Though he was identified by the Chicago Crime Commission as a leader of a powerful gang in its most recent "Gang Book," a clerk at the Cook County Circuit Court in Maywood, Ill. on Thursday denied affiliation with any gang.
Maurice Henderson has, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, worked for the Maywood courthouse for eight years, transporting often sensitive documents from courtrooms. The book claims that Henderson is a leader in the Imperial Insane Vice Lords street gang, and though he denied that, he has already begun looking for other employment.
"There have never been any problems because I am respectful with everyone and people respect me -- I'm not affiliated with any gang and I don’t favor any one gang over any other," Henderson told the Sun-Times, calling the accusations "some bull****."
West suburban Maywood is no stranger to controversy among its government employees. Last month, the Better Government Association and Fox Chicago partnered to expose village officials who charged thousands of dollars on village-issued credit cards.
The BGA reports that the village's former village manager Jason Ervin -- now a Chicago alderman -- and other village officials spent more than $150,000 in taxpayer money between 2009 and 2010 on trips, sports tickets and stays at luxury resorts. Maywood mayor Henderson Yarbrough, whose wife is state Rep. Karen Yarbrough, told the BGA that he knew nothing of the credit cards.
In November, Robert Welch, a Maywood police officer, was charged with accepting $240 from an undercover FBI agent who had posed as a drug suspect, the Chicago Tribune reported. Welch allegedly took money from suspects on numerous occasions while he worked on a drug-trafficking task force.
And earlier in the fall, the village's police force came under fire because they failed to look into a violent robbery for over a month even as police were being tasked with providing rides for elected officials to the airport, as well as providing bodyguard details to the mayor.
Meanwhile, Henderson's boss Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown is reportedly "in the process of determining the courses of action that may be taken" in response to the allegations -- though any action will have to be in line with the collective-bargaining agreement" because he is a union employee, the Sun-Times reports.