Scores of Chicago Police Officers Continue to Receive Salaries Years After Being Barred From Duty Due to Misconduct

By Dan Hinkel and Jeremy Gorner, Chicago Tribune

15 October 16

 

decade after one of the most damaging scandals in Chicago police history broke, two of the officers accused of wrongdoing remain on desk duty at full pay, filing papers or answering phones as they await the outcome of the city's slow-moving and much-criticized disciplinary process.

The two are just a fraction of about 85 officers who remain on the force but are barred from working on the street because of ongoing disciplinary cases that can take years to close.

As Chicago police fight surging violence and Mayor Rahm Emanuel acknowledges the need for more police on the street, these sidelined officers are taking a toll on finances and available manpower.

The group of about 85 officers — the size of some Police Academy graduating classes — is on track to cost the city at least $5 million in pay this year, according to a Tribune analysis of department records obtained through an open records request.

The Tribune found the officers have been stripped of their police powers an average of almost two years each.

The two officers stripped of their police powers for a full decade worked in the scandal-plagued Special Operations Section. A third SOS officer had been on prolonged desk duty until July when the department moved to fire him and suspended him without pay.

City records show the three officers alone have been paid about $2.2 million combined over the past decade while they were barred from working the street.

A fourth officer caught up in the scandal had been on paid desk duty until earlier this year when he resigned.

The long stays on desk duty are largely the result of a dysfunctional and inefficient disciplinary system that has been a focus of public outrage since the release in November of video of the Laquan McDonald shooting.

No one benefits from an officer being shelved for years, criminal justice experts say.

"The officers who are innocent of these charges are hurt by being deprived without due process of their right to do their job," said Ronald Safer, a former federal prosecutor who led a 2014 study of the city's flawed police disciplinary system. "The public is hurt by having to pay officers ... who should be terminated."

'No limits on how slow'

The scandal that engulfed the Special Operations Section 10 years ago involved disturbing allegations that suspected drug dealers and law-abiding citizens had been robbed of hundreds of thousands of dollars after illegal stops and searches.

The blowback was severe — numerous officers were criminally charged, stripped of their police powers and placed on desk duty or suspended without pay; the SOS unit was disbanded and the scandal helped force the police superintendent's resignation.

Until earlier this year, four of the officers — Carl Suchocki, Thomas Sherry, Bret Rice and Sgt. James Eldridge — remained relieved of their powers and off the street as they waited first for lengthy criminal investigations to be completed and then for several years more as their disciplinary cases wound through the system.

Suchocki and Sherry are still on paid desk duty pending the results of internal investigations, city records show; in July the department moved to fire Rice, who awaits Chicago Police Board proceedings. Eldridge resigned in February after the department sought his firing.

Suchocki makes $87,384 and Sherry $84,450 a year, records show. Though he is now suspended without pay, Rice had made $98,016 a year.

Eldridge declined to comment, and the three other officers could not be reached.

Rice's attorney, Thomas Needham, also declined to comment on the case but said the police disciplinary system "makes no sense and works for nobody."

"The Police Department and the city recognize no limits on how slow they can move in a police disciplinary case," he said.

Of about 85 officers stripped of their police powers, all but about a dozen are on paid desk duty, requiring them to report to work and typically perform clerical tasks, department spokesman Frank Giancamilli said. They face discipline for alleged offenses ranging from drinking on duty to using excessive force.

The other dozen are suspended without pay. By long-standing practice, the department suspends police without pay only in rare circumstances, usually cases in which officers are criminally charged or facing termination, Giancamilli said. Officer Jason Van Dyke, who is charged with McDonald's killing, is among those suspended without pay.

Noting that the inactive officers make up less than 1 percent of the force, Giancamilli said their absence from the street "does not present an operational challenge."

But the officers illustrate the city's long-standing failure to promptly discipline police, a subject of intense public anger since November when the city released video of Van Dyke shooting 17-year-old McDonald 16 times.

The U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether Chicago police have systemically violated citizens' rights, and Emanuel has pushed changes aimed at getting in front of reforms that federal authorities are likely to seek. The mayor faces a political balancing act — he's seeking to reform policing even as gun violence has spiked on the South and West sides, a problem some attribute to officers avoiding confrontations that could land them in trouble.

Much of City Hall's focus has been on the Independent Police Review Authority, which recommends discipline in many of the most serious cases. A recent Tribune investigation showed the agency has often been sluggish and prone to clearing officers, even when evidence suggests misconduct.

Earlier this month, the City Council voted to replace IPRA with the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, giving it broader authority to investigate allegations of wrongdoing. While city officials plan to fund COPA more fully than IPRA, it is unclear who will staff the new agency or whether investigations will be completed faster.

While IPRA is responsible for some lengthy investigations, other components of the disciplinary system also bear responsibility for cases dragging on for years, and City Hall has not announced plans for major overhauls of those bodies.

Of about 85 officers relieved of police powers, about 30 are waiting on an IPRA investigation, city records show, and all but one of those cases have been open less than three years. Meanwhile, about 40 officers — including two of the SOS officers — are waiting on an investigation by the Police Department's Bureau of Internal Affairs, and several of those cases have been underway for three or four years.

