Corruption, Fraud and Judicial Misconduct

Defense lawyers complain of judge's rulings, remarks

2010-06-23T13:48:00.000-05:00

Hired Truck figure lands $39 million city contract

2010-03-03T10:05:00.000-06:00

March 3, 2010
BY FRAN SPIELMAN AND TIM NOVAK Staff Reporters

Former Hired Truck kingpin Michael Tadin has snared a three-year, $39.4 million contract to operate and maintain one of three waste transfer stations that Mayor Daley once attempted to lease.
Tadin-owned M.A.T. Leasing was chosen to operate the largest of the three facilities at 750 N. Kilbourn -- where city crews once sorted through garbage for recyclables in blue bags -- after assembling a sub-contracting team that includes two firms that cashed in on the scandal-plagued Hired Truck program.
South Chicago Trucking Corp., a women's business enterprise, and B.B.D. Trucking, a minority-owned company, will each receive a $2 million share of the Tadin contract.
With 43 trucks paid by three city departments, B.B.D. was the largest black-owned company to ride the Hired Truck gravy train. One of its drivers pleaded guilty in 2005 to stealing city asphalt and delivering it to a private job site while driving a B.B.D.-owned Hired Truck.
"I wasn't aware of that. I don't know what that driver did. But, the owner of the company I've known for 25 years," Tadin said Tuesday, noting that he under-bid his closest competitor by $2 million.
The new contract appears to fly in the face of Tadin's 2004 pledge to wash his hands of city business.
But, he said, "We never precluded ourselves from public work. We were talking about Hired Truck."
The contract to operate the transfer station at 3757 W. 34th Street was awarded to Heartland Recycling on the strength of owner Thomas Volini's $15.6 million bid, records show.
The third center, at 1633 W. Medill, will apparently remain in the hands of Allied Waste Transportation.
Tadin is the perennial city trucking magnate whose $1.25 million loan to a security company co-owned by Ald. Patrick Huels (11th) forced the 1997 resignation of Daley's former City Council floor leader. Tadin's trucking company had received a $1.1 million city subsidy with Huels' help.
Tadin was the undisputed king of Hired Trucks, emerging from the pack, even after City Hall accused the company of over-billing and agreed to spread the wealth to other firms. No over-billing was ever documented.
The program was disbanded in 2005 after the Chicago Sun-Times disclosed how politically-connected companies were paid to do little or no work.
MAT Leasing was awarded the three-year contract because it was the low bidder for the work covering that part of the city, said Shannon Andrews of the Department of Procurement Services.

Cook County court clerk gets three years for bribery

2010-02-23T15:17:00.001-06:00

Admits to taking payoffs for a false promise to win man's release from jail

February 23, 2010
By RUMMANA HUSSAIN Criminal Courts Reporter
A Cook County Circuit Court clerk was sentenced today to three years in prison after pleading guilty to bribery, admitting he took money from a Texas woman and falsely promised her he would pay off a judge in exchange to win her jailed husband’s release.
Angelo Colon, 48, first met Eduardo Suke’s wife in September 2008, when she was trying to bail out her spouse on drug-trafficking charges, according to prosecutors. Colon, of the 3000 block of North Kolmar, allegedly presented a phony business card and took $3,000 from the woman at that meeting at a fast-food restaurant near the 26th and California courthouse.
Colon met the woman another time with a private investigator and continued to promise he’d help if she kept making payments, prosecutors said. At that meeting, the victim was asked to surrender Suke’s two identification cards as a member of the Kickapoo Nation.
Colon had the woman wire the remaining $10,000 to him in five separate transactions between Nov. 4, 2008, and Jan. 13, 2009, prosecutors said.
Colon’s arrest is part of an investigation into financial corruption, according to state’s attorney office spokeswoman Sally Daly, who said there was no evidence Colon ever contacted a judge to seek the jailed man's release.
Colon had been employed at the clerk’s office since 1999.

Kevin Trudeau held in criminal contempt, facing jail time

2010-02-15T12:10:00.001-06:00

Federal judge in Chicago acts after being flooded with emails prompted by the author-infomercial king

February 11, 2010

By NATASHA KORECKI Federal Courts Reporter

Kevin Trudeau, the slick, silver-tongued infomercial king and best-selling author amassed a fortune over years of persistent, late-night hawking.

This week, he made the wrong sales pitch.

Trudeau was found in criminal contempt of court Thursday and nearly had handcuffs slapped on him after he asked his supporters to email the federal judge overseeing a pending civil case brought against him by the Federal Trade Commission.

U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman said he was flooded with hundreds of “harassing, threatening and interfering” emails, locking up the judge’s email system and shutting down his Blackberry for part of the day.

“This is direct contempt — that’s how I view it,” Gettleman said. “He interfered with the direct process of the court.”

Gettleman hauled Trudeau into court a day after he posted a message on his Web site with his appeal. Gettleman ordered Trudeau to turn over his passport, pay $50,000 bond and warned he could face future prison time.

Gettleman, on his own authority, can sentence Trudeau to up to six months in prison. In addition, the judge referred the matter and the emails to the U.S. Marshals Service, which investigates threats to judiciary.

“This is the first time we are addressing an email blast or something that’s disrupted the court’s email system,” said Acting U.S. Marshal John O’Malley.

Trudeau, who also hosts his own radio show and has served prison time for credit card fraud, appeared in court tanned and tieless, wearing a black mock turtleneck and navy blue suit coat.

Trudeau, who has a residence in Hinsdale, refused to talk after court, even remaining silent when twice asked his age. He’s 47.

After being called on the carpet by the judge, he sent a follow-up email to his supporters telling them:

“That was a mistake. It was wrong to make that request,” Trudeau said. “Please do not under any circumstances communicate with the court or Judge Gettleman.”

“I don’t have confidence in your client,” Gettleman told Trudeau’s lawyer. “I do insist that, if he is to avoid custody today, he post bond.”

The Federal Trade Commission has labeled Trudeau a fraud and got a court order in 2004 to curtail his business.

Trudeau has sold millions of books, in part with the pitch that the government is trying to keep him from telling dieters the truth with his “The Weight-Loss Cure They Don’t Want You to Know About,” which has become a best-seller.

Gettleman previously has banned Trudeau from making infomercials for three years, fined him more than $5 million, then raised that fine to more than $37 million — the amount the FTC figured Trudeau made on the book via his infomercials. An appeals court said the ruling was too broad and sent it back to the judge. Gettleman was still weighing the matter when he was deluged with emails Wednesday.

Trudeau has pitched miracle health cures, also saying the government wants to keep the public from knowing about natural remedies.

In a recent on-air radio broadcast, Trudeau talks about wanting to land a TV show. If Fox gave him the chance, he said he’d be: “Bigger than O’Reilly. Bigger than Glenn Beck.”

Stephen Barrett, the creator of Quackwatch.org, has for years labeled Trudeau a fraud.

CASE AGAINST HIM

What led the late-night miracle-cure hawker to criminal contempt charges in Chicago:

* Kevin Trudeau's Shop America USA as well as Natural Cures Inc. are in Elk Grove Village.

* Trudeau has a home in Hinsdale.

* In 2008, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman banned Trudeau from infomercials for three years and ordered him to pay more than $5 million in profits from his book, The Weight Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You to Know About. It was the second contempt finding in four years. An appellate court said the ruling was too broad and sent it back to Gettleman, who was poised to revise his ruling in March.

* Gettleman has previously stated that "the infomercial[s] falsely and intentionally led thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of consumers to believe that the Weight Loss Book would describe an 'easy,' 'simple' protocol that, once 'finished' would allow the consumer to 'eat anything' he or she wants."

* Gettleman hit Trudeau with criminal contempt and threatened him with prison time after Trudeau urged supporters to flood Gettleman's e-mail in-box

“He struck me as somebody who (believes he) is omnipotent. That is, no one can touch him,” Barrett said. “That’s almost been the case.”

2009-06-30T09:55:00.000-05:00

Ban on phones stirs up courts
* Those with cell phones in criminal courtroom face jail time or fine.
Comments

June 29, 2009

By Ruth Ann Krause, Post-Tribune correspondent
A recent ban on cell phones in the criminal courts at the Lake County Government Center delayed testimony in an attempted murder trial after one of the jurors refused to give up the device and was arrested.

Lake Superior Court Judges Salvador Vasquez, Clarence Murray, Diane Ross Boswell and Thomas Stefaniak Jr., who preside over criminal division cases, signed an order two weeks ago banning cell phones, but visitors continue to bring their phones to the building.

Lake County Commissioners are also looking into the issue.

County Attorney John Dull said at the commissioners' request he sent Boswell, senior judge of the criminal division, a letter seeking clarification.

The order signed by the judges prohibits members of the general public from bringing cell phones into the courts building, but Dull pointed out the administration building and courts building are connected by a hallway. Someone could enter the administration building with a cell phone and walk into the courts building. In addition, there are civil courtrooms and other offices in the courts building.

Visitors in possession of a cell phone in a criminal courtroom could be held in contempt and be jailed or fined, according to the judges' order.

Last Monday, court security officers arrested a juror selected for an attempted murder case in Boswell's courtroom. The juror became upset after being told he couldn't bring his phone into court and was arrested for disorderly conduct.

Afterward, Boswell spent about an hour questioning the remaining 12 jurors and one alternate about whether the ruckus over the cell phone ban in court would affect their deliberations in the attempted murder case of Marlon Stringfellow.

During questioning by Boswell, several jurors said they were allowed to bring their cell phones, which typically are placed with other metal objects in a plastic bin and examined by court security officers while the visitor walks through a metal detector.

Since the courtroom ban went into effect, security officers ask visitors where they're going in the building. Those who say they're going to court are instructed to return their phones to the car.

2009-06-18T12:01:00.000-05:00

Daley to put taxpayers on hook for Olympic financial losses
June 17, 2009
BY LISA DONOVAN AND FRAN SPIELMAN Staff Reporters
Mayor Daley finally sounds ready to give the International Olympic Committee the financial guarantee it is seeking.

The mayor told reporters in Switzerland that he’ll sign a host city contract with the committee putting taxpayers on the hook for any financial losses if the city wins the summer 2016 games — even as some aldermen grumbled Daley is exceeding his authority.

Daley and an entourage of Chicago Olympics boosters are in the lakeside city of Lausanne, making their pitch for the games on the committee’s home turf.

Back in Chicago, mayoral press secretary Jacquelyn Heard stressed that Chicago 2016 has come up with a series of guarantees and private funding formulas for the proposed $4.8 billion game plan, so taxpayers won’t be footing the bill.

“Obviously the mayor understands that neither he nor Chicago 2016 can go to taxpayers and essentially expect them to guarantee or be responsible for long- or short-term Olympic financing,” Heard said today. "When he said he was prepared to sign the host city contract, it was with knowledge that Chicago will only sign it under the new approach that does not require us to go to the taxpayers beyond what we already promised."

She's referring to today's announcement that an added $500 million in insurance will be part of a $2.5 billion safety net for the Chicago games.

The net already includes: a $450 million “rainy day fund;” as much as $375 million in IOC cancellation insurance; an additional $500 million in insurance coverage, a state guarantee of $250 million and a “last-resort” $500 million guarantee of taxpayer money from the city of Chicago.

Daley initially vowed that not a dime of taxpayer dollars would be spent on the 2016 games, but after the last election — and a prod by the United States Olympic Committee to “put some skin in the game” — the City Council approved the financing.

Daley insisted at the time: “If everything fails — an earthquake, tornado, everything comes down — this is your insurance policy.”

Lori Healey, President of Chicago 2016 issued a written statement from Switzerland saying the new insurance “will further reduce risk to the City of Chicago and its taxpayers.”

“This new development will ensure that at the required time — two days prior to the October 2nd decision — the Mayor of Chicago will be able to sign the host city agreement,” she saidt. “The cost of this solution will be funded entirely by Chicago 2016."

Chicago 2016 officials say they're heartened by IOC president Jacques Rogues repeat of an earlier assurance that Chicago's financial guarantees are strong.

Mike Moran, a sports consultant formerly with the United States Olympic Committee , says the mayor signing this document doesn’t necessarily mean Chicago can’t work out something with the IOC to make sure city isn’t on the line for losses.

That’s what happened when Moran worked on the successful bid for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

“We had $25 million in guarantees (in largely privately dollars) against a shortfall and Mayor Tom Bradley signed it,” Moran said of the traditional host city contract calling for L.A., in this case, to cover any losses. “But there was a quiet nod by the IOC, that if there was an overrun the city wouldn’t be liable for it.”

The money issue arose as Chicago, along with competing cities Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, made brief, closed-door presentations today before 93 IOC members — about 10 shy of the full Olympic committee that will decide in October which city will host the 2016 games.

Chicago was first at bat today, using the start of the 45-minute presentation to talk about how its $4.8 billion game plan would be financed. Chicago is the only finalist city in the pack not to have 100 percent government guarantees, standard for American cities because the federal government traditionally doesn’t pony up for guarantee money for the Olympic games.

Pat Ryan, head of the Chicago 2016 effort, said in a news conference in Switzerland today that he believes the Chicago’s plan to layer guarantees with private and corporate donations is the best financial approach in these recessionary times.

“We believe that it’s responsible [in] changing times. And it’s very important because it spreads the risk among public and private sources. We also believe this combination of public and private guarantees [that] could be as much as $2 billion is not only better for host city taxpayers, but we believe also offers stronger protection for the Games than government can do alone.”

With another layer of insurance protection, Daley intends to sign the host-city contract — without returning to the City Council for authorization, Heard said.

“We are not exceeding the authority granted by the City Council. We remain within the financial boundaries they set” when they approved the $500 million Olympic guarantee, she said.

Several aldermen strongly disagreed. They argued that Daley has “no authority” to sign the host-city contract without Council approval.

“This is a big deal. He’s planning to sign an agreement that puts the city on the hook for an unlimited amount of money,” said Ald. Joe Moore (49th).

“Let them come before the City Council and explain to us why this is a safe bet for taxpayers. They can tell us they have insurance. They can make all the arguments they want to make. But, as elected representatives closest to the votes, we need to have a say in this. This is something that recent events have made all too clear. We need to exercise our authority as a check and balance on the mayor’s office.”

After the fiasco caused by Daley’s $1.15 billion decision to lease Chicago’s 36,000 parking meters, aldermen can’t afford to sit back, according to Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd).

“They made guarantees, and none of those guarantees have come true on the parking meter deal. I don’t think the Council will buy his guarantee of, ‘Don’t worry. There’s multiple layers of guarantees here,’” Waguespack said.

“The Council needs to be part of this process. The mayor’s office and 2016 needs to show us what those guarantees are and what taxpayers are on the hook for ... .I have no information right now that proves to me these backstops are genuine.”

2009-06-18T12:00:00.002-05:00

Aldermen want answers regarding Vanecko deal
June 17, 2009

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter/fspielman@suntimes.com
Chicago aldermen on Tuesday demanded to know why the city has paid nearly $500,000 to lease space at a South Side industrial site co-owned by Mayor Daley's nephew without City Council approval required for city leases.

As chairman of the City Council's Committee on Housing and Real Estate, Ald. Ray Suarez (31st) should have signed off on the lease at 3348 S. Pulaski.

But, the Daley administration's decision to make it a month-to-month lease -- and continue that temporary arrangement since November, 2007 -- denied Suarez' committee and the full City Council the right to approve the deal.

"Things have to be done the right way. Right is right. Wrong is wrong. You can't skirt" the rules, Suarez said.

"Why didn't we get a long-term contract? I want to know what their justification is for giving them a month-to-month lease. You could do month-to-month for a while," but not for 15 months.

Unless the city can prove it needed flexibility to get out of the lease quickly, it appears that the month-to-month lease was designed to get around the City Council, said Ald. Joe Moore (49th).

"It would seem to me that someone was trying to hide something," Moore said.

He added, "One of the reasons we have these meetings is so the public and ... media can know who's getting these leases. It begs the question why, in this particular case, it was done in what appears to be a secretive fashion. We are owed an explanation."

Anthony Pascente a spokesman for the city's Department of General Services, did not return repeated phone calls on the lease.

