queen, then a trail of complaints

In August 2004, husband and wife James and Neva Lasswell pulled into the Dairy Queen in Johnston City, Illinois, where they spotted Anthony Kendrick, then Johnston City police officer and boyfriend of their son’s ex-wife. The couple was meeting their son, Stewart, and their grandchild for a supervised visit. Kendrick was not supposed to be there, and the couple suspected he’d come to interfere, according to Robert DuClos, a former Johnston City alderperson and James’s friend and neighbor. James and Stewart have since died, and Neva did not respond to requests for comment.

Using a camera she’d brought to photograph her grandchild, Neva snapped a photo of Kendrick from outside the Dairy Queen. Kendrick stormed outside and demanded she hand over the camera, incorrectly claiming that taking his photo was against the law. Kendrick then body-checked James and took the camera, according to a federal lawsuit the Lasswells filed a year later.

That afternoon, DuClos accompanied the couple to the Johnston City Police Department to file a complaint and retrieve their camera. There was nothing much to retrieve. Kendrick had destroyed the camera and “would not give the remains back,” the Lasswells wrote in their complaint. That same year, Kendrick was named in three more excessive-force lawsuits.

Johnston City settled with the Lasswells in 2006. During the legal process, the city agreed in a court filing that Kendrick had violated their civil rights, that Kendrick had committed battery against James and assault against Neva, and that the city had been negligent in hiring him.

Records show that by the time they had met outside the Dairy Queen, the Johnston City Police Department had tried to rectify its mistake by firing him. In his first two years, the department received numerous complaints about him from within the department and from other agencies. The city’s released records don’t show why the department was unsuccessful in firing Kendrick. In 2003, a year before Kendrick seized the Lasswells’ camera, then-police chief John Mayers wrote a letter to the city board of police and fire commissioners that revealed Kendrick was a troublemaker.

Since Kendrick’s appointment just over a year prior, Mayers wrote, “I have been faced with numerous situations involving Officer Kendrick’s behavior and demeanor.” He wrote that immediately after he was hired, Kendrick had raised concerns about an auxiliary member of the department also serving on the board of commissioners. Kendrick cited a letter from the attorney general’s office appearing to address the issue — but the copy he provided had the addressee’s name “obliterated.”

After Kendrick denied knowledge of the provenance of the letter, Mayers eventually obtained a copy from the attorney general’s office showing that Kendrick himself had solicited the opinion. Around the same time, Kendrick shared with Mayers letters he had written on department letterhead criticizing an officer from his previous department and a Johnston City firefighter, each of whom he’d had issues with; Mayers forbade him from sending the “confrontational” letters.

Kendrick also blew a case by opening a seized duffel bag without a search warrant, against Mayers’ direct orders. “I chose not to make an issue of this incident due to the potential embarrassment to our department,” the chief wrote. “Officer Kendrick has struck out at almost everyone in the department in anger and jealousy. He has done things in an attempt to cause problems between other officers, as well as other departments and agenc[ies]. There are other incidents with Officer Kendrick that I did not include in this letter,” he continued, “but I would be willing to discuss with the Board upon your request.” The city said it had no additional records about why the board did not fire Kendrick.

The department didn’t give up on ridding itself of Kendrick, first filing termination charges upon settling the lawsuit with the Lasswells in 2006, and then filing another set of charges in 2007 after he lied to the police and fire commission, telling it in a hearing that the Johnston City Police Department had disciplined him only once. This time the department was successful. The commission fired Kendrick that November, and his appeals to the Williamson County Circuit Court and the appellate court failed.

Throughout the three-year appeal process, Kendrick stayed a cop, making arrests and testifying in court. According to state data, he first went to the police department in Gorham, a Jackson County village of 173 near the Missouri border. Emails to the village clerk went unanswered, and Invisible Institute could not identify a working phone number for the village. He then went to nearby Hurst, a small Williamson County city of around seven hundred. In August, City Manager Ted Swanner said the police department had since been shuttered and that he was working to find records on Kendrick, but Invisible Institute never received them. Kendrick bounced to the Hardin County Sheriff’s Office in 2011, where records show he lasted exactly one month, and then landed at the Creal Springs Police Department in Williamson County the following year.