In another dozen cases, either the city's Law Department is reviewing the matter — potentially a precursor to the Police Department seeking discipline — or the officer is awaiting a ruling by the Police Board.

Indefinite desk duty

While a few SOS officers have waited a decade for their fate to be decided, another longtime officer finds himself in a unique position as a result of the city's halting, contradictory approach to discipline. John Haleas is indefinitely on desk duty, with no disciplinary case pending and no prospect of getting back on the street.

Haleas was once the state's most prolific drunken driving enforcer, but he was stripped of his powers in 2008 after Cook County prosecutors filed felony charges, alleging he had skipped key steps while making a DUI arrest and lied about it in reports, records show. Prosecutors responded by dropping more than 150 DUI cases involving Haleas. He would have lost his job automatically if convicted of a felony, but court records show that Haleas reached a plea agreement with prosecutors. As a result, the felony charges were dropped in 2012, and Haleas pleaded guilty to misdemeanor attempted obstruction of justice.

The Police Department then sought to fire him. But the Police Board ruled in 2014 that Haleas couldn't be punished twice for the same offense, citing a one-day suspension Haleas had already received in 2007, records show.

Superintendent Eddie Johnson has refused to restore him to full duty, so he remains indefinitely stripped of his powers and on desk duty, Giancamilli said. Haleas makes $87,384 yearly, payroll records show.

Haleas, 45, who declined to comment, stands to remain on desk duty potentially for years.

At this point, though, the officers from the SOS unit have been relieved of their powers the longest. Their cases illustrate factors that have often slowed police discipline — as well as the costs the city incurs as the system grinds on for years.

Giancamilli said the Police Department halted any internal investigation into the SOS officers for years while criminal cases were pending, a long-held practice of the city. Recently, however, city officials have tacitly acknowledged it's not always necessary to hold off, instead moving ahead with disciplinary investigations while criminal cases were still ongoing.

The SOS scandal erupted in 2006 after Cook County prosecutors charged four officers — including Suchocki and Sherry — with armed violence and aggravated kidnapping, among other charges, alleging that the officers had robbed drug dealers and law-abiding citizens of cash and property. Other officers, including Rice, were stripped of their powers but not charged, records show.

SOS had been a crucial element of the department's efforts to use saturation teams to tamp down violence in the city's toughest neighborhoods, and the unit was given greater latitude to hunt for guns and drugs. The saturation teams' work was credited by some with reducing street violence in the mid-2000s, but their aggressiveness and lack of supervision gave way to lawlessness in some cases, further hurting the department's credibility.

As the scandal deepened, the department disbanded the unit, some officers resigned and the police superintendent, Phil Cline, retired after several embarrassments for the department. Federal charges followed against some officers, and the alleged ringleader, Jerome Finnigan, is serving a 12-year federal prison sentence for crimes including ordering the killing of a fellow officer who he believed was cooperating with investigators. Finnigan, 53, is scheduled for release in 2018, according to prison records.

The charges against Suchocki and Sherry were dropped in 2009 after evidence emerged that victims had misidentified them.

In 2013, Giancamilli said, federal authorities turned over evidence from the SOS scandal to the Police Department after they finished prosecuting several officers, and the department launched its own internal investigation of the officers who remained with the city.

The city generally does not comment on pending internal investigations, and Giancamilli declined to give details of the city's continuing investigation into Suchocki and Sherry, though a roster of stripped officers listed "SOS" by their names.

The city, however, often disciplines officers in the absence of criminal charges, and Suchocki, Sherry and Rice were repeatedly named as defendants in lawsuits linked to the SOS scandal.

A search of federal court records turned up about 25 lawsuits against one or more of the officers, most filed as the scandal erupted. The city paid about $2.8 million in settlements, judgments and legal costs for cases filed against the officers between 2006 and 2008, city records show.

The years pass by

At this point, the Police Department has sought to discipline only Rice and Eldridge. In asking the Police Board to fire Rice, the department charged that he and Finnigan recovered a handgun at an Oak Lawn home in 2003 but later falsely claimed they had found the weapon at a South Side residence. Rice told Cook County prosecutors in 2006 that Finnigan had written the report, but Rice didn't notify superiors of the false report, according to the department's allegations.

In seeking Eldridge's firing in February, the department accused him of accepting a bribe from another officer to keep quiet about the other officer's theft. Eldridge, who was never criminally charged, quickly resigned.

The disciplinary investigations of SOS officers have taken so long that they have outlived people and places involved in the scandal.

During an infamous incident in 2004, officers from the SOS unit reported finding cocaine on a suspect outside the Southwest Side bar Caballo's. But cameras on the bar's ceiling and outside caught a dramatically different scene — more than two dozen SOS officers rushed in the bar without a warrant, searched everyone and arrested several people.

The bar owner and two of the arrested men sued police — including Rice and Suchocki — alleging officers stole cash and property.

More than seven years ago, the city settled the lawsuit for about $300,000.

In 2014, the bar's owner died, and Caballo's has since closed. The awning in front is covered with a for sale sign.