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A felony conviction and sentence that were later dismissed and alleged "drunken street hooker" behavior weren't enough to prevent the election of JoAnn Reed as the mayor of Alorton, a government oversight group argued recently.
The Edgar County Watchdogs (ECW), which has written about Reed several times, described her on its Illinois Leaks website as “the vile creature who was caught on camera screaming obscenities, the likes you might hear from a drunken street hooker, at a citizen in the parking lot of Commonfields of Cahokia Water District.”
In 2014, Reed was convicted of bringing contraband into a penal institution. While serving her first stint as Alorton’s mayor, she brought a cell phone to a facility where her niece was being held. After the conviction and after Reed had completed her sentence, a St. Clair County judge granted a motion to dismiss, leading to the charge and conviction to be removed from the court docket, the ECW said.
More recently, Reed was caught up in a series of federal grand jury indictments on election violations and is facing charges of buying votes and disregarding election code — but she was still elected.
“There is something terribly wrong when this can happen in Illinois,” the ECW said.
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