Despite weeks of questions from the Chicago Sun-Times, City Hall yet to produce a lease document or invoices to justify the monthly payments, at a rate of $3.83-per-square foot for 70,565 square feet of space, 20 percent of the warehouse.

Nor have city officials provided an explanation for the month-to-month arrangement with mayoral nephew Robert Vanecko and his partners, developer Allison Davis and Davis' son Jared.

The Sun-Times reported earlier this month that Vanecko and Davis used $4.2 million of the $68 million they manage for five city employee pension funds to help buy the mostly vacant warehouse and surrounding land.

On Sunday, the newspaper disclosed that the lease was linked to the demise of Chicago's scandal-plagued Hired Truck program.

The Department of Water Management says it needed a place to park dozens of dump trucks leased by the city to replace Hired Trucks.

In October, 2006, they found the ideal spot in the massive industrial property on Pulaski Road, just north of the Stevenson Expy.

After parking the trucks outside for a year, they decided to move them inside the warehouse on the 15-acre site.

As they negotiated a lease for that building, it changed hands, officials said. And City Hall insisted it had no idea that the new owners of the building included an investment company co-owned by the mayor's nephew.

Last week, Vanecko abruptly announced that he would "end his involvement with DV Urban Realty Partners, both as a general partner and as an investor," effective July 1. He cited a desire to minimize "unwarranted distractions.

He bowed out two weeks after a federal grand jury issued subpoenas seeking details of why the pension funds invested with Vanecko's start-up firm three years ago.

2009-06-18T12:00:00.001-05:00

Democratic ward boss Cullerton's husband charged after cocaine allegedly falls out of his pocket
June 17, 2009

BY RUMMANA HUSSAIN Criminal Courts Reporter
The husband of a Democratic ward boss was hit with drug charges after a small packet of cocaine fell out of his pocket at the downtown County Building and a coworker spotted it, authorities said.

Cameras captured the cocaine falling from Kevin O'Brien's back pocket Tuesday. He admitted it was his, sheriff's spokesman Steve Patterson said.

O'Brien has worked for the county assessor's office for over 20 years, office spokesman Eric Herman said. He has been placed on administrative leave.

O'Brien is married to P.J. Cullerton, Democratic committeeman of the Northwest Side's 38th Ward, a source said.

P.J. Cullerton is the scion of a political dynasty with power stretching back just before the Chicago Fire of 1871. Family members sat on the City Council for 107 years in what became known as "The Cullerton seat."

Cullerton's father, Thomas, who died in 1993, was the last. Other family members include P. J. "Parky" Cullerton, who was elected county assessor in 1958, and state Sen. John Cullerton, who was named Senate president last year.

2009-06-15T08:46:00.000-05:00

Busboy-turned-county worker collected salary while he was jailed

June 15, 2009

BY MARK J. KONKOL Staff Reporter
If a guy's got clout in Cook County, getting tossed in the hoosegow could be like a paid vacation.

Tony Cole, the busboy- turned-patronage worker at the center of a county hiring scandal, apparently had that kind of clout in the finance department, according to payroll records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

County president Todd Stroger's cousin, former chief financial officer Donna Dunnings, gave her former secretary paid time off that he did not earn for workdays he was locked in county jail. Dunnings also signed time cards that claimed Cole worked weekends that he did not show up at the office, county records show.

Cole got his county job after a night pouring Stroger icewater at a River North steakhouse. Stroger later fired Cole for lying about his criminal past on a job application.

Dunnings -- whom Stroger fired over her dealings with Cole without giving specifics -- signed off on three "excused" absences with pay for Cole during his stint in county jail between Nov. 19 and Nov. 21 for violating orders of protection against an ex-girlfriend, according to Cole's time records.

On Nov. 21, Dunnings used her personal credit cards to bail out Cole, who said he promised to pay her back as soon as he got paid.

Dunnings also signed off on time cards that report Cole worked 14 hours the weekend of Nov. 22.

But security records kept by the sheriff's department said Cole was in the county building at 118 N. Clark for only four hours and 20 minutes that weekend.

Dunnings bailed Cole out of jail a second time Jan. 23 -- the same day Cole got comp day off "per D. Dunnings," records show.

On Jan. 25, the Sunday after Cole was released from jail, Dunnings signed a time card that reported Cole worked four hours. But Cole did not sign in at the county building that day, sheriff's department records show.

Dunnings would not comment on the excused absences, but said Cole earned the comp days off by working extra hours.

When told county time sheets did not show evidence that Cole worked enough extra hours to warrant receiving that much comp time, Dunnings said a "time keeper" kept track of comp time hours and she just signed off on the time sheets.

A county source close to the situation said Cole was the office time keeper.

Stroger spokesman Eugene Mullins said he's not sure if Cole was assigned to keep his own time records, but the county does not condone giving employees excused absences with pay that are not due them.

"The county does not have a policy to pay money to employees for pay they have not earned," Mullins said.

The Sun-Times obtained Cole's time records through a Freedom of Information Act request. The Stroger administration, however, has refused to release other county records requested by the paper because an "investigating body" directed the county in writing not to release the information, Stroger's special counsel Laura Lechowicz Felicione said.

Sources have confirmed that the Cook County state's attorney's office financial crimes unit has launched a probe into the Dunnings- Cole controversy.

Cole, who remains in county jail and is due in domestic violence court today, said an assistant states attorney in the financial crimes division visited him in jail and he received a grand jury subpoena.

Cole also told the Sun-Times an FBI agent -- confirmed as an investigator from the Chicago field office -- has visited him in jail several times and as recently as last week to ask questions about Dunnings and Stroger and any information Cole might have about county corruption

2009-06-15T08:42:00.000-05:00

City's lease with Vanecko's company has Hired Truck link
INDOOR PARKING | City says it didn't know of Vanecko's interest in warehouse

June 13, 2009

BY TIM NOVAK, CHRIS FUSCO AND FRAN SPIELMAN Staff Reporters
Chicago water officials wanted a place to park dozens of dump trucks they'd been leasing since the collapse of the city's scandalous Hired Truck Program.

They found the spot in October 2006 -- a massive industrial property on Pulaski Road, just north of the Stevenson Expy.

For a year, they parked dump trucks outside. Then, city officials decided they wanted to move the trucks indoors to a warehouse on the 15-acre site.

As they negotiated a lease for that building, it changed hands, city officials say. And they say they had no idea the new owners included an investment company co-owned by Mayor Daley's nephew, whose firm manages $68 million for five city pension funds.

Some of that pension money -- $4.2 million -- was used to buy the warehouse in November 2007. And Chicago taxpayers have since paid nearly $500,000 to lease it.

The property is at the center of the latest scandal confronting Daley, whose nephew Robert Vanecko resigned from his pension-investment company Tuesday, two weeks after a federal grand jury issued subpoenas seeking details of why the pension funds invested with Vanecko's start-up firm three years ago.

City officials have yet to respond to a Chicago Sun-Times request for copies of lease documents. But they are now offering an explanation for how they came to lease a huge garage at 3348 S. Pulaski for the city Water Management Department.

And it ties back into the biggest scandal Daley has faced during his 20 years as mayor: the Hired Truck Program, which the city got rid of after a Sun-Times investigation found the city spent millions of dollars hiring dump trucks that were often paid to do nothing.

"In 2006, the City of Chicago's Hired Truck Program was dismantled, and the city needed to purchase 50 20-ton trucks to work with water and sewer construction crews," said water department spokesman Tom LaPorte. "To meet this demand, an additional 45 trucks were also leased. This significant addition of equipment meant adequate parking locations needed to be found.''

The city wanted to park the trucks near Reliable Asphalt Corporation, a supplier of construction materials, at 3741 S. Pulaski. Reliable is owned by Michael Vondra, who is referred to in the original criminal complaint filed against former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Vondra wanted unspecified help from the governor on a business venture, according to prosecutors, who said Blagojevich, in turn, wanted $100,000 in campaign contributions. Vondra, who hasn't been charged with any wrongdoing, never raised the money.

City officials hoped to park the trucks on property Reliable leases from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, but Reliable turned the city down, LaPorte said. So city officials set their sights on the Pulaski warehouse.

On Oct. 10, 2006, the city signed a month-to-month lease to park trucks at 3348 S. Pulaski. That included city-owned trucks and also trucks leased from Steve's Equipment Services under multimillion-dollar contracts struck after the Hired Truck Program was scrapped. At first, the trucks were parked outside the massive, 320,000-square-foot warehouse, LaPorte said.

Then, city officials decided they wanted to move the trucks inside and began negotiating a long-term lease with owner Michael Lazar.

"In the midst of the negotiations, Mr. Lazar sold his interest in the building,'' LaPorte said.

On Nov. 14, 2007, the city signed a month-to-month lease with Lazar to move its trucks inside the warehouse.

On Nov. 27, 2007, Lazar sold the building to Sydney Pulaski LLC for $10.5 million. The deal included the $4.2 million in city pension money managed by DV Urban Realty Partners, co-owned by the mayor's nephew and his partners, Allison S. Davis and his son Jared Davis.

City officials have said they didn't know Vanecko was involved. Vanecko has never taken part in the ongoing negotiations for a long-term lease, they also said.

On Dec. 1, 2007, the city began parking its trucks inside the warehouse, LaPorte said.

The city says it moved into the warehouse after Vanecko's group bought the property. Vanecko's firm said last week that the city already had its trucks in the warehouse before it bought the property.

The city has paid a total of $480,408 in rent to Sydney Pulaski.

The city had paid $50,026 in rent to Lazar's company.

The terms of the indoor lease remained the same after Lazar sold the building to Vanecko's group, according to city officials and Vanecko's company. The city is paying $3.83 per square foot for 70,565 square feet -- about 20 percent of the warehouse.

Another tenant is Bus & Truck of Chicago, a city contractor that got a three-year, $4.3 million deal last September from the city's Fleet Management Department to repair city vehicles. The city has paid the company more than $345,000 since 2006.

City officials are still negotiating a five-year lease for the warehouse, but they are also looking at other places to park the trucks, LaPorte said.

Vanecko's partners apparently wouldn't mind if the city found another location.

"What we knew is [city officials] were looking for larger space, so our assumption was that they would move out," Allison Davis said in an interview last week on WTTW-Channel 11's "Chicago Tonight." "And we were marketing the space to other buyers. They repeatedly came back to us and wanted to lease the space, and we said no, this is not appropriate, and this will only cause us grief and problems.

"While it's a very attractive lease, it's a problem,'' Davis said. "I don't need a problem."

Background checks for sheriff's office, police

2009-02-25T13:04:00.000-06:00

February 25, 2009

BY FRANK MAIN Crime Reporter fmain@suntimes.com
The Cook County sheriff's office and the Chicago Police Department are launching new efforts to weed out bad apples.

Sheriff Tom Dart recently ordered his internal-affairs investigators to conduct background checks on every one of the office's roughly 7,000 employees, spokesman Steve Patterson said.

Under the department's rules, every sworn law enforcement officer is required to report any contact with police. If they don't, they could be fired, Patterson said. Also, any sworn officer with a felony conviction can't keep that post, he said.

"As for civilian employees, we'd look at it on a case-by-case basis," Patterson said.

The Chicago Police Department, meanwhile, is sending four officers and a sergeant through training to operate polygraph machines. Anyone applying to be an officer will have to take a lie-detector test, said Ted O'Keefe, head of the department's personnel division.

Patterson said the sheriff's office already requires people applying for sworn positions to take a polygraph test. Sworn positions include correctional officers, court deputies and police officers.

Applicants are asked about drug sales, theft, time-sheet fraud, vandalism, gang affiliations and arrests, Patterson said. Last year, 295 applicants took polygraph tests, he said.

"The test gives us tremendous insight into the backgrounds of people applying for law enforcement jobs," he said, adding, "The test results aren't the sole determining factor in deciding whether someone gets hired."

Former fed Blakey gets top Cook County corruption-fighting post

2009-02-19T12:54:00.000-06:00

February 19, 2009

BY RUMMANA HUSSAIN Criminal Courts Reporter
Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez introduced Jack Blakey today as her office's new special prosecutions chief.

The former assistant U.S. attorney will be in charge of pursuing corruption cases, as well as organized-crime and narcotics investigations.

Blakey moves to Alvarez's staff from the office of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, where he was on the team that successfully prosecuted Tony Rezko on corruption charges involving state of Illinois deals under ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

As Chicago Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed reported today, crime-busting is in Blakey's blood. His father, George Robert Blakey, was the principal author of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known for short as the RICO law, that's often used to prosecute organized-crime figures, and is a preeminent authority on the law. The father has been a law professor at the University of Notre Dame since 1980 and, before that, also taught there from 1964 to 1969.

2 city workers charged in park drug deal

2009-02-17T12:43:00.000-06:00

HUMBOLDT PARK | Firefighter, Water Dept. worker accused of cocaine transaction
February 17, 2009

BY FRAN SPIELMAN AND ANNIE SWEENEY Staff Reporters
A 62-year-old Chicago firefighter has been charged with selling cocaine to a worker in the Department of Water Management, which was at the center of a 2005 heroin-trafficking scandal.

Fire engineer Ruben Santiago has been placed on an unpaid leave of absence after being charged Thursday with manufacture, delivery and possession of more than 15 grams of cocaine.

Waldemar Cruz, a 63-year-old Water Management rate taker who allegedly bought drugs from Santiago, was charged with felony possession of a controlled substance. His employment status was not known.

The alleged drug deal between two city employees in their 60s allegedly took place in the inner drive of Humboldt Park.

Officers from the Chicago Police Department's gang enforcement unit conducting surveillance in response to complaints of narcotics sales in Humboldt Park reportedly observed the hand-to-hand transaction.

After the 2 p.m. street sale, Santiago allegedly got into his personal vehicle and threw drugs on the ground after being stopped by police. Cruz was also driving his personal car, sources said.

"At this time, there is no indication that anything illegal was done on city time. However, the conduct alleged clearly violates the oath taken to protect life," said Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford.

In 2005, a Water Management hoisting engineer who served as a deputy voter registrar for the Hispanic Democratic Organization was accused of heading the Chicago arm of a Colombia heroin-trafficking ring. George A. Prado was arrested along with two other city employees.

Santiago's arrest marks the latest in a series of black eyes for the Chicago Fire Department.

In December, firefighter Jose Moreno was charged with sexually molesting three young children, including a 3-year-old girl and two boys, ages 5 and 6. He was hired to be their caretaker three or four times a week.

Two weeks later, another firefighter was charged with fraud and forgery; he allegedly stole natural gas after the heat was cut off at his home.

Chicago firefighters and paramedics are subject to random drug testing that traditionally yields a 1 percent positive rate, "which is good," Langford said.

Could Burris’ new statement protect him from perjury charge?

2009-02-17T12:41:00.000-06:00

February 17, 2009

BY DAVE MCKINNEY AND NATASHA KORECKI Staff Reporters
The ranking Republican on the Illinois House panel that moved to impeach former Gov. Rod Blagojevich said today he does not want to reconvene the committee to accept Sen. Roland Burris’ changed testimony.

Doing so, Rep. Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs), could give Burris an ironclad defense against perjury charges should they be brought against him by a Sangamon County prosecutor.

If House Democrats allow Burris to present his revised affidavit, “They’re quietly giving him the ability to rehabilitate himself to bar any prosecution under perjury,” Durkin said.

The provision of the perjury statute that could protect Burris reads this way:

“Where the contradictory statements are made in the same continuous trial, an admission by the offender in that same continuous trial of the falsity of a contradictory statement shall bar prosecution — under any provisions of this code.”

On Monday, state Rep. Jack Franks (D-Woodstock) became the first high-ranking House Democrat to call for the House Special Investigative Committee to be reconvened and to demand that Burris reappear and explain the discrepancies in his testimony.

“This, to me, is a very clever way to pound their fists,” Durkin said. “The greatest defenders of Mr. Burris are all of a sudden angered and troubled about the new affidavit. But they’re also winking at Sen. Burris at the same time.”

