Oak Brook's Connie Xinos: A profile of the Illinois lawyer who takes on firefighters & 11-year-old girls.

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Burt Constable, a columnist with the Daily Herald, knows something about Connie Xinos. Xinos, of course, is the man who wants to fire one Oak Brook, Illinois firefighter a month until the Village officials get the concessions they want. Constable has followed the antics of this outspoken critic of those in public safety and those in elementary school.

The writer has now penned (or should it be keyboarded) his latest column about Xinos. It has the title Mr. X earns rep by ripping poor, library and firefighters. It starts with a description of the Grinch (“it could be that his head wasn’t screwed on just right”) from Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Here are excerpts:

Constantine “Connie” Xinos says things that could lead some people to see him as the meanest man in all of Oak Brook. But Xinos seems as comfortable wearing that reputation as he is tooling around his gated community in his Mercedes-Benz.

Xinos, a 70-year-old attorney who hasn’t won a villagewide election but has been president of his home association since 1983, attacked the girl with such meanness that it made her little friend cry. He knew he was ticking off professional librarians and people who like libraries and 11-year-old girls, and he liked it.

“I wanted that kid to lose sleep that night,” Xinos, with a smile most unpleasant, told me during a two-hour, profanity-filled interview last year in his car.

This was not his first dip into the pool of publicly spewed vile. Once, when Oak Brook considered a subsidized housing unit for seniors, Xinos successfully campaigned against it by proclaiming, “I don’t want to live next to poor people. I don’t want poor people in my town.”

Now, as Oak Brook, which levies no property taxes to pay for village services, looks at ways to cuts costs in these harsh times, Xinos goes after village firefighters.

“Firemen, like cops, are street people. They only understand civilized force. That’s what they understand. Fire ’em!” Xinos said at a recent meeting, suggesting the village fire one firefighter every month until the firefighters retreated on salary and benefits.

But he didn’t just want to put a village employee out of work. He fantasized about ruining the lives of firefighters, their wives, kids and pets.

“She’ll leave him. He’ll be out of the house,” Xinos said, envisioning the demise of the family. “The dog will be dead and the kids will be out on the streets.”