In October 2017, Kendrick resolved a “mild disagreement” between couple Robert and Jacquelyn Lindsey by entering their home and tasing Robert, who passed out, fell to the ground, and suffered a concussion, according to a lawsuit the couple filed. The Lindseys sued Kendrick and Creal Springs for $30,000 in damages, arguing the city should’ve known Kendrick was unfit for the job based on his extensive record of misconduct. The Lindseys have since died, and the couple’s lawyer told us he did not recall the terms of the settlement. The city of Creal Springs dissolved its police department and said it had no records about the case.

Kendrick left Creal Springs shortly before the city settled the case. He was soon hired by the Brookport Police Department, where he worked for only a month until state records show he was fired for violating a traffic stop policy. He did not work as a police officer for three years, until he was hired by the Ridgway Police Department in Gallatin County in April 2023. A little under a year later, he would join the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office; state records show he still works for Ridgway, which hasn’t reported any complaints.

“Took all my proper steps”

Kendrick’s past would not fully catch up to him in Gallatin County until October 2024, when Dyhrkopp sent his letter to Gallatin County public defender Nathan Rowland.

“I was not made aware of, or ha[d] any knowledge of this Brady issue with Deputy Kendrick until a citizen made a complaint about him to my office and the sheriff’s office,” Dyhrkopp wrote. “I then began researching the matter and over a few days, discovered the disciplinary issues.”

That Kendrick could slink from county to county despite the legal mechanism meant to prevent cops like him from testifying without disclosures of their past misconduct exemplifies the shortcomings of Illinois’ Brady system.

Had someone not complained to Dyhrkopp, he might never have learned of Kendrick’s record. And even though he did, Kendrick is still working and making arrests in Gallatin County.

Since Johnston City fired him in 2007, five county prosecutors’ offices have overseen Kendrick’s court testimony. Not one notified the next about his lengthy record of misconduct. That is one of the Brady lists’ greatest limitations: prosecutors are not required to share their lists with one another.

Since joining the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office, Kendrick has arrested a man without probable cause, engaged in “unprofessional and unethical conduct” by photographing at least two traffic accidents while in uniform and possibly selling those photos to local media, and been accused of physically assaulting a 16-year-old boy, according to court records and a complaint Dyhrkopp submitted to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board (ILETSB), the state’s police regulator. The complaint said Kendrick put the child in an illegal choke hold, busted his lip with a strike to the face, and hit the child’s head multiple times inside his squad truck.

Dyhrkopp said Kendrick’s case was the first time in his nearly 20-year career as both a prosecutor and a defense attorney that he’d made or received a disclosure about officer misconduct. “I would know if there were other Brady issues that came up,” he said. “We’ve got three deputies full time and one part time, so everybody knows everybody.”

“I took all my proper steps,” Dyhrkopp said, adding that he tried to “follow the law” after discovering Kendrick’s prior misconduct. He said Gallatin’s sheriff’s office claimed it didn’t know about Kendrick’s disciplinary history until he told them. Kendrick “works for my county sheriff’s department,” Dyhrkopp said. “I don’t know if he filled out a job application. I don’t know any of those things.”

Gallatin County sheriff Shannon Bradley said in an emailed statement that his office conducted a background check on Kendrick, the “same” as “for all officers.” He said the background investigation included a criminal history check and a search of the ILETSB Professional Conduct Database, which has documented gaps.

All that background check turned up was Kendrick’s firing by Johnston City. Because there was “no kind of criminal offense or anything,” Bradley hired him anyway.

Kendrick remains on the force. An ILETSB spokesperson said its investigation is pending.

This story was produced as part of the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. Fellowship.

View Invisible Institute’s statewide database of Brady-listed Illinois officers, compiled through records requests to more than one hundred prosecutors’ offices.

Learn more about Illinois’s Brady lists from reporters Max Blaisdell and Sam Stecklow on Thursday, November 12, at 6 PM at the West Side Justice Center. For more information and to register, visit Invisible Institute.