Ex-alderman Troutman sentenced to four years in prison

2009-02-17T12:33:00.000-06:00

February 17, 2009

BY NATASHA KORECKI Federal Courts Reporter
Despite a tearful plea for mercy, proclaiming she's "no monster," former Ald. Arenda Troutman was sentenced to four years in prison on mail fraud and tax fraud charges that were part of a corruption investigation.

An emotional Troutman hung her head and apologized to her ward, the city and for bringing "shame" to her family.

"As God as my witness, I am no monster. I am not a criminal and I never helped criminals," Troutman said.

U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo said he couldn't understand how public officials continue, year after year, to think they can get away with corruption.

"You are a walking contradiction," Castillo said. Adding "you join the hall of shame," of corrupt Illinois politicians.

Troutman, a single mother of three, said she turned on the radio this morning -- and her son heard about his mother's predicament.

"I looked at my son's face. I didn't know what to do or say but tell him I loved him and that I'm sorry," she said, crying.

"I'm sorry. I'm regretful. There's still good in me."

A prosecutor in the case said today the corruption case grew out of a probe into the Black Disciples street gang. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Alesia said agents doing surveillance on gang kingpin Marvel Thompson saw a meeting take place between the ex-alderman and Thompson.

It was later revealed that Troutman carried on a relationship with another member of the gang, Donnell Jehan. Alesia said it was "aggravating" for law enforcement to battle gangs only to find Troutman, an alderman, had befriended gang members and used them to help her in campaigning.

"It is appalling and something the court should consider," in sentencing, Alesia said.

Alesia also revealed that on the day agents knocked on her door for her arrest, she was shredding documents having to do with the Hired Truck program and a family member who had business in that controversial program.

The Sun-Times previously revealed Troutman's family ties to the program and first reported that Troutman's shredder was still warm when agents entered her home in the 2007 raid.

Troutman admitted she coerced kickbacks totaling $21,500 over the years from developers to support their projects in her South Side ward and, in one case, outside her ward. She was famously caught on wiretaps saying that all aldermen are "ho's."

Her lawyer, Michael Gillespie, said Troutman, 51, is a single mother of three and repentant.

"Her actions are terrible," Gillespie said. "But judge, you have to look at this picture as a whole."

He spoke of doing work for affordable housing, kids, seniors and the poor.

Troutman, wearing a tan pants suit, was soft-spoken, tearful and repeatedly apologized for her actions.

Lawyer: Rep. Jackson 'completely guiltless'

2008-12-10T14:46:00.000-06:00

U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) is "completely guiltless" in the alleged scheme to corrupt the appointment of a new U.S. senator from Illinois and will meet with federal investigators as soon as Friday, the congressman's newly hired lawyer said today.

Jackson was not named in the criminal complaint yesterday charging Gov. Rod Blagojevich with trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama. But descriptions in the court document fit the congressman's profile and sources have further identified him as the "Senate Candidate 5" who was among those being considered for the job.

Jackson hired longtime Chicago lawyer James Montgomery Sr. on Tuesday after federal prosecutors unveiled criminal charges against Blagojevich and top aide John Harris, sources said.

"There is nothing there to implicate the congressman," Montgomery told the Tribune. The attorney said he and Jackson have been advised by a top deputy to U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald that Jackson is not a target of the investigation.

Montgomery said he expected Jackson would meet with officials from Fitzgerald's office as soon as Friday.

In an interview posted on the ABC News website today, Jackson did not specify who had told him he was not a target. He also said he did not know whether he was Candidate 5.

Jackson did say, however, that prosecutors had asked him to "come in and share my insights and thoughts about the selection process" and he planned to do so after consulting with his lawyer.

A lengthy government affidavit filed with the criminal complaint against Blagojevich refers to a Senate Candidate 5 who was under on-again, off-again consideration by the governor as a replacement for Obama in the Senate.

The affidavit quotes Blagojevich from a surveillance recording as describing an approach by an emissary of Candidate 5 who had promised to raise upwards of $1 million for Blagojevich if Candidate 5 secured the Senate seat.

On Oct. 31, according to the affidavit, Blagojevich described an approach by an associate of Senate Candidate 5. "We were approached 'pay to play.' That, you know, he'd raise me 500 grand. An emissary came. Then the other guy would raise a million, if I made [Senate Candidate 5] a senator," Blagojevich allegedly said.

Last week, according to the affidavit, Blagojevich told an adviser that he was giving greater consideration to Senate Candidate 5 because that person could raise money for Blagojevich if he ran for re-election and perhaps kick in "some [money] upfront" as well. And Blagojevich was recorded as saying that he was going to meet with Senate Candidate 5 in the next few days, the affidavit said.

On Monday, Jackson met with Blagojevich to discuss the Senate post. Last week, Jackson told the Tribune that he had recently reached out to Blagojevich confidant John Wyma as well as the governor's patronage chief, Victor Roberson, to discuss the Senate job. The Tribune reported last week that Wyma has been cooperating with the federal corruption probe of Blagojevich.

Blagojevich allegedly told one of his fundraisers to pass a message to someone identified in the affidavit only as Individual D whom Blagojevich believed to be close to Senate Candidate 5: If Candidate 5 was to land the Senate seat, "some of this stuff's gotta start happening now . . . right now . . . and we gotta see it. You understand?"

Of the affidavit, Montgomery said: "Even if you read that in its worst light, it was an assumption on the part of Blagojevich that his operatives had sought to induce someone who he believes to be as associate of the congressman to engage in a quid pro quo for the Senate seat."

Jackson told ABC News he had authorized no one to make overtures to Blagojevich on his behalf and said he was sure no one did.

"It's impossible for someone on my behalf to have a conversation that would suggest any type of quid pro quo, payments or offers," Jackson declared. "It's an impossibility to an absolute certainty."

-- Bob Secter and Dan Mihalopoulos

Happy birthday, Guv — How about a little self-exam?

2008-12-10T14:45:00.000-06:00

Mary Schmich
December 10, 2008
Happy birthday, Governor.

Yeah, well, bleep you, too. Sit down. Yes, that seat is very hot. We don't coddle our clients here at to Pay-to-Play Therapy Inc., a fully licensed Illinois facility catering to crooked politicians. You're lucky we could squeeze you in. We're usually booked.

Let's cut to the chase, Guv. Are you out of your bleeping mind? Trying to sell—allegedly—a Senate seat? Trying—allegedly—to extort Tribune Co.? When you knew the feds were watching you through the sights of a loaded gun?

Ha ha ha. Very funny, sir, but you can't have me fired. I'm a therapist, not an editorial writer.

And I'm here to help you, Governor. You're 52 years old today. It's OK to feel sad. Fifty-two's no lollapalooza even if you're not a crook.

But it's especially sad for you. Just think. On Dec. 10, 1956, an innocent babe was born in Chicago. He grew up to be a husband, a father, a politician, an embarrassment to his state and a joke to the world. Help me to understand why someone would squander so much opportunity and promise.

That's all you can say? The word "bleep" again?

Here. Take this mirror. Birthdays are a time for self-examination. Are you proud of what you see?

Yes, you've still got a full head of hair. That's not what I meant. Keep looking while I consult my manual.

Hmm. "Delusional." Sounds right. How else could you think you had a chance of running for president in 2016?

"Compulsive." That works. You certainly seem to have been overpowered by repetitive, irrational behavior.

"Arrogant?" Yes. "Narcissistic?" Could be. Hmm. I don't see an entry for "dumb."

Sir. Please. Do I have to warn you again about the word "bleeping?"

I agree with you on one thing, Governor. No, not about the media. It's true they're feasting on your woes, but you have to admit that those taped phone conversations are pretty juicy meat.

Like the time you allegedly were talking about Barack Obama's open Senate seat and said, "I've got this thing, and it's [bleeping] golden. And I'm just not giving it up for [bleeping] nothing."

Grade A sirloin, sir.

Anyway, the thing we probably agree on is your kids. I'm sad for them, too. I'm sad they had to wake up Tuesday and find their dad had been hustled out of the house at dawn by the FBI. I'm sorry you put them in that position.

Are you listening, Governor? I get the feeling you don't listen very well. Can I read you something? It's from the statement by U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald. Ready?

"The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges," he wrote, "is staggering. They allege that Blagojevich put a 'for sale' sign on the naming of a United States senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism."

Can we at least agree that Pat Fitzgerald can turn a phrase?

Governor, our time's almost up, so I'm going to offer you some advice. Even if these charges haven't been proven, they're so strong and the evidence is so compelling that this state and this city are weakened if you stay. Give up your job. Give Illinois back. Commemorate your birthday by giving the people that gift. You owe us.

2008-12-09T13:47:00.000-06:00

Feds: Allegations against Gov. Blagojevich 'would make Lincoln roll over in his grave'

2008-12-09T13:46:00.000-06:00

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald says the corruption charges against Gov. Blagojevich represent “a truly new low,” and he says the allegations “would make Lincoln roll over in his grave.”

“This is a sad day for government,” he said at a news conference with federal prosecutors to discuss the arrest of Blagojevich. “Gov. Blagojevich has taken us to a truly new low."

Fitzgerald called Blagojevich's actions in the last several weeks as “a political corruption crime spree.”

The head of the FBI office in Chicago said if Illinois isn’t the most corrupt state in the United States, it’s a strong competitor.

The charges accuse Blagojevich of trying to benefit financially from his ability to appoint President-elect Barack Obama’s replacement in the U.S. Senate.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald says federal investigators bugged the Democrat’s campaign offices and placed a tap on his home phone. And Grant says even seasoned investigators were stunned by what they heard on those tapes.

Fitzgerald described the situation by saying: “We were in the middle of a corruption crime spree and we wanted to stop it.”

Blagojevich has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Blagojevich calls Obama mother****er

2008-12-09T13:45:00.000-06:00

December 9, 2008

Click here to read the entire complaint

Rod Blagojevich calls Obama a mother******
Rod Blagojevich said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling him that he has to "suck it up" for two years and do nothing and give this "motherf***er [the President-elect] his senator. F*** him. For nothing? F*** him." Rod Blagojevich states that he will put "[Senate Candidate 4]" in the Senate "before I just give F***ing [Senate Candidate 1] a F***ing Senate seat and I don't get anything." (Senate Candidate 4 is a Deputy Governor of the State of Illinois). Rod Blagojevich stated that he needs to find a way to take the "financial stress" off of his family and that his wife is as qualified or more qualified than another specifically named individual to sit on corporate boards. According to Rod Blagojevich, "the immediate challenge [is] how do we take some of the financial pressure off of our family." Later in the phone call, Rod Blagojevich stated that absent getting something back, Rod Blagojevich will not pick Senate Candidate 1.
Harris re-stated Rod Blagojevich's thoughts that they should ask the President-elect for something for Rod Blagojevich's financial security as well as maintain his political viability. Harris said they could work out a three-way deal with SEIU and the President- elect where SEIU could help the President-elect with Rod Blagojevich's appointment of Senate Candidate 1 to the vacant Senate seat, Rod Blagojevich would obtain a position as the National Director of the Change to Win campaign, and SEIU would get something favorable from the President-elect in the future.

Patti Blagojevich: Hold up that f***ing Cubs s***
During the call, Rod Blagojevich's wife can be heard in the background telling Rod Blagojevich to tell Deputy Governor A "to hold up that f***ing Cubs s***. . . f*** them." Rod Blagojevich asked Deputy Governor A what he thinks of his wife's idea. Deputy Governor A stated that there is a part of what Rod Blagojevich's wife said that he "agree[s] with." Deputy Governor A told Rod Blagojevich that Tribune Owner will say that he does not have anything to do with the editorials, "but I would tell him, look, if you want to get your Cubs thing done get rid of this Tribune." Later, Rod Blagojevich's wife got on the phone and, during the continuing discussion of the critical Tribune editorials, stated that Tribune Owner can "just fire" the writers because Tribune Owner owns the Tribune. Rod Blagojevich's wife stated that if Tribune Owner's papers were hurting his business, Tribune Owner would do something about the editorial board. Rod Blagojevich then got back on the phone. Rod Blagojevich told Deputy Governor A to put together the articles in the Tribune that are on the topic of removing Rod Blagojevich from office and they will then have someone, like JOHN HARRIS, go to Tribune Owner and say, "We've got some decisions to make now." Rod Blagojevich said that "someone should say, 'get rid of those people.'"

Corrections officer charged wth bribery for buying cigarettes for an inmate

2008-11-26T15:26:00.001-06:00

November 26, 2008

BY RUMMANA HUSSAIN Criminal Courts Reporter/rhussain@suntimes.com
A Cook County correctional officer has been charged with bribery and official misconduct for allegedly purchasing cigarettes for a female inmate.

The inmate allegedly asked Cook County Jail guard Javier Toro, 23, about bringing her supplies at the jail, Assistant State’s Attorney Michael Evans said during Toro’s bond hearing today. She gave him the phone number of a woman who would pay for the supplies, prosecutors said.

During his lunch break on Nov. 18, Toro allegedly met the woman at a Citgo gas station at 4319 W. 47th, Evans said. He then charged to his credit card six packets of loose Kite brand tobacco and two lighters. The woman allegedly gave Toro $100 on behalf of the inmate.

Toro was stopped by authorities when he tried to give the tobacco to the inmate back at the jail, Evans said.

Judge Laura Sullivan ordered Toro held in lieu of $20,000 bail

2008-11-19T12:38:00.001-06:00

Cheney, Gonzales Indicted In South Texas County
McALLEN, Texas (AP) ― Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted on state charges involving federal prisons in a South Texas county that has been a source of bizarre legal and political battles under the outgoing prosecutor.

The indictment returned Monday has not yet been signed by the presiding judge, and no action can be taken until that happens. The seven indictments made public in Willacy County on Tuesday included one naming state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. and some targeting public officials connected to District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra's own legal battles. Regarding the indictments targeting the public officials, Guerra said, "the grand jury is the one that made those decisions, not me." Guerra himself was under indictment for more than a year and half until a judge dismissed the indictments last month. Guerra's tenure ends this year after nearly two decades in office. He lost convincingly in a Democratic primary in March. Guerra said the prison-related charges against Cheney and Gonzales are a national issue and experts from across the country testified to the grand jury. Cheney is charged with engaging in an organized criminal activity related to the vice president's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds financial interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees because of his link to the prison companies.

Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment on Tuesday, saying that the vice president had not yet received a copy of the indictment. The indictment accuses Gonzales of using his position while in office to stop an investigation in 2006 into abuses at one of the privately-run prisons. Gonzales' attorney, George Terwilliger III, said in a written statement, "This is obviously a bogus charge on its face, as any good prosecutor can recognize." He said he hoped Texas authorities would take steps to stop "this abuse of the criminal justice system." Another indictment released Tuesday accuses Lucio of profiting from his public office by accepting honoraria from prison management companies. Guerra announced his intention to investigate Lucio's prison consulting early last year.
Lucio's attorney, Michael Cowen, released a scathing statement accusing Guerra of settling political scores in his final weeks in office. "Senator Lucio is completely innocent and has done nothing wrong," Cowen said, adding that he would file a motion to quash the indictment this week. Willacy County has become a prison hub with county, state and federal lockups. Guerra has gone after the prison-politician nexus before, extracting guilty pleas from three former Willacy and Webb county commissioners after investigating bribery related to federal prison contacts. Last month, a Willacy County grand jury indicted The GEO Group, a Florida private prison company, on a murder charge in the death of a prisoner days before his release. The three-count indictment alleged The GEO Group allowed other inmates to beat Gregorio de la Rosa Jr. to death with padlocks stuffed into socks. The death happened in 2001 at the Raymondville facility.

In 2006, a jury ordered the company to pay de la Rosa's family $47.5 million in a civil judgment. The Cheney-Gonzales indictment makes reference to the de la Rosa case.

None of the indictments released Tuesday had been signed by Presiding Judge Manuel Banales of the Fifth Administrative Judicial Region.

Last month, Banales dismissed indictments that charged Guerra with extorting money from a bail bond company and using his office for personal business. An appeals court had earlier ruled that a special prosecutor was improperly appointed to investigate Guerra.

