The director of the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board was fired earlier this year after an internal investigation implicated a conflict of interest when the director gave a law enforcement certificate to a philanthropist, according to a report released Wednesday.
Brent Fischer, executive director of the standards board, gave the certificate to Howard Buffett, who had served as the interim sheriff of Macon County for 14 months. The only qualifications for sheriff at the time were that the person had no criminal record, lived in the county for over a year, and was a U.S. citizen. The son of billionaire Warren Buffett had also donated $15 million for a law enforcement training academy.
The inspector general’s report, obtained by the Associated Press, revealed that Fischer gave the certificate to Buffett three hours after receiving a $10,000 donation from him for a canine training program. The certificate, issued in 2019, allowed Buffett to be a part-time law enforcement officer and included a waiver that allowed him to serve as a part-time undersheriff.
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“Certification of law enforcement officer status, especially considering the significant public interest in maintaining integrity in that process, should not be minimized nor should it be provided based on someone’s ability to financially contribute … to the law enforcement community,” the report said.
Buffett has served in both volunteer and auxiliary sheriff’s office positions in Arizona and Illinois. He has also completed most of the training courses needed for the certificate, though he is short of the 560 hours needed for completion.
Fischer, who served as the Adams County sheriff for 17 years, countered the report in a written response that stated the report failed to provide “any established rule, regulation, statute, or even norm I somehow violated. My performance should be measured against known, objective and accepted standards.”
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Buffett did not run in the election for sheriff in 2018 and does not plan to run in 2022, likely because a new law added the prerequisite that a candidate has to have completed the basic training course.
