More Details On Elmhurst Campaign Sign Theft: Cops

ELMHURST, IL – Every campaign season, political signs are reported missing. And each side blames the other.

In 2020, Hinsdale saw a rash of sign thefts. In online comment boards, partisans pointed to their opponents as the culprits.

However, Patch found that Republicans and Democrats were victims in roughly equal numbers in Hinsdale.

Last month, Elmhurst resident, Martin Manion, 64, was cited on a theft charge under a city ordinance. He was accused of stealing a campaign sign.

He is the former deputy administrator of the DuPage County Jail. He is also the director of the MCM Substance Abuse Center in Elmhurst.

Through a public records request, Patch obtained the police report on Manion. The report largely reflects what Manion told Patch in an interview.

Shortly before 8 p.m. March 20, a woman and her daughter reported seeing a man, later identified as Manion, with two campaign signs under his arm near Butterfield Road and Eldridge Lane. The signs were for Pete DiCianni, an Elmhurst Republican running for County Board chairman, the witnesses told police.

Manion drove away and pulled into the parking lot for the office building at 340 Butterfield Road. Manion told Patch he was going to his nearby office.

The witnesses told police that several signs had gone missing from Spring Road in recent days. One of the witnesses requested the suspect be arrested.

The witnesses got Manion's license plate number, so police visited him at his house on Bryan Street.

Officers said they saw a couple of signs in the back of Manion's car for Hinsdale resident Greg Hart, who is running against DiCianni in the June 28 Republican primary.

But the officers said they saw no DiCianni signs. Manion also had a Hart sign in his front yard.

Manion said he was a Hart supporter. But he said he did not like any campaign signs in the city's right-of-way along Butterfield Road. He noted such placement of signs violated a city ordinance.

Police said Manion referred to Hart's signs as "my" signs. He said he did not believe it was a crime to remove signs from public property, the report said.

According to the report, Manion denied taking a DiCianni sign. When an officer asked to look in Manion's trash cans, he at first said the officer would need to get a warrant, but then consented to a search, the report said. No signs were found in the cans.

Shortly after, the witnesses told police that they found a DiCianni sign in the dumpster near the office building, the report said.

Manion acknowledged he removed signs for both Hart and DiCianni because they were in violation.

As he told Patch, he said to officers that DiCianni was a friend of his and it "has nothing to do with that," the report said.

Police issued the theft citation. Manion was given a date to appear in court.

In an interview last month, Manion said he took responsibility for his action.

"I threw away Pete's sign. That was probably wrong," he said.

He said he knew removing a sign from a person's property was against the law. But he said he did not know that doing so on a city easement, where signs are banned, was considered a crime.

He said the sign removal was not giving one candidate a leg up.

"If I took just one down, that would have been political," Manion said.