After Guerra's office was raided as part of the investigation early last year, he camped outside the courthouse in a borrowed camper with a horse, three goats and a rooster. He threatened to dismiss hundreds of cases because he believed local law enforcement had aided the investigation against him.
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

Rezko plea for acquittal denied

2008-11-13T11:39:00.000-06:00

BY NATASHA KORECKI Federal Courts Reporter
A federal judge has denied Tony Rezko’s plea for an acquittal or new trial, giving the convicted businessman even more incentive to cooperate with the feds.

In a 34-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve didn’t buy the argument that

Rezko’s conviction relied solely on the testimony of a shaky witness: Stuart Levine.

Levine sat on two state boards that Rezko was convicted of defrauding with Levine.

Levine was the chief witness in the case, testifying for 15 days.

“The government introduced substantially more evidence than just the testimony of Stuart Levine to prove defendant Rezko’s criminal conduct, including extensive corroborating wire taps,” St. Eve wrote. “When viewing all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, the government proved defendant’s knowledge and intent beyond a reasonable doubt. A new trial is not required in the interest of justice.”

Rezko has been providing information to federal prosecutors since August. The two sides haven’t signed a cooperation deal, however.

St. Eve’s opinion allows Rezko to appeal his conviction with a higher court. The next hearing in Rezko’s case is scheduled in January.

Rezko’s attorney declined to comment.

TOO BAD TONY

Man arrested for trespassing dies in police station

2008-11-13T11:35:00.000-06:00

November 13, 2008

FROM STNG WIRE REPORTS
A man arrested for trespassing died Wednesday morning while being detained at a South Loop police station.

Rafe McMullen, 52, died in police custody at the Central District police station at 1718 S. State St., according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office.

McMullen, of an unknown home address, was pronounced dead on the scene at 6:20 a.m., according to the medical examiner’s office.

McMullen was discovered unresponsive at the station after being arrested for trespassing, a misdemeanor, police said. Further details on his arrest were not available.

A Wednesday autopsy was inconclusive and “pending further studies,” according to the medical examiner’s office.

2008-11-13T11:34:00.000-06:00

U.S. rep: 'I hope this was not a case of racial profiling'
NOT GUILTY | Davis claimed last year he was given ticket for 'driving while black'

November 13, 2008

BY MARK J. KONKOL Staff Reporter/mkonkol@suntimes.com
Rep. Danny Davis was found not guilty Wednesday of "driving left of center" in Lawndale last November -- a ticket Davis had blamed on racial profiling.

The Traffic Court trial did little to shed light on what happened when Chicago Police curbed Davis' black sedan and ticketed him for an alleged lane violation. The Chicago Police officer who spoke to Davis during the traffic stop did not appear in court. That officer's partner, Police Officer Laura Kuhlmann, testified that Davis was driving a gray car on 16th Street and crossed the double yellow line when turning left onto Kedzie.

Cook County Judge Martin Coughlin kept discussion focused on Davis' alleged left turn crossing the center line and refused to hear testimony from Kuhlmann about a second time she claimed Davis' vehicle drifted over the double yellow lines. Davis remained silent.

Coughlin dismissed the charge, saying "of course" Davis crossed the double yellow line -- that's what happens when you make a left turn.

Last November, Davis made headlines for filing a complaint with police claiming the traffic stop was an example of racial profiling.

After court Wednesday, Davis said he hoped the white officers who ticketed him simply had made a mistake and that he wasn't stopped for "driving while black."

"I hope this was not a case of racial profiling," Davis said. "All I know is that I was driving a black car. The officer said I was driving a gray car. . . . The officer said I made a left turn off 16th Street onto Kedzie. And I've never been on 16th Street."

Mayor reverses on who's to blame

2008-10-22T08:03:00.001-05:00

October 22, 2008

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
Two years ago, Mayor Daley accepted his share of responsibility and offered to “apologize to anyone” for the torture of suspects by Jon Burge — even as he argued that the ultimate responsibility rests with the Chicago Police Department.

On Tuesday, the mayor changed his tune.

Hours after Burge was arrested in Florida and charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, Daley refused to accept even an ounce of responsibility for one of the ugliest chapters in the history of the Chicago Police Department.

Never mind that a $ 7 million report by special prosecutors faulted Daley, who served as state’s attorney during the 1980’s, for failing to follow up on a 1982 letter from then-Police Supt. Richard Brzeczek that strongly suggested abuse in the case of accused cop killer Andrew Wilson.

“I was very proud of my role as prosecutor. I was not the mayor. I was not the police chief. I did not promote this man in the ’80’s,” Daley said Tuesday.

“Brzeczek ran against me in ’84. He was the head of the Police Department….The Police Department cleared him and they promoted him in the `80’s. I was not the mayor then.”

Daley said there is “no room whatsoever for any type of torture” and he’s pleased that a “20-year-long” federal investigation of Burge has “finally” culminated in an indictment. Since Burge is facing criminal charges, it means Chicago taxpayers who have spent millions to defend Burge in civil cases will no longer have to pay his legal fees.

But the mayor said he feels no accountability whatsoever for Burge’s decades-long reign of terror.

“I just don’t…I was state’s attorney. I had 700, 800 prosecutors under me. It would be like [holding] you [accountable] for some of the headlines you write about me. I don’t hold you accountable…You can’t hold me responsible,” Daley said.

He added, “Looking back, you could do a lot of things [differently]. But you don’t look back. You look forward.”

In the 1982 letter, Brzeczek passed along explosive information he had received from Dr. John Raba, medical director of Cermak [Prison] Health Services.

Raba had examined Wilson and found: multiple bruises, swelling and abrasions on his face and head; a battered right eye; linear blisters on his thigh, cheek and chest “consistent with radiator burns.” Raba also reported Wilson’s claim that electric shock had been administered to his gums, lips and genitals.

“There must [be] a thorough investigation of this alleged brutality,” Raba wrote.

Brzeczek tossed the political hot potato to Daley, who referred it to his Special Prosecutions Unit for further investigation. Nothing ever came of the investigation.

It wasn’t until the early 1990’s that the Police Board finally got around to firing Burge.

The mayor’s response Tuesday was in sharp contrast to his contrite tone in July, 2006, when Daley was gearing up for his 2007 re-election campaign and was concerned the special prosecutor’s report could come back to haunt him in the African-American community.

On that day, Daley accepted his share of responsibility for what he called “this shameful episode in our history….I’ll take responsibility for it. I’ll apologize to anyone….It should never have happened….Everybody should be held accountable…The system could have broken down.”

But Daley categorically denied he deliberately looked the other way to avoid jeopardizing either his political ambitions or the prosecution of an accused cop killer.

“Do you think I would sit by, let anyone say that police brutality takes place, I know about it, that I had knowledge about it and I would allow it? Then you don’t know my public career. You don’t know what I stand for…I would not allow anything like this,” the mayor said then.

On Tuesday, Daley was asked if the Burge nightmare could ever happen again. His answer was hardly reassuring.

“Anything could happen again. You try to do a lot of preventions….But individuals could do something outrageous any time,” the mayor said.

“We have good police officers. I know you want to beat them all up all the time. But we have good men and women in the Police Department,” he said, adding that “90.9 percent are hard-working men and women who want to do the job” the right way.

After decades of accusations, Burge finally faces charges

2008-10-22T08:01:00.000-05:00

October 22, 2008

BY NATASHA KORECKI nkorecki@suntimes.com
APOLLO BEACH, Fla. -- Former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge's arrest here Tuesday didn't close the book on decades-long allegations of police torture, federal authorities said.

The FBI will investigate "others who may have participated in these crimes or knew about them but remained silent," said Chicago's FBI chief, Robert Grant.

Burge, 60, was arrested at his Apollo Beach home on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. He's accused of lying under oath in a lawsuit accusing him and other officers of torture. After his court hearing in Tampa, he was released on $250,000 bond.

Burge was accompanied by former Chicago Police Lt. Tom Brady, who lives near Burge and brought his friend his reading glasses.

Burge told the court he travels to Las Vegas as a security consultant for trade shows. The judge told Burge he's restricted to Florida and the Chicago area. He must turn over four pistols and a rifle to Brady.

Burge limped as he left court. He explained that he suffers from knee problems. "I'm old. I'm hurting," he said. "Please leave me alone."

Burge wouldn't talk about the charges, but Brady was quick to defend him. "The city of Chicago politics caught him up in this," Brady said. "The mayor of the city of Chicago fired him after he was found innocent, twice."

At least three of Burge's former police colleagues -- John "Jack" Byrne, Peter Dignan and Daniel McWeeney -- also have denied under oath that they were involved in torture. Their 2006 statements were given in a lawsuit brought by alleged torture victim Darrell Cannon, court records show.

Asked Tuesday if he still stands behind his 2006 statement, Byrne said, "Of course I do. I don't worry about it. . . . I feel very bad for Jon Burge. I've known him all my life."

The charges against Burge are in connection with sworn statements he gave in 2003 in a suit by former Death Row inmate Madison Hobley. Hobley claimed Burge and other officers tortured him into confessing to a 1987 arson that killed seven people.

Burge was asked if he used sleep deprivation, phone book beatings, electric shock or other methods to torture suspects.

He replied, "I have never used any techniques set forth above as a means of improper coercion of suspects while in detention or during interrogation." Later, he added, "I have not observed nor do I have knowledge of any other examples of physical abuse and/or torture on the part of Chicago Police officers at Area 2."

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said prosecutors will try to prove that Burge tortured suspects and knew that other officers did, too. One method was "bagging," putting a typewriter cover over a suspect's head, the indictment said. Fitzgerald emphasized that prosecutors are not necessarily claiming Hobley was tortured.

Hobley was on Illinois' Death Row for the murders of his wife, child and five others in a 1987 arson on the South Side. In 2003, Gov. George Ryan pardoned him and three other Death Row inmates after they claimed they were tortured into giving murder confessions.

Edward Egan, a former appellate judge, and Robert Boyle, a former Cook County prosecutor, later were appointed as special Cook County prosecutors to investigate the torture allegations. In 2006, they released a report that found Hobley probably was lying about torture.

Last year, federal authorities launched a new investigation of the 1987 arson -- and whether Hobley was involved.

Egan and Boyle's $7 million investigation concluded that dozens of other suspects were tortured decades ago by Burge and his colleagues. Still, the special prosecutors said they were unable to bring charges against the former officers because the state's statute of limitations had expired.

Fitzgerald said the federal statute of limitations for torture also has expired. But the federal statute of limitations for perjury is five years. Prosecutors were able to charge Burge with perjury because he gave his statements in November 2003.

"If Al Capone went down for taxes, it's better than him going down for nothing," Fitzgerald said.

Flint Taylor, an attorney who represents some of Burge's alleged victims, said he was "extremely pleased and gratified that, so many years later, a U.S. attorney has made the move to indict the leader of the police torture ring. I presume some of his henchman will be charged, too."

Already, the torture claims have cost the city of Chicago millions of dollars. Hobley and the other three pardoned Death Row inmates sued the city and agreed to share nearly $20 million in a legal settlement.

In one lawsuit, Cook County Judge Dennis Dernbach is continuing to battle former Death Row inmate Leroy Orange in court. Orange accuses Dernbach of coaching his 1984 murder confession while Dernbach was an assistant state's attorney on the case. Dernbach denies the claim.

Natasha Korecki reported from Florida. Frank Main, Carol Marin and Shamus Toomey contributed from Chicago.

Feds punch hole in 'perjury trap,' statute of limitations excuses

2008-10-22T08:00:00.000-05:00

October 22, 2008

BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Staff Reporter/apallasch@suntimes.com
Can't be done -- it's too late.

That was the $7 million answer that a special prosecutor delivered two years ago in the case of former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge, accused with his men of torturing false confessions from as many as 148 defendants, most of them minorities, in the 1980s.

Attorneys for those who said they were tortured had argued that, even if the statute of limitations had expired for the torture, Burge and other officers and prosecutors who took part or cooperated in any such coerced confessions could be charged with lying under oath in civil suits.

Not practical, special prosecutors Ed Egan and Robert Boyle concluded after spending four years on a probe that ultimately cost $7 million. Burge and the others could get any perjury or conspiracy charges dismissed on a "perjury trap" defense, Egan and Boyle said.

On Tuesday, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald made clear he disagrees.

"I don't know that the law has ever recognized a 'perjury trap,' " Chicago's top federal prosecutor said. "If it ever was recognized, this ain't one of them. People in this courthouse have received substantial sentences for perjury if convicted."

Experts say that, given that city of Chicago officials concluded Burge tortured people when they fired him, it should be easy enough to prove he perjured himself when he denied torture in written answers in a civil suit, especially if fellow officers come forward to testify.

Dozens of companies, people get lifetime ban from city work

2008-10-07T08:55:00.000-05:00

October 7, 2008

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter/fspielman@suntimes.com
Twenty-five companies and 26 individuals -- most of them caught up in the Hired Truck and minority contracting scandals -- have been banned forever from doing business with the city.

"The city should be consistently sending the message that, no matter who you are and who you know, you'll be barred from benefiting from city contracts if you act unethically," said Inspector General David Hoffman, whose office investigated seven of the targeted firms.

"I don't think Procurement has ever taken action against this many companies and individuals. It's a step in the right direction and suggests a seriousness about debarment matters that is welcome."

The city contracting equivalent of the death penalty targets 20 individuals and 18 companies convicted of criminal offenses in federal court.

The Procurement Services Department's hit list includes: A. Affetto Trucking and Anthony Affetto; American Tank Inc. and Timothy Shrader; Cayla Trucking and owners Richard and Debra Coveliers; Elliott Inc. and Martin McDonagh; FRC Trucking and Frank Cannattello; Garfield Trucking and Richard Rylewicz and Charles Romano; Get Plowed, Inc. and owner Michael C. Jones; GNA Trucking and John Canatello; Joseph S. Ignoffo and Ignoffo Trucking; LR&C Truck Line and Leroy and Commelie Peters; R&V Trucking and Robert Mangiamele; Sarch Hauling Ltd. and Salvador Alverez.

The debarment list also includes Leahy & Assoc., John Leahy and Edward Wisniewski, co-defendants in the $100 million minority business fraud engineered by the mob-connected Duff family. It also targets companies involved in a fraudulent fence contract that victimized the Chicago Board of Education. They are: Tru-Link Fence and Products, Tru-Link Commercial, Inc. and owner James H. Levin; MPZ, MPZ Enterprise and MPZ Construction and James Picardi, brother of Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Michael Picardi.

Seven companies and associated individuals were never convicted, but nevertheless handed lifetime bans after Hoffman found "substantial evidence" that they had either forged documents as part of the minority certification process, obstructed investigators or otherwise de-frauded the city.

They include: Patricia Trucking; Victory Transport; Pitts Transportation; G& L Trucking, Inc. and ATS Decorators. Two other companies -- Chicago Sound and Joyce Ford -- were debarred earlier this year.

For years, Chicago Sound supplied sound equipment for city festivals. According to Hoffman, the company was partly owned by Lori Cole, whose father was one of the founders of Cole Taylor Bank. The city's investigation determined that Cole was not a legitimate women's business enterprise, the inspector general said.

Earlier this year, Chief Procurement Officer Montel Gayles found himself in hot water with Mayor Daley after issuing a three-year ban against James Duff, head of a mob-connected family that became the poster child for minority business fraud in Chicago.

Hours after defending a penalty that African-American aldermen condemned as a slap on the wrist, Gayles fell on his sword and ordered the permanent debarment that Hoffman recommended more than a year ago.

"The Department of Procurement Services, along with the Office of the Inspector General, is committed to eliminating misconduct and fraud from city contracting," Gayles said Monday in a press release.

Sheriff's officer faces firing over FBI data

2008-07-28T09:43:00.001-05:00

July 27, 2008

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart will move to fire an officer charged by federal authorities with illegally using an FBI computer database to obtain information about a drug dealer.

Authorities said Rodney Quinn accessed the National Crime Information Center database using a sheriff's mobile-data terminal on May 8, 2003. Quinn searched for information about the drug dealer's 1998 Ford Expedition, even though he did not have an official reason to do so, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors did not say what Quinn did with the information.

Quinn, a sheriff's employee since 2002, has been on desk duty for three years as the FBI investigated, sheriff's spokesman Steve Patterson said.

