The Journal Star reports that newly-appointed circuit court judge, Kevin Lyons, has been appointed to a position in the Tazewell County Court House. So, it’s official. He’s Pekin’s problem now.

The Peoria Journal Star announced he will be handling one of Pekin’s civil courtrooms. The move is effective Aug. 1st. Lyons has said he will run for election in November 2012.

And Peoria attorney Gerald Brady of the law firm Brady  & Donahue was named as his replacement.

I have absolutely no problem with Brady as his replacement. Not so much with Lyons. The man was a menace and one of the reasons Peoria has the crime problem that is does.

Peoria Police have complained bitterly to me for years. They would make an arrest in an older neighborhood, and literally before the cops could finish the paper work, the state’s attorney’s office would have approved their release from custody. Time and time again this would happen.

So here’s the thing. Lyons isn’t going to have to figure out how to convict people now. He won’t be in a position of being faced with a difficult case that he might lose if he actually takes it to court. So he won’t be unloading his unrelenting bile on the police officers who worked their butts off bringing the case to them. He won’t be dropping the case because witnesses refused to testify, as he did with DeVar Lewis, who fired off a gun outside a crowded club. That was something he refused to do when the people being charged were cops; in those cases he threatened officers into testifying.

There was the case of Monterius Hinkle, who Kevin Lyons graciously released from custody. THEN he assaulted a girl. THEN Lyons made a case out of the arrest.

And yes, Lyons was famous for making long-winded macho statements about big cases that got a lot of press. Not so much drama when the cases were not so big.

There’s that guy on the East Bluff who was busted for a slew of drug and weapons charges. Then Lyons released him, citing that the feds were going to come along and arrest him later anyhow. Never mind the neighbors that were being threatened by him.

I could go on and on, but he’s, frankly, not worth the effort.

And I’m noting, for the record, that serious consideration was NOT given to anyone now working in the state’s attorneys office.

My sympathies to Tazewell County.

Ninety hours of work, and eight citations to show for it?

The City of Peoria sent officers to a bunch of bars to try to catch them violating the prohibition against smoking.

They found violations at three of the bars. At two of the bars, they found two people smoking, at the third, they found just one. A total of eight tickets were issued.

The cited bars were:

1.Cheers and Beers (4201 SW Adams), 2 citations for smokers, 1 citation to the bar for allowing smoking.

2.Duffys  Tap  (1900  W.  Antoinette),  1  citation  for  a  smoker,  1  citation  to  the  bar  for  allowing smoking.

3.Behmer’s Dugout (2422 N. Knoxville), 2 citations for smokers, 1 citation to the bar for allowing smoking.

I think that ratio of man hours per violation is extremely high. Think about it: More than two weeks of labor went into finding THREE bars NOT in compliance. They checked a total of 123 bars.