Dean Olsen

1 month ago | illinoistimes.com | Dean Olsen

Four Springfield police officers were disciplined – and one of them will serve a six-day unpaid suspension – in connection with their work at the site of a Sept. 5 car-motorcycle collision in which a recently retired cop was charged with drunken driving and the couple on the motorcycle were hurt. A family member of one of the people injured, as well as a critic of the police who was taken into custody during a Sept.

1 month ago | illinoistimes.com | Dean Olsen

The trial of Sean Grayson, who is charged with first-degree murder in the July 6 death of Sonya Massey, needs to be moved outside Sangamon County because pretrial publicity would bias potential jurors, Grayson’s attorneys argued in court documents filed Feb. 26.

2 months ago | illinoistimes.com | Dean Olsen

When Gregory L. Fraase described the conditions that women working in his Asian massage parlors endured when they were growing up overseas, his words highlighted the way he and others may have taken advantage of their desperation. "Most of these girls coming over, they don't even have a shower in their house," Fraase, 61, told a confidential witness in 2023 in the federal criminal case that would be filed against him in February 2024. "They wash in a 55-gallon barrel with rainwater.

2 months ago | illinoistimes.com | Dean Olsen

Springfield City Council members on Feb. 18 approved $1.5 million in city funding for a 50-home addition to the Nehemiah Expansion affordable-housing project on the east side. The two 10-0 votes – to spend $1 million in federal HOME grant funds and $500,000 in property tax revenues from the Far East Tax-Increment Financing District – pave the way for the church-based nonprofit overseeing Nehemiah to request bids from contractors for the project’s proposed fifth phase.

2 months ago | illinoistimes.com | Dean Olsen

A proposal to construct 50 more single-family homes for low-income renters may hinge on whether Springfield City Council members grant an exception to a 2023 ordinance that guarantees union involvement in the hiring and pay of workers on large projects. The proposed fifth phase of home development in the Nehemiah Expansion project would provide desperately needed, decent and affordable housing on the city's east side, according to the Rev.