Frank Main

Feds say contractor attacked FBI agent

2008-07-22T09:02:00.001-05:00

MINORITY FRAUD PROBE | Franklin Park firm was being served with search warrant

July 22, 2008

BY FRAN SPIELMAN AND NATASHA KORECKI Staff Reporters
The owner of a Franklin Park construction company has been charged with assaulting a federal agent who was attempting to execute a search warrant as part of a joint city-federal investigation of alleged minority business fraud.

John Esposito, owner of National Concrete Pipe in the near west suburb, is accused of "pushing, rushing at and engaging in a physical struggle" with Special FBI Agent Brian Etchell last Thursday.

Federal agents had arrived at National Concrete to investigate allegations that the company had lied about its minority subcontractors to satisfy the City of Chicago's minority set-aside requirement.

According to an affidavit filed by FBI agent Alan W. Reiner, who accompanied Etchell, the agents asked Esposito during a "voluntary interview" whether "another business was acting as a fraudulent minority business enterprise, functioning as an improper pass-through" for National Concrete Pipe.

Esposito reportedly denied the allegation and invited the agents to follow him to "an outdoor area on the grounds of his business to show us what he claimed was inventory belonging to the MBE," the affidavit states.

When Etchell pointed to what appeared to be a new sign and asked how long it had been there, Esposito reportedly used a profanity and pushed the agent.

"Esposito then rushed at Special Agent Etchell. Esposito was then on top of Special Agent Etchell on the ground. The two continued to struggle," Reiner's affidavit states.

"I jumped on Esposito and attempted to pull him off. Several workers of the business then arrived and assisted me in separating" the two men. The attack reportedly left Etchell with only minor injuries.

The affidavit says federal agents "had received information as part of the FBI investigation that the sign and the inventory area supposedly belonging to the MBE had been recently added in response to an interview from a representative from another government agency."

Esposito could not be reached.

Lynwood issuing tickets for baggy pants

2008-07-16T15:42:00.000-05:00

By Alan Krashesky LYNWOOD (WLS) -- It's another one of those clothing trends that some teens love and many parents hate.
And now one Chicago suburb is taking its dislike of those below the hip saggy pants to a new level by banning them and handing out tickets.
"They just rolled up on us and told us to come here. And they didn't say why, so we didn't come. So then, we came to them, and they put us in the back of the car," said Antonio, 19, ticketed for wearing baggy pants, recounting a recent experience with south suburban Lynwood police. " We went to the station. They wrote out these tickets, and now we got to go to this little Lynwood court thing."
He is one of the first to be ticketed under a week-old ordinance that outlaws baggy pants and carries a $25 fine. Lynwood Mayor Eugene Williams says he wants his growing community to keep an upscale appeal to help attract businesses.
"It makes it very hard to drive through the neighborhood with a retailer and show him where he could possibly locate a store, and you've got people walking around that have no regard to anything," Williams said.
"In this case, I think it's very clear who the police are going to interact with. They're going to interact with young men of color because it tends to be young men of color who wear their pants this way. This is really the worst kind of racial profiling," said Ed Yohnka, American Civil Liberties Union.
Regardless of the motive for the ordinance, Yohnka said this ordinance opens the door to trouble.
Mayor Williams denies the ordinance has racial undertones. He says after being raised in Chicago's Robert Taylor projects and teaching in Chicago public schools for more than 20 years, the new ordinance is more about tough love. Some residents don't buy it.
"He can't raise my kids. And I love my mayor. I voted for him. But he's wrong on this one," said Margaret Liddell, Lynwood resident.
Some other residents say they believe in a tough economy, this is just a creative way for the village to make money. The mayor denies that allegation. He also says some parents have thanked him

Governor: Chicago might need National Guard help

2008-07-16T15:40:00.000-05:00

CHICAGO -- Governor Rod Blagojevich is raising the possibility of bringing in Illinois State Police troopers or even the National Guard to help Chicago fight a recent increase in violence.
Blagojevich says he'll meet with state police, National Guard and other officials later in the day to discuss the options.
The governor says Chicago Mayor Richard Daley hasn't asked for help, but Blagojevich says he'll call the mayor once he has some concrete suggestions about what help he can provide.
The governor didn't have many specifics, but he says it's more likely that state police will be brought in than the National Guard.

Blagojevich also says there are a lot of retired Chicago police officers and state police troopers who could be rehired for the summer.

Weis says cops worry about suspensions

2008-07-16T15:39:00.000-05:00

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
Embattled Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis emerged unscathed from a day-long City Council inquisition today, but not before disclosing a troubling trend: Police officers are being less aggressive as violent crime rises because they’re afraid of piling up citizen complaints.

“I think he’ll survive — and he should,” said Police Committee Chairman Isaac Carothers (29th), who put the rookie superintendent on the hot seat.

Standing alongside Carothers, Weis said, “This has been made out to be confrontational-type thing —and it wasn’t. I don’t mind tough questions. The city … has the right to ask tough questions — especially when our crime is up nearly 13 percent. I’m not happy with that. I’m gonna do everything I can to bring it down.Ó

Weis acknowledged the contradictory trends of rising crime and less aggressive policing under Perry Mason-style questioning from Carothers.

The alderman recited a string of statistics that Weis did not challenge. Compared to this time last year, Chicago has had 28 more homicides, 2,626 more gang disturbances, 1,210 more reports of a person with a gun, 7,136 more reports of shots fired and 473 more reports of narcotics sales.

With crime indicators headed upward, police should be more aggressive, but the opposite has occurred. Gang loitering interventions are down 1,163, narcotics loitering interventions have dropped 2,329, and police have taken 500 fewer guns off Chicago streets.

Carothers (29th) called it "de-policing," a condition that exists when officers Òstop doing their jobsÓ because they're afraid nobody has their back.

Weis took issue with the term. But he acknowledged being so concerned about the drop in arrests, he recently exhorted over 100 police officers to pick up the pace and "take back street corners" from gangs that refuse orders to disperse.

"I have heard from many officers that there is a degree of timidness -- that people are not maybe as engaged as they should be because of fears of lawsuits, fears of [complaints registered] being put against them by criminals and by other folks who are just trying to impugn their integrity," the superintendent said.

To reverse the trend, Weis said he has directed his command staff to "go out to roll calls to try and re-instill the confidence that we are here for our officers and to ask them to aggressively police." But he said, "I'm not naive. When officers have told me, 'It's tough out there. I don't want to get sued,' it's not unreasonable to believe that some officers might not be as aggressive as we need them to be."

Carothers blamed low morale that nosedived after Weis ordered an unprecedented housecleaning that swept out 21 of 25 district commanders and nearly all of the Police Department's top brass.

A career FBI agent brought in from the outside, Weis argued that you can't change the culture of an organization by leaving the same people in place and that change is better made "all at once."

Carothers summoned Weis to appear before his City Council committee to address the citywide surge in homicides and other violent crime that boiled over at Taste of Chicago. That's when four people were shot, one fatally, as the crowd from the city’s annual July 3rd concert and fireworks show was dispersing.

Today, Weis reiterated the policing plans tipped to aldermen during private meetings last week, as first disclosed by the Chicago Sun-Times.

He’s hoping to develop a methodology by the end of this year to realign at least some police beats or districts to get more officers into high-crime areas. And he plans to resurrect a "better trained, better supervised" version of the disgraced and disbanded Special Operations Section by changing the focus of so-called Targeted Response Units.

"I know there's a lot of negative things associated with that. But, not the concept. That was a very aggressive enforcement group that would go out and take weapons off the street and arrest a lot of bad guys. The failings were in, perhaps, a lack of leadership and a lack of centralized accountability. But the concept was strong,” he said.

As for the Taste debacle that infuriated Mayor Daley, Weis disclosed that there were 995 officers assigned there July 3, including 23 tactical teams and nine more added at the first sign of trouble.

That’s 399 more officers than were assigned to secure the annual fireworks show last year.

“We had never seen large groups of individuals coming in like that. … There’s too many people inside of a small area. Next year, we’re gonna see if we can limit that and control the access,” Weis said.

Ald. Sharon Dixon (24th) said she’s tired of the media’s laser-like focus on the Taste shootings when Lawndale residents are living in constant fear. She was not alone. Aldermen from across the city complained about rising crime and shortage of manpower.

“What happened at Taste happens every day where I live — every single day. If we were addressing the issues in the communities [like Lawndale], it probably wouldn’t escalate to the Taste,” Dixon said.

Relationship with cop gets attorney in trouble

2008-07-16T15:31:00.000-05:00

BY ANDRE SALLES Beacon News
A Kane County assistant state's attorney will be suspended for four weeks without pay for having a relationship with an officer who served as a witness in several of the prosecutor's cases.

County Prosecutor John Barsanti said he was tipped about the relationship between Assistant State's Attorney Elizabeth Lovig and the officer. Lovig eventually acknowledged the relationship.

Barsanti's office is conducting an internal investigation on the relationship. Maintaining such a relationship without disclosing it, is a violation of office policy, Barsanti said.

Lovig, 43, will start her suspension next month. Lovig has led the state's attorney's domestic-violence unit since 2002.

According to Barsanti, Lovig's relationship with the unnamed officer began in 2001, and the office has identified six cases in which the officer served as a witness.

Two of those cases resulted in acquittals, and two others ended with a guilty plea. The remaining two yielded convictions, and these may be retried.

One of them is already scheduled for a retrial. Duka Smith, 31, of Aurora, was convicted in April of unlawful use of a weapon by a felon. His conviction was vacated last week, Barsanti said. A new court date has been set for July 17.

Additionally, Barsanti said he has informed the defense attorneys in each of the five other identified cases. The concern, he said, is that the defense attorneys, the judge and the jury deserve to know whether testimony given may be biased and whether it affected the outcome of the trial.

"We have an obligation to ensure that all parties in a criminal matter are treated fairly, including defendants, and that the interests of justice are served," he said.

The identity of the Aurora police officer was not released.

No immediate disciplinary action has been taken against the officer. "I am disappointed that the actions of our officer may have compromised justice being served in these cases," Chief Greg Thomas said.

Was old-style patronage more honest?

2008-07-16T15:30:00.000-05:00

BY MARK BROWN Sun-Times Columnist
The lawyer who defended city patronage chief Robert Sorich on federal fraud charges says he faults Mayor Daley and the corporation counsel's office for the hiring procedures that sent his client to prison, which isn't to suggest he thinks they did anything wrong.

Meanwhile, the lawyer who prosecuted Sorich said he thinks the old-style Democratic Machine patronage system in effect in Chicago in the 1960s and '70s -- before the Shakman court decrees -- was "so much more honest" than Daley's underground patronage operation, which isn't to suggest he'd turn back the clock.

These were among the insights offered during a panel discussion Friday on the future of patronage hiring in light of Sorich's recently upheld conviction.

'He had a job to do'
The Better Government Association hosted the event -- bringing together Thomas Anthony Durkin, Sorich's lawyer, with Patrick Collins, the Sorich prosecutor -- for a rare outside-the-courtroom exchange, made possible by the fact that Collins is now in private practice and mostly free to speak his mind.

Rounding out the panel were Michael Shakman himself and former Chicago alderman-turned-radio host Cliff Kelley, but Durkin and Collins were the draw.

What actually convinced me to attend was word that former City Clerk James Laski was planning to be there, too, possibly in hopes of confronting Collins, the guy who sent him to prison for his role in the Hired Truck scandal.

Sure enough, Laski was hanging around the railing at the Harold Washington Library when we arrived and confirmed he wanted to see Collins.

Later, before the session started, heads turned as Laski made his way to the head table for his encounter with the guy who put him away.

Fireworks? No, entirely cordial.

"He had a job to do. It's as simple as that," Laski explained on the way back to his seat.

"And he said he read the book. He liked the book," Laski added, referring to his self-published tell-all.

System 'poorly thought out'
But back to the main event, much of it a rehash with Collins arguing for the umpteenth time that the prosecution of Sorich and three co-workers wasn't about patronage but rather about the fraudulent hiring practices that were used to enable a sub rosa patronage system.

Durkin reiterated for the umpteenth time his contention that prosecutors trying to nail Daley improperly swept up Sorich in an overreaching interpretation of federal fraud laws -- an argument rejected in April by a federal appeals court.

But they also set aside the usual script.

"There are very valid reasons the mayor has stated why he wanted to run the hiring out of the intergovernmental affairs office," Durkin offered at one point, then stopped himself when he remembered Daley's version of events was never made public during the trial.

"There's a document," he continued, apparently referring to a sealed account of the mayor's 2005 interview by federal investigators. "I've read it. I think there are some pretty valid reasons there."

"Do I condone the way they did this? No. I think it was improperly set up. I think it was poorly drafted and poorly thought out," Durkin said.

"This is what I do fault the mayor's office on. They could have set it up -- the way they did it -- correctly, and they didn't, and they should be faulted for that," he said. "But should Robert Sorich be in jail for 43 months? That's preposterous."

Earlier, he had observed: "I don't think Daley's motives in that were purely negative," another reference to the decision to allow Intergovernmental Affairs to oversee hiring and promotions, which we now know led to the system being rigged.

How it used to be
Collins said the hiring fraud investigation grew out of the Hired Truck scandal, in particular the prosecution of former Water Department boss Donald Tomczak.

Collins said he vividly recalled his first meeting with the once-powerful political operative, after Tomczak had decided to "flip" and become a cooperating witness.

"I gave him my little speech about telling the truth and how important it is. He says, 'Everything in the indictment is true. I did it all,' " Collins recounted.

And there are other things you don't know, Tomczak continued, proceeding to clue in investigators about how hiring and promotions were rigged.

Collins later observed that the patronage system in effect before the Shakman restrictions, when a letter from a sponsoring ward committeeman was routinely placed in a job applicant's city personnel file, was "so much more honest."

"There's some honesty in that, frankly, that was completely absent in this fraud system that was built, perpetuated and thrived for years," Collins said.

In a way, Durkin and Collins were saying the same thing. If the mayor had been aboveboard, his people wouldn't be in jail.

HDO is dead, but members still call shots

2008-07-16T15:27:00.000-05:00

BY MARK BROWN Sun-Times Columnist

The Hispanic Democratic Organization is officially dead. The group that became known, feared and loathed by its initials -- HDO -- filed its Final Report this week with the Illinois State Board of Elections, legally terminating its activities as a political committee.

Some would say HDO has been effectively deceased since the federal Hired Truck investigation of City Hall began focusing attention on its activities in 2004.

But they would also tell you the group's individual members continue to carry on pretty much as before Hired Truck, just not as effectively since the federal heat made the organization and its leaders too hot to handle, shutting off its patronage and fund-raising pipeline.

At the peak of its power, HDO controlled hundreds of jobs and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations -- all with the de facto if not explicit blessing of Mayor Daley.

Before closing the books, the organization doled out its last $32,575.

Roosevelt Media, a company affiliated with HDO founder and chairman Victor Reyes, got the biggest check, $10,411, while his sister Virginia, a lawyer, was paid $4,772 for unspecified services. Another $7,000 went to Alberto Guevara in connection with his brother Carlos Guevara's losing campaign this year against state Sen. Iris Martinez, one of several recent political rebukes to HDO.

The job holders, though, are still out there, still serving as loyal political armies in support of pretty much the same regional coordinators who controlled them during HDO's heyday. These HDO "cells" remain a potent political force, especially in legislative and aldermanic races.

In fact, for all the hoopla surrounding the federal investigation, it's notable how few of HDO's leaders were actually charged in connection with it.

The highest-ranking HDO leader indicted was former Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Al Sanchez, who ran a political street army of perhaps 100 patronage workers for HDO. A couple of his top lieutenants also got nailed.

Sanchez is scheduled to go on trial next March, and until his case is completed, nobody is ready to say for certain that the Hired Truck probe -- and its sister investigation of city hiring fraud -- are at an end. But many believe all signs point that way.

In case you've forgotten, Reyes has never been charged, even though he was named by the U.S. attorney's office as an unindicted "co-schemer" in the fraud trial of former City Hall patronage chief Robert Sorich and three associates.

Defense lawyer Tom Breen, who represents both Reyes and Sanchez but represented Reyes first, says he would not have taken Sanchez as a client if he "thought there was any chance of any charges being brought against Victor Reyes."

Others came to a similar conclusion when federal prosecutors raised no objection to Breen taking Sanchez's case. Often under those circumstances, they will complain about a conflict of interest.

Reyes left city employment in 2002, and it's possible the statute of limitations has run out on any potential case against him, although Breen won't make that assertion.

Instead, he says: "Quite frankly, I don't know what he would have done wrong."

Some of us assumed Reyes did everything Sorich did and more, but obviously, the U.S. attorney's office felt the evidence against him was weaker. The hiring fraud case stalled when Sorich declined to cooperate against higher-ups. Sorich is now serving a 43-month prison sentence.

A federal appeals court recently upheld the Sorich verdict -- and the legal theory under which the case was brought. Some speculate that will breathe new life into the city investigations, and as much as I'd like to think that, I've seen no signs of it.

There haven't been any indications Sanchez is inclined to turn "flipper" on his old associates either.

As one of its last acts when it still had some real money, HDO paid $140,000 to Breen's law firm in late 2006, partly as a retainer for future services. Breen declined to say whether the money was to be applied to representing Reyes or Sanchez or both.

In the meantime, there aren't a lot of outward signs Reyes' career was thrown off kilter by the federal attention. His political consulting firm continues to report an extensive list of lobbying clients in Springfield and City Hall, and he's still listed as a director of Park Bancorp.

The political officeholders most closely connected to HDO have continued to get re-elected, although they have been unable to extend their reach in efforts to pick off those deemed disloyal. A reminder: HDO was never as much about Hispanic political empowerment as about which Hispanics would have the power.

So, HDO is dead. Ding-dong?

2008-02-29T07:50:00.001-06:00

2004 | 'Clout on Wheels' had instant, continuing impact

February 29, 2008

The ripples created by the landmark Sun-Times series "Clout on Wheels" began immediately. And they're still being felt.

The three-day series, published in January 2004, documented that trucking companies in a $40 million-a-year City of Chicago program were, as a front-page headline said: "PAID TO DO NOTHING."

By Day 2 of the reports, federal prosecutors had arrested the head of the city's Hired Truck Program.

But the investigation into widespread waste and corruption -- begun by reporter Tim Novak, later joined by Steve Warmbir -- went much deeper, exposing the Hired Truck Program as a hotbed of payoffs, sweetheart deals and mob connections.

Last November, the 46th person convicted as a result of the Hired Truck scandal was sentenced to 15 months in prison.

The wide-ranging federal investigation prompted by "Clout on Wheels" continues.

The newspaper's investigations into clout and corruption at City Hall have continued, too.

Subsequent Sun-Times reports spearheaded by Novak have exposed, among other things: the powerful role in Chicago city government that one family with strong ties to organized crime has had for nearly a century; evidence of widespread cheating among city workers filing workplace-injury claims, and secret city deals involving Mayor Daley's son and nephew.

2008-02-22T09:11:00.000-06:00

Budget director getting shower installed in City Hall office
Executive paying for all the work, officials say
By Gary Washburn | Tribune reporter
February 21, 2008

City workers who dig ditches, pave streets and fight fires sometimes get dirty during a day's work. City Budget Director Bennett Johnson III, by contrast, doesn't usually break a sweat performing his $155,600-per-year job.

But despite his white-collar toils, Johnson is having a shower installed in his City Hall office.

Daley administration officials acknowledged the plumbing job Wednesday but said the budget chief is covering the estimated $5,400 cost with his own money.
Department of General Services tradesmen are doing the work. They recently punched a hole in the floor to make a pipe connection in the office below, which belongs to Mayor Richard Daley's chief of staff, Lori Healey, a worker familiar with the upgrade said.

It's a clean project, insisted Daley press secretary Jacquelyn Heard.

"When I talked to Lori, she said the only way she was willing to sign off on it was if he was willing to pay for it, and he did," Heard said. "That's what sealed the deal."

Heard said Johnson wants the shower because he rides his bicycle to work when weather permits.

"As I understand it, Bennett is a big cycling enthusiast," she said.

Johnson was unavailable for comment.

Johnson was the architect of Daley's 2008 budget, which calls for nearly $280 million in tax, fee and fine increases.

"I think allocating public resources to install a shower in a city office would be totally inappropriate, especially given the budget challenges that this City Council has had to struggle with," said Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd), who was among those who voted against the spending plan. "However, if Mr. Johnson is willing to pay that tab out of his own pocket ... I don't have a problem with that."

Ald. Manuel Flores (1st), who also voted no on the budget, sounded a cautionary note. "I think we have to be careful," he said. "What is the message we are sending at a time we are asking people to step up to the plate to help finance government?"

Other council members said they would have no objections to a stall in Johnson's office even if the city were footing the bill.

"Who cares? What's wrong with that?" asked Ald. Bernard Stone (50th). "These guys who work 14, 15 hours a day -- that doesn't bother me."

Johnson's will not be the first shower in City Hall. The chief of staff's office got one in the 1970s, and the mayor's office has had one "forever," Heard said. The office of the Streets and Sanitation commissioner, who sometimes works round the clock during snowstorms and other emergencies, also has a shower.

A shower in Johnson's office could save time, eliminating the need for the budget director to duck out to a health club for a quick clean-up before an evening meeting, said Ald. Brian Doherty (41st).

"You don't want a smelly budget director," Doherty declared.

2008-02-22T09:05:00.000-06:00

ShowerGate steam rises as City Hall circles drain

If you don't know about City Hall's latest scandal -- ShowerGate -- then you probably haven't seen my new, hot video quest to take a steamy, lathered-up shower one floor above Mayor Richard Daley's office.

Just think of me at City Hall on Wednesday, towel over my arm and a couple of bars of Irish Spring soap, begging to shower in the new, luxury spa built secretly for the mayor's tax-happy budget director, Bennett Johnson III.

But don't think of my Mediterranean back hair. It might ruin your breakfast.
You think this is a joke? You think taxpayers are allowed to take a shower in one of the secret City Hall showers built with taxpayer dollars?

No. They're not allowed to shower in the secret shower. And I wasn't allowed a shower, either, though I brought the special soap.

If you've got a computer, just go to chicagotribune.com/kass and you'll see the whole thing, including the FedEx guy who likes Irish Spring, too, and a discussion of pulsating water jets, the hot towel rack, soap dispensers, and heaters to keep you toasty.

"And the public can't use it?" asked the troubled FedEx guy.

Exactly.

I've known about ShowerGate for several weeks now, and, as a former City Hall reporter, I waited for the bureaucrats to finish ordering city workers to complete the shower before asking any questions.

They'd have shut it down if I'd asked earlier. They still might shut it down, now that City Hall has massaged its story considerably from the time I showed up with my towel. Seconds after city workers and politicians spied me and the Polish Spartacus carrying shower gear into the building, the secret was out. I wouldn't be surprised if they leaked it to the other paper.

Now Bennett Johnson is being forced to say he's paying for the shower, some $5,400 or so, a cheap shower beneath the dignity of a budget boss. They're probably dropping the Greek marble, the hot-stone warmers and the fancy scented candles as you read this. Is there soap in the shower? Or do you have to bring your own?

"I haven't seen it," she said. "I'll have to go look at it."

Why would a budget director need a shower?
"A fair question. I promise I will get back to you by the end of the day," she said.

Is it stressful? Does he sweat? I sweat.

"That's fair. I think they're all fair, Mr. Kass," she said.

She was right. They were fair. And City Hall did respond to my questions, after they had several meetings about Johnson's secret shower and they shaped a story out of fear and chaos.

Personally, I think it's another Chicago fairy tale, like the time I gave the mayor's airport operations boss, Dave "Pool Boy" Ochal, his nickname.

"Pool Boy" had a beautiful in-ground pool built in his Northwest Side backyard, with concrete you could land jets on, with shrubbery as fine as any from Streets and San, and with lights as nice as anything City Hall electricians could build. Once completed, it flooded his neighbors' yards, causing damage, and Pool Boy's favorite paper, the Sun-Times, defended him with an editorial saying he was a good neighbor who'd remove the pool immediately.

City Hall insisted that Ochal paid for it all himself, and would show me the canceled checks to prove it. The next day, they decided they didn't have to show me the checks. Last we checked, Pool Boy was still having pool parties.

On Wednesday, my old City Hall reporting partner, now the mayor's press secretary, said Bennett Johnson was a dedicated bicyclist who needed to take showers after riding to work and that Johnson was paying for everything now.

"He's a big biking enthusiast," Jacquelyn Heard said. "I'm told he needs a shower after biking and that he's willing to pay for the privilege of having one."

That's nice. There are other, older showers used at City Hall, but the mayor doesn't have to pay for his shower, and the chief of staff doesn't have to pay for hers, and the boss of Streets and San gets a quick, free rinse whenever he gets sweaty behind his desk.

But the budget director has to pay out of his own pocket? And I didn't get my chance to lather up with Irish Spring: manly, yes, and City Hall likes it too.

"I can't let you into the budget director's office without him being present," said Johnson's spokeswoman, Wendy Abrams, who handled the stressful situation with style and grace.

I'm not going to look at any secret contracts, or anything with Tommy DiPiazza's name on it.

"I'm not suggesting you're going to snoop around," she said.

You can come with me, I said.

"No!" she said.

I swear to God I'm not going to take a shower in your presence, I said, waving my towel and soap. I just want to see it.

But she said that was quite impossible, so I asked some more.

How many people can fit in the shower?

"Another fair question," she said. "I will give you all the details by the end of the day."

2008-02-19T07:58:00.001-06:00

Whistleblower suspended 18 days
CITY | Plumbing inspector punished after reporting on violations at school

February 19, 2008
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
An $85,068-a-year Chicago plumbing inspector who uncovered two pages of building-code violations that left 1,100 children at Jose de Diego Community Academy without water for weeks has been hit with back-to-back suspensions of three and 15 days.

Michael McGann said Monday the actions are in retaliation for his faxing a copy of his inspection report to the school's principal, talking with a Chicago Sun-Times reporter about the threat of disciplinary action and cooperating with an inspector general's investigation into what McGann calls "a rash of" substandard cast-iron pipe being used on city jobs.

The Sun-Times reported in late November that McGann faced disciplinary action for violating internal rules that prohibit preliminary inspection reports from being shared with outsiders until they're officially approved.

McGann said he gave the Oct. 24 report to de Diego principal Alice Vera so she could use the information to expedite repairs that had languished for weeks at the 116-year-old school at 1313 N. Claremont.

On Jan. 18, McGann was told he was being suspended for three days. McGann said he pulled out a tape recorder because, "I wanted a record of the event -- who was saying what, who was issuing what."

The inspector said he served his suspension even as he filed an appeal with the same officials who suspended him.

Then, on Friday, he was hit with another suspension, this time for 15 days. Among other things, he was accused of "borderline insubordination" for taping the earlier meeting.

Found E. coli
"They're trying to get rid of me because I'm honest, and I'm exposing corruption," McGann said. "They were totally disregarding the health and safety of students in that school, using plumbing contractors they want to put Band-Aids on it. Eighty days after the water main broke, I showed up and found E. coli bacteria in three different locations. There was still contaminated drinking water in that school. They had a full kitchen and swimming pool they couldn't use."

Building Department spokesman Bill McCaffrey said McGann "is not being punished for sending that report out," nor is he being targeted for blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing.

2008-02-19T07:56:00.000-06:00

Dad went to prison for extortion

February 19, 2008
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
His father went to prison in 1983 for extorting up to $32,500 in remodeling work for his ward office. Now, Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th) finds himself under a federal microscope.

An old-school politician who has complained loudly about hiring constraints imposed by a federal monitor, Carothers has endeared himself to Mayor Daley with cheerleading speeches -- and his West Side army of city workers who delivered the vote for Daley's candidates.

Daley chose Carothers to chair the Police and Fire Committee over more-senior aldermen.

Carothers has sponsored crackdowns on crank 911 callers and on the parents of curfew violators. He joined Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th) in pushing through a "Traffic Stop Code of Conduct" after a stop involving state Rep. James Meeks.

In 1985, a federal judge ordered Carothers' imprisoned father, former Ald. William Carothers (28th), to help pay $152,000 for organizing a campaign of violence against a political foe. U.S. District Judge Charles Kocoras said Isaac Carothers appeared to be the ringleader. He was ordered to pay $25,000.

2008-02-19T07:55:00.000-06:00

Feds probe city records on alderman's zoning changes
29TH WARD | FBI mole may have taped Carothers

February 19, 2008
BY FRAN SPIELMAN AND CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporters
Federal investigators have requested city records on four West Side zoning changes pushed by Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th), amid questions about Carothers' relationship with a Chicago developer who made secret recordings as an FBI mole.

Last year, Carothers' New 29th Ward Campaign Committee got $11,000 in contributions from Morgan Properties Inc., which lists FBI mole John Thomas as "manager."

The contributions came in payments of $9,000, $500 and $1,500, with the last one made on Feb. 23, 2007 -- four days before the aldermanic election, records show.

Last April 9, the committee returned all $11,000, offering no explanation in campaign records except "refund of excess contribution."

Carothers, the powerful chairman of the City Council's Police and Fire Committee, did not return calls seeking comment. He also declined to answer written questions.

Thomas is the Chicago developer-turned-FBI-mole who played a pivotal role in one of the two federal cases involving Tony Rezko, the indicted developer and political fund-raiser who is accused of business fraud and of seeking kickbacks and campaign contributions for Gov. Blagojevich from companies seeking state pension business.

The Sun-Times has reported that Thomas recorded hundreds of hours of conversations for federal investigators. Sources said the government had Thomas -- who is cooperating in hopes of getting probation for a felony fraud conviction in New York -- secretly record conversations with an unidentified Chicago alderman.

One of the 29th Ward zoning files that federal authorities requested from the city dates to May 2005, when Carothers introduced a zoning change for vacant land at Roosevelt and Central to be converted from manufacturing to heavy commercial.

The applicant for that zoning change was V-Land Chicago Roosevelt LLC. Jason Gigot, listed as a contact for the applicant, could not be reached. Nor could attorney John Pikarsky. Jay Javors, spokesman for listed property owner Roosevelt and Canal LLC, did not return calls.

Two of the three other zoning files pertain to the same property and were jointly introduced in August 2006 by Carothers and Ald. Emma Mitts (37th), his protege.

The applicant on those, Grand Central Center for Business LLC, was seeking to change zoning from manufacturing to mixed-use. The land, part of a so-called planned development, required -- and received -- a green light from the Planning and Development Department.

The fourth application was introduced by Carothers in 2007 on behalf of the Chicago Board of Education for Knute Rockne Stadium in Austin.

Three years ago, Carothers' name surfaced in the Hired Truck scandal. Carothers, a former Streets and Sanitation Department deputy, received $2,500 in contributions from Naperville businessman Martin McDonagh, who later pleaded guilty.

McDonagh allegedly made the contributions to Carothers at the request of John "Quarters" Boyle, who was sentenced to seven years for accepting $214,000 in cash, gifts and campaign contributions for steering Hired Truck business to favored companies.

At the time, Carothers said he knew Boyle from their days together on the city payroll. Carothers was not charged, said he did not ask Boyle to muscle truckers for gifts. And he returned the money.

2008-02-18T15:38:00.003-06:00

TO PURCHASE MY FALL FROM GRACE: FROM CITY HALL TO PRISON WALLS, VISIT:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1434362809/ref=cm_rdp_product

2008-02-18T15:25:00.004-06:00

'I told myself the money wasn't for me but for my family'
LASKI'S BOOK | Disgraced former city clerk chronicles his downfall

February 17, 2008
For $48,000 in bribes, former Chicago City Clerk James Laski ended up in prison, the highest-ranking official caught in the federal government's investigation of the city's Hired Truck Program.

His downfall traces to 1994. That's when Laski helped his close friend Mick Jones get work from the Hired Truck Program to supplement the paycheck Jones got as a city housing inspector.

Jones eventually admitted paying bribes for Laski's help -- an admission that sent them both to prison and ended their friendship.

Jones got out last summer. Laski was released this month, after 11 months in prison and six months more in a halfway house.

What follows are excerpts from My Fall From Grace: City Hall to Prison Walls, the self-published book Laski wrote during his time in prison:

At . . . the beginning of 2004, a story broke in the Sun-Times that would change my life forever. . . . I decided to go to a 7-Eleven, as I usually did in the morning, to pick up a large coffee for [his wife] Kathleen and a Sun-Times. . . .

When I picked up the paper from the rack, I immediately saw the words "Hired Truck Program," which caught my attention. As I read the story, I experienced a burning and nauseous feeling [in] my stomach. What I always feared in the back of my mind was now actually happening -- someone was looking into the city's Hired Truck Program's operations.

Not only was there a media inquiry, but information was leaking out about preferential treatment, politics and bribes. I quickly headed home, where I dropped off the coffee to Kathleen. I told her I had to stop at the law office . . . but what I really did was get into my car and call Mick Jones. . . .

We spoke basically in general terms, except when the name Angelo Torres, the director of the entire program, came up. For whatever reason, Torres wasn't being kind to Get Plowed, Inc., the company that Mick and his wife Traci owned with their friends John and Mary Novak. Because one has to know some basic facts about the city's trucking operations to understand why the Sun-Times was turning up the heat, we must first go back to late 1994.

• • • •

I was campaigning for city clerk at that time . . . Mick asked me for a favor. He told me that the city had a Hired Truck Program that employed private trucking companies to work for various city departments. . . . As I began to learn, the whole truck program was a gravy train for these companies, and Mick wanted to hop on. Let's say the city paid a company $40 per hour for its truck and driver for a day. That company was paid regardless if the crew worked or not. . . .

The following week, I had an appointment with [Mayor Daley's City Council floor leader] Alderman Pat Huels . . . and told him I had a very good friend who was interested in being part of the program. . . . When I finished, the alderman answered nonchalantly, "No problem.''

It wasn't long after the trucks were on, maybe a month or so, that Mick stopped by the house one evening. . . . Before too long, he leaned over to shake my hand, and said, "Take care of the family." As I extended my hand and we shook, I knew, though we never spoke about it in any detail, he had just handed me money -- how much, I didn't know. As soon as we transferred the money, I quickly put it in my pocket. During the course of the evening, Mick used my bathroom, and I went into my pocket and counted five $100 bills. I knew at this point that we were starting a wonderful, but illegal, business relationship, because this was technically bribery, but I told myself the money wasn't for me, but for my family, my loved ones.

• • • •

There were also times when Torres' people did inspections and found that certain paperwork, such as insurance certificates for Mick's trucks, were not in place, and suspended his trucks. When these shutdowns would occur, I would ask Daley's people to call Torres and to order him to put the trucks back on the payroll. . . .

Let's look again at the Hired Truck Program and Daley's people who granted my requests: Pat Huels, Victor Reyes and Robert Sorich. During an 11-year period, each of them helped me, in one way or another to put my friends' trucks on with the city. These same people talked to Daley on a regular basis, and not one of them ever told him they were doing favors for me, the city clerk, by giving out business contracts to my friends?

• • • •

Mick and I hoped that the story would just go away, but two weeks after the first Hired Truck article had appeared in the Sun-Times, new trouble erupted. I decided to make a pit stop at Ray Drish's house to talk about politics, fund-raising and employment issues. Ray was still my number one adviser, even though he was no longer on the city payroll. About 10 minutes into our conversation, my cell phone rang. On the other end was Joe Panarese, my new chief of staff . . . Joe [now a Cook County judge] immediately cut to the chase and told me that a Sun-Times reporter called, asking me to speak about Mick and Traci Jones and Get Plowed, Inc. Unfortunately, my political campaign had recently received a recent donation from Get Plowed. In addition, these checks were signed by Traci, even though she was supposed to have been off the books, and working for me, for several months . . . In addition, Mick had allegedly divested himself of any ownership or monetary interest in Get Plowed, yet the company's business address in the phone book was 5711 S. Sayre, which was, in fact, the Jones family's home address.

• • • •

I left City Hall around three in the afternoon and told Tom Lally to drive me straight to Mick's house. . . . As I entered the house, I could immediately see that Mick was worried. . . .

As we sat on the couch, just trying to stay calm, I glanced out the front window and saw two individuals, one with a camera, walking toward the front of the house. I quickly dove on the floor to avoid being seen, and Mick ran to the kitchen. I still had on my full-length overcoat as I crawled out the front room into the kitchen.

Mick and I quickly moved toward the back of the house, to get out of sight. Mick then called his wife, to tell her not to come home until he had called to give her the OK . . . The door bell rang, and I could see panic in his face. We knew it was a Sun-Times reporter. . . . We decided to sit in the back bedroom and wait to see how long they would camp out.

• • • •

As the rest of the year 2004 moved quickly by, Mick and I constantly reassured each other that everything was going to be fine. With so many other investigations going on in the city, unless there were some informant in our inner circle with some solid information, there was no way the U.S. Attorney could ever indict either Mick or me on just speculation or hearsay.

• • • •

In September [2005], each time Mick said he had an upcoming meeting with his attorney, we would talk in my garage. I actually would turn my stereo radio up quite loudly and pat him around his waist and chest, which really insulted him. When he was in my garage one last time, he angrily told me that he was going to drop his pants, so that I could check . . . for a wire. I guess I should have listened to him.

• • • •

Don Zochowski, my former legislative assistant during my alderman days . . . came right out and said, "The word on the street is that Mick's been wearing a wire."

I didn't waste any time and said, "Mick, according to Don, the word on the street is that you've been wearing a wire."

There was a short moment of silence before Mick replied, "I heard that, too." . . . What I didn't know was that Mick and I had just talked together for the final time!

• • • •

Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Collins opened the door and invited us in. . . . My knees were shaking, and my hands were dripping with perspiration. . . .

There was a small table, with the morning edition of the Chicago Sun-Times on top. The headlines read, "Laski Friend Wore a Wire." . . .

I started looking at the various paraphernalia. Every single tape had been labeled with a different informational heading, such as "Laski and Jones" and "Gammicchia." . . . I then started examining the copies of the pictures. I saw myself sitting in my basement on the day I came home from the hospital after my tests, with a blanket pulled up to my chin. During that time, and with my children around, either Mick or Traci had brought some type of hidden camera (probably in that big purse of Traci's) to take pictures of me. . . .

• • • •

The last tape he played, and the most damaging of all, was that portion of my conversation with Mick on the two-way, when I was recorded as saying, "Go Cubs!" According to the feds, that was the go-ahead for Mick to instruct his wife to lie to the grand jury. . . .

Mr. Collins . . . told me that I was now under arrest. . . . He said he was not out to crucify me, but that I needed to cooperate with them. . . .

I looked across the table at Collins and, with my voice cracking, told him that I would cooperate.

• • • •

I'll never forget the look of panic on my wife's face when she asked me again if everything was OK. I don't know really how to describe my feeling, except to say that I felt as if a part of me had just died, and that I was now saying goodbye to my family. I looked at Kathleen and told her that I was arrested by the FBI and indicted by the U.S. Attorney's Office. . . . I also looked right into her teary eyes, and told her, "Kathleen, I'm going to prison."

With that, she broke down, and began to cry. She asked what she and the kids would do without me.

• • • •

The night before the hearing, I was extremely anxious because I knew I would have to face Judge [Charles] Norgle and answer some questions he would ask me after I entered my guilty plea. Of course, the only way, I felt, to handle my anxiety was to drink. . . .

After I entered the guilty plea, Judge Norgle asked me if I had made my decision freely, and without duress, if I had discussed the matter with my attorney, and if I understood that I had just pled guilty to one count of bribery. He also asked me, if, within the last twenty-four hours, I had taken any alcohol or drugs. I answered yes. He then wanted to know what I had taken, and how much. I answered, about four beers up until 11 p.m., and one Lorezopan and Lexapro that morning, for my anxiety. . . .

Before the proceedings ended, Judge Norgle asked me when I had resigned as Chicago clerk. I told him February 6, 2006.

He then asked me if I thought I had done a good job as city clerk.

I quickly answered that I thought I had. Then, Norgle asked, "Until now?" I answered, "Yes, your Honor, until now."

2008-02-15T08:32:00.000-06:00

Daley: Laski has 'a lot of personal problems'

February 14, 2008
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter/fspielman@suntimes.com
Convicted former City Clerk Jim Laski has “a lot of personal problems” and he’s making wild post-prison allegations in a desperate attempt to sell his self-published book, Mayor Daley said today.

Responding for the first time to Laski’s claim that Daley has a “selective memory” and “knows more than he says he does” about the Hired Truck scandal, the mayor made a thinly-veiled reference to Laski’s well-publicized bout with drinking and drugs.

A sentencing report said the former clerk had been drinking nine beers a night before his conviction and that he took 10 medications a day to control panic attacks and related stomach disorders.

Earlier this week, Laski himself acknowledged drinking as many as 14 beers a-day — and popping two valiums — before he went cold turkey shortly before going off to a federal prison in West Virginia.

“Jim Laski’s had a lot of personal problems in his life and challenges. I know his family. [He should] just get on with his wife, get on with his family and handle his own situation. I’m not gonna [respond] to his personal challenges…He had a lot of personal challenges even today. He should get on with his life,” Daley said.

When a reporter noted that Laski was challenging the mayor’s credibility, Daley said, “Everybody does it. You do it every day.”

The mayor was asked point-blank whether Laski was “lying” when he claimed to have worked through Daley’s top lieutenants to get Hired Truck business for the lifelong friend who betrayed him.

“He says everything. He’ll say everything in a book about me. Nobody else. That’s how it is,” Daley said, claiming Laski is “definitely” trying to sell the book by making allegations against the mayor.

Daley appointed Laski to fill an aldermanic vacancy in the 23rd ward, only to have Laski become a constant thorn in the mayor’s side.

Laski lead a 1992 City Council rebellion against successive property tax increases proposed by the mayor. Three years later, he blew the lid on millions in unpaid water bills and parking tickets owed by city employees.

That’s apparently why the mayor believes it defies credibility for Laski to suggest that a whispering Daley had asked Laski during a private meeting in the mayor’s office whether he had “heard anything from the guys down the street,” meaning federal prosecutors.

“Maybe I said four words to him,” over the years, the mayor said.

A livid Laski said he had numerous private meetings with the mayor and challenged Daley to “have his secretary pull the records.”

“When is he gonna have the guts to stand up and tell the truth? It’s typical Daley. Blame somebody else. He’ll never take responsibility for anything. He throws out these slanderous statements about people and he’s just blatantly lying. Maybe he better take a look at himself in the mirror,” Laski said.

“Now he’s gonna say I had personal problems and challenges and impugn my credibility because I openly admitted that I drank too much and took pills and try to say I’m crazy or something? Don’t insult my intelligence and don’t insult the people of Chicago’s intelligence. His feathers are ruffled. Somebody called him on something and he doesn’t like it. He’s the mayor. He’s not God. Take responsibility.”

Laski, 54, plead guilty in 2006 to accepting $48,000 in bribes in exchange for steering Hired Truck business to lifelong friend Mick Jones. He also admitted that he coached a witness to lie to a grand jury.

In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times earlier this week, Laski said he brokered Hired Trucks through the “buffers” who insulated the mayor from blame: former Ald. Patrick Huels (11th); former Intergovernmental Affairs Director Victor Reyes and the mayor’s former patronage chief Robert Sorich.

Laski also told the Sun-Times he was in First Deputy Water Commissioner Donald Tomczak’s office at the Jardine Water Filtration plant on numerous occasions when Reyes and Sorich called to tell Tomczak where to send his political army of city workers.

Daley has said he cannot identify the city officials who gave Tomczak his marching orders. The mayor has also condemned Tomczak’s notorious tactics: shaking down truckers for campaign contributions and using jobs, promotions, pay raises and overtime to reward political foot soldiers.

Laski described Daley as a “paranoid,” one-way-street of a politician who “blows hot and cold” with other elected officials and is “always thinking somebody’s out to get him, somebody’s out to run against him.”

“He never trusted anybody,” the former clerk said.

2008-02-15T08:30:00.000-06:00

Disgraced ex-city clerk takes on Mayor Daley
Laski on Mayor: 'He knows more than he says'

February 12, 2008
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter/fspielman@suntimes.com
Convicted former City Clerk Jim Laski said Monday he worked through Mayor Daley's top lieutenants to get Hired Truck business for the lifelong friend who betrayed him and, therefore, believes the mayor knows a lot more about the scandal than he has publicly admitted.

Free after spending eleven months in a West Virginia federal prison and six months at a Chicago halfway house, Laski is pointing fingers at the mayor in a tell-all book and in-depth interview.

Laski said he started brokering Hired Trucks in 1995 through Ald. Patrick Huels (11th), the mayor's City Council floor leader, then switched to Intergovernmental Affairs Director Victor Reyes after an unrelated scandal forced Huels' resignation. When Reyes left, the mayor's patronage chief Robert Sorich became Laski's go-to guy. He also dealt with First Deputy Water Commissioner Donald Tomczak.

Laski described Huels, Reyes and Sorich as "buffers" who gave Daley deniability and insulated the mayor from blame.

But, when a whispering Daley asked Laski during a meeting in the mayor's office whether he had "heard anything from the guys down the street," meaning federal prosecutors, it became clear to the clerk that the mayor knew more than he was letting on.

Motives questioned
The meeting took place after the Chicago Sun-Times blew the lid off the Hired Truck scandal, but before Laski had been publicly implicated.

"I went to Victor. I was on the phone in my house with Sorich about trucks. I wasn't hiding anything. . . .

"It was no secret. I'm not saying Daley knew anything about that. All I'm telling you is . . . he knows more than he says he does," Laski said.

"When I was trying to get a job for my oldest daughter, Victor Reyes told me, 'When it comes to family or something high-profile, you've got to see the mayor personally.' You go see the mayor on certain things, then he tells people he has a selective memory."

Laski said he was in Tomczak's office at the Jardine Water Filtration plant on numerous occasions when Reyes and Sorich called to tell Tomczak where to send his political army of city workers.

Daley has said he cannot identify the city officials who gave Tomczak his marching orders. The mayor has also condemned Tomczak's notorious tactics: shaking down truckers for campaign contributions and using jobs, promotions, pay raises and overtime to reward political foot soldiers.

Laski described Daley as a "paranoid," one-way-street of a politician who "blows hot and cold" with other elected officials and is "always thinking somebody's out to get him, somebody's out to run against him."

"He never trusted anybody," the clerk said.

Mayoral press secretary Jacquelyn Heard countered:

"What is the motivation for saying these things now? And where is the proof?" She added, "I know it takes intrigue, scandal and/or controversy to sell books. And I wholeheartedly believe that's what Mr. Laski is trying to do."

Laski, 54, pleaded guilty in 2006 to accepting $48,000 in bribes in exchange for steering Hired Truck business to lifelong friend Mike Jones. He also admitted that he coached a witness to lie to a grand jury. Laski's self-published book is titled My Fall From Grace: City Hall to Prison Walls.

On Monday, Laski gave an exclusive interview to the Chicago Sun-Times in the same Southwest home where Mick Jones and his wife, Traci, wore a wire and a hidden camera to incriminate him.

"If I didn't take the money from Mick Jones, it wouldn't have mattered how many wires he wore. I made a mistake. I put friendship before my family and my job. It's my own fault. It was my stupidity. . . . [But], it ripped my heart out," Laski said, his voice rising.

"To come over on the day my dad died. To come over on my birthday and on the day I went for a colonoscopy -- when my wife opened up the door, Mick and Traci Jones almost knocked her over. They charged down the stairs wired up. . . . I mean, this was a well-orchestrated plan."

Also implicates Bill Lipinski
As for the infamous phrase "Go Cubs," which he used to signal a witness to lie to the grand jury about his dealings with Tomczak, Laski, a die-hard Sox fan, said it wasn't his idea.

"It didn't come from me. . . . It came from the FBI and Mick Jones. Tell Laski to say, 'Go Cubs' so that'll be the friggin' cue and one of the things we can nail him on. [U.S. Attorney Patrick] Fitzgerald was standing there at the press conference with a smirk on his face saying, 'Laski said Go Cubs,' " Laski said.

The former clerk also implicated former Congressman Bill Lipinski, Laski's mentor-turned-nemesis, even more deeply in the ghost payrolling that went on during Laski's days as 23rd Ward alderman.

Laski said he hired a handful of employees at the congressmen's direction who did remodeling work at Lipinski's home and congressional office.

Laski was Lipiniski's former chief-of-staff and succeeded Lipinski as alderman. But he was kicked out of Lipinski's 23rd Ward Regular Democratic Organization after leading City Council rebellions against consecutive property tax increases proposed by Daley.

Lipinski, Reyes and Huels could not be reached for comment.

2008-02-15T08:29:00.000-06:00

Listen up!

February 10, 2008
BY MICHAEL SNEED Sun-Times Columnist
Mayor Daley . . . grab the Excedrin!

Former City Clerk Jim Laski, who was sent to federal prison on corruption charges stemming from the Hired Truck scandal, is about to take you on a bumpy ride.

• • Translation: Laski, now free, has written a book, My Fall from Grace: City Hall to Prison Walls, in which he has some unkind words to say about Mayor Daley.

• • To wit: In the 419-page self-published book, Laski compares Daley to Capt. Queeg, the mentally unbalanced ship's captain in Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny.

• • Daley schmooze: In his book, Laski claims Daley invited him into his private City Hall conference room and asked if he'd heard "from anybody down the street." -- Hizzoner's reference to the feds -- during a probe of alleged time-sheet fraud at City Hall.

• • The upshot: When Laski said, "No!" Daley offered to give him some advice.

• • Quoth Laski: "He spoke quietly as if we were being bugged. He told me, in a very serious tone of voice, that, in order to survive in this business, I had to have a buffer.

"At that point, he reminded me of Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, when he warned me that everyone would be trying to get me, especially the press.

"He basically told me that I needed someone to protect me, and that where the buck would stop, everything would end there with that person.

"In my opinion, Daley was forever surrounding himself with his own personal buffers.

"Even today, I still hear the Mayor, over and over, pleading ignorance about the latest Chicago political scandal.

"I was in government service for about twenty-seven years, sixteen of those as an elected official, and, in my opinion, the mayor knows everything that goes on in City Hall."

• • The back shot: For more information, go to the Author House Web site, authorhouse .com, and to Laski's Web site, www.myfallfromgrace.com.

2007-10-16T12:37:00.000-05:00

Cops let Alderman Tom Tunney skip license hassle
NOT USUAL 'PROTOCOL' | Tunney got cell phone ticket, handed over driver's license -- but police gave it back after he made a call

October 16, 2007
BY FRAN SPIELMAN AND ANNIE SWEENEY Staff Reporters/fspielman@suntimes.com, asweeney@suntimes.com

Ald. Tom Tunney, like thousands of other motorists, got caught talking on his cell phone while he was driving last week.

What he also got -- which most drivers don't -- was a visit from a Chicago Police officer who returned Tunney's driver's license to him at the alderman's 44th Ward office. The license was returned Friday after Tunney called Town Hall District Cmdr. Gary Yamashiroya to tell him about the ticketing earlier in the day -- which Tunney said he didn't dispute. "I should have known better. And I'm gonna try to get my car equipped so it doesn't happen again," Tunney said. "It's fairly common to see people talking on their cell phones. So, I got caught. I'm treated like everybody else." Motorists generally get their licenses back after they go to court or after they pay their fine and the license is mailed to them. Tunney said he called the commander to inform him of the ticket. The alderman works closely with Yamashiroya on issues pertaining to Wrigley Field. "I called the commander and said, 'This is what happened.' And he suggested, 'The least I can do is return your driver's license to you.'" Tunney said an officer -- not the one who ticketed him -- brought the license to his ward office, and he had to sign an affidavit with conditions for getting the license back. Yamashiroya was on vacation and couldn't be reached Monday, department spokeswoman Monique Bond said. The returning of the license to Tunney's office will be reviewed, Bond said. But she said there have been "extenuating circumstances" where citizens -- average citizens -- were allowed to pay a ticket and get their license back at police stations. "It has to be very, very extenuating -- [such as] someone has to go out of the country," Bond said. When asked about accepting the favor, Tunney said: "Oh, I don't know. I don't know what the [normal] protocol is. I very seldom get stopped. It's still a violation. ... It makes it more convenient, I guess, for the time where it's in the court system. But, I signed off on that."
Tunney, who in 2005 voted for the ban on cell phone use while driving without a hands-free device, said he was conducting routine business while holding his cell phone and driving. "I was remiss," he said. "I should have an appliance in my car because I need to be on the phone all the time. I should have known better." As of August, Chicago Police had issued about 8,500 violations for using a hand-held cell phone while driving -- a $50 ticket. In 2006, police wrote 13,400 tickets.

Fugitive in City Hall case not so defiant this time

2007-10-09T10:33:00.000-05:00

'Who am I? I'm a little ant compared to these people.'

By Oscar Avila | Tribune foreign correspondent October 9, 2007

MEXICO CITY - A decade ago, Chicago contractor Marco Morales fled to Mexico to avoid going to prison and testifying against a top city official he bribed. As he sits in a Mexico City prison awaiting possible extradition to Chicago, Morales has undergone a change of heart. He's ready to talk to prosecutors, but he's not sure if he has much to offer, since he has been away from Chicago for so long. In an hourlong jailhouse interview with a Tribune reporter Monday, Morales said he was caught by surprise when Mexican agents arrested him last month. He considers himself a small-time criminal who has become the victim of a political vendetta by U.S. authorities. Morales said he has come to terms with the fact that he likely will be extradited to the U.S. within months. He now says that he would cooperate with federal prosecutors if it would reduce his prison time for charges that he sold 2 pounds of cocaine to an FBI informant. "I'm going to see if they can knock [that sentence] down," Morales said in his first interview since his arrest. But Morales, who pleaded guilty to bribery and mail fraud in 1996 as part of the wide-ranging Operation Silver Shovel probe, said he isn't sure he can provide any information on Chicago corruption that prosecutors would find useful. "What can I offer them that's going to be worth something? It's been 12 years," Morales said. "I'm a convict to a certain extent. What's my testimony against somebody else's?" At the time of his guilty plea, in 1996, Morales said he bribed Anthony Pucillo, a former high-ranking Transportation Department official under Mayor Richard Daley. Pucillo, who has denied wrongdoing, ran a pro-Daley army of city workers, according to court testimony. In addition to Morales, Operation Silver Shovel netted the convictions of six Chicago aldermen and eleven others. One alderman was acquitted. In 1997, after his conviction, Morales fled to Mexico instead of reporting to a federal prison in Michigan to serve his 59-month sentence. In 2004, he successfully fought off an extradition attempt because the statute of limitations on the bribery and fraud charges had expired.

At the time of the first extradition bid, Morales said he had been threatened at gunpoint if he testified and fled for his family's safety. Now that so much time has passed, he said Monday, he no longer feels at risk. Last year, federal prosecutors charged Morales in the drug case again in a new bid to win his extradition. Prosecutors had dropped that charge as part of his initial plea agreement. The U.S. government has not yet filed a formal extradition request for Morales, but officials have until mid-November to do so. U.S. officials noted that Mexico has been more cooperative this year in extraditing suspects back to the U.S. In addition, drug crimes are specifically eligible for extradition under a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Mexico. Unlike the loophole Morales used in the corruption case, the statute of limitations in drug cases extends to 17 years and has not expired in his case. Those factors mean that fighting extradition this time will "be a little more complicated," said Mauro Negrete, a member of Morales' legal team. In fact, Morales, 62, has lost the swagger he displayed in an interview with the Tribune after his first arrest in Mexico three years ago. Then, he was confident he would avoid extradition and proved to be right. Now, Morales admits to a sense of pessimism. Before his recent arrest, his restaurant, a lunch counter in the Yucatan city of Merida, went out of business. Morales said he had been living on a $400 monthly union pension check while caring for his ailing parents. Morales once again denied claims that he has received money from his son, who has collected millions of dollars in city contracts since Morales fled to Mexico. In Monday's interview, Morales fought back tears as he described the telephone calls he makes to his parents from prison with a calling card. "When you call them, they start crying," he said. "It gets to you." The evidence against Morales in the drug case appears solid: the FBI informant, a crooked waste hauler, videotaped the sale. Morales, however, said he considers the drug case to be "entrapment." Negrete said attorneys have not decided whether that will be their official defense. If convicted on the drug charge, Morales faces as many as 40 years in prison. He said he never thought authorities would keep pursuing him but also said he now realizes that U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald would never let him skip out on a plea deal, especially one focused on City Hall corruption.

"Who am I? I'm a little ant compared to these people," Morales said. "It's a vendetta. They figure they couldn't get me the first time. They're going to get me the second time. [The prosecutors] are not going to give up. "They're going to make a show: 'Nobody gets away from us no matter where they go.'" "It's now personal," Negrete added. "It has surpassed the judicial sphere." Although Morales acknowledged that bribing city officials was wrong, he said he would do it again because it was necessary for a businessman to get ahead in Chicago. For now, he has started making a new life for himself in the North Prison, a high-security facility on the fringes of the city. He watches movies on the communal TV and cooks eggs for breakfast in the kitchen. Morales sleeps in a large room with seven other inmates, most of them accused of white-collar crimes. Inmates don't have to wear prison uniforms, and Morales arrived at the interview in a linen shirt, khaki pants, white tennis shoes and no handcuffs. He has one accessory: a black cloth rosary that he wears around his wrist. Morales, who said he is Catholic, conceded that he doesn't use the rosary to pray but wears it because almost all the inmates wear one. "I'm not really a person who goes to church every week," he said. Instead, the man who parlayed City Hall connections, and cash payoffs, into a lucrative living sees the rosaries as a business opportunity. "I'm going to start making them and selling them," he said. "Something to get by until I see what happens."

2007-10-04T13:24:00.000-05:00

Hired Monday, gone Wednesday
Coveted county job given to girlfriend of commissioner -- but she only lasts 2 days
October 4, 2007
BY STEVE PATTERSON Staff Reporter/spatterson@suntimes.com

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger this week hired the girlfriend of his powerful ally, Commissioner William Beavers, for a coveted county job.

But after the Chicago Sun-Times began inquiring Wednesday about the hiring of Patty Young, she was taken off the payroll.

Both Young and Beavers initially denied she was a county employee, but other employees confirmed she had been working there.

Young later said she decided not to accept the job in the county Purchasing Department -- where she would have reported to the wife of Stroger's best friend -- because it didn't pay enough.

"The county offered me a job, but I decided not to take it," Young said. "I don't know who offered it to me, but it wasn't enough money, so I didn't take it. It's got to be the right situation."

By late Wednesday, though, a county spokeswoman confirmed Young had been tapped by Stroger as an administrative assistant and had worked from Monday until Wednesday, when "a mutual decision was reached to reverse the hire." The spokeswoman said Young won't be paid for the days she worked.

The county denied a request from the Sun-Times for a copy of Young's application or resume and refused to divulge her salary.

Young has been on stress leave from her job with the Chicago Department of Transportation since June.

A former co-worker told the Sun-Times recently that she "never wrote any citations, hardly did any work and spent most of her time in the office just walking around."

Young denies that but says she took the leave of absence after her boss allegedly harassed her with racist and sexist comments.

City officials couldn't be reached to say whether Young ever notified them of any change in her job status this week.

The county Purchasing Department where Young briefly worked is headed by Carmen Triche-Colvin, wife of state Rep. Marlow Colvin (D-Chicago). Stroger's cousin Vincent Jones is the top deputy of the department, which is responsible for contracts for county goods and services.

Commissioner Forrest Claypool bemoaned "the latest installment of the Todd Stroger friends and family hiring plan," adding that Young's hiring "is not surprising. It's Cook County-style nepotism and patronage."

2007-10-03T09:28:00.000-05:00

Is This a Gag?

The city’s lawyers claim a gag order prevents them from discussing the strange deal they made to settle police torture lawsuits. There’s no order.
By Chicago Reader's John Conroy
September 28, 2007

Note: This story has been updated at the end since it was originally published.

A secret agreement that benefits only Mayor Daley. A mysterious side issue that stops a settlement in its tracks. Lawyers refusing to talk because of a gag order that nobody ordered. What’s going on? Why doesn’t the city settle with three victims of police torture and stop paying private attorneys public money to negotiate with them?

Two lawyers are at the heart of this story—Mara Georges, who’s the city’s corporation counsel, and Terrence Burns, an attorney with Dykema Gossett who was hired to defend the city against civil suits that accuse Chicago police officers of torture. Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard, Leroy Orange, and Aaron Patterson collectively spent more than half a century on death row before they were pardoned in 2003 by Governor George Ryan. They filed their suits not long after.

It became apparent during the settlement talks that the Hobley, Howard, and Orange cases would be the easiest to close, and the city focused on them. Last October a deal was at hand. The city agreed to pay a total of $14.8 million in damage claims and attorneys’ fees. And as the Reader revealed this summer (“The Meter’s Still Running and the Mayor’s Still Mum,” July 6), the plaintiffs agreed to accept four secret conditions written to protect Mayor Daley.

The plaintiffs would not name Mayor Richard Daley as a defendant “in a civil rights, obstruction of justice, and racketeering conspiracy . . . and they would not seek a finding of liability and damages from Daley for his alleged conspiratorial actions while serving as Cook County State’s Attorney.”
They wouldn’t pursue Daley’s deposition.
They wouldn’t criticize Daley in any public statements made in connection with the settlement.
These terms would remain secret and would not be put in the written agreement.
Daley was Cook County’s state’s attorney from 1980 to 1989. During that time Hobley, Orange, Howard, and Patterson were interrogated as murder suspects by detectives who either were serving or had served under Commander Jon Burge. By 1993 allegations of torture had risen to such a pitch that after a Police Board hearing Burge was thrown off the force. But those allegations first surfaced at a time when Daley could have looked into them, and his office did nothing.

According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, and as we reported in July, the two sides came to terms last November 3. When they met on December 27 before Judge Marvin Aspen, who’d been mediating the talks, the city gave no indication of any problem. Assured that a settlement was at hand, Madison Hobley signed a contract to buy a house. Soon, however, Burns let it be known that a problem had arisen. This was an issue, he said, that had nothing directly to do with the three cases, but it needed to be resolved and he couldn’t tell the plaintiffs what it was. Presumably Burns told Judge Aspen. On January 11 Aspen informed the plaintiffs that the “minor” issue had been resolved and the paperwork could be completed in a matter of days.

But weeks passed. At a status hearing on February 13, Burns said the mysterious issue was still not resolved, there was no telling when it would be, the plaintiffs could do nothing to clear it up, and he had no idea when the city would sign the agreement.

An April 5 pleading by plaintiffs’ attorneys described the moment: “In the presence of a room full of lawyers and his clerks, [Aspen said] that the City’s conduct was ‘unprecedented’ in his many years of experience, and that while he would not say that City attorney Burns ‘acted in bad faith,’ he ‘could not say the same for his client.’” Aspen’s been a federal judge since 1979.

The plaintiffs have spent the last seven months arguing that as of last October 23, when they accepted the city’s $14.8 million offer, they and the city had a done deal, a “meeting of the minds” that under federal case law constitutes a binding and enforceable settlement agreement, whether or not it was signed. In their view the “secret” issue has no bearing on the agreement, not having arisen until two months after the parties came to terms.

But Burns and Georges, the lawyers for the city, say otherwise, and because they do, Hobley eventually had to forfeit his $2,500 deposit. Burns claims there’s no agreement because the City Council hasn’t approved it. Here’s what’s funny about that: the aldermen, to judge by recent rhetoric, are eager to settle the cases but can’t approve this agreement because Burns and Georges have never presented it to them.

Burns has argued that the negotiations failed but the city can’t explain why they failed because Judge Aspen—and magistrate judge Michael Mason, who also played a role—ordered that the negotiations be kept confidential. That sounds as though a judge imposed a gag order, but Mason’s deputy clerk and a former clerk for Aspen, on duty until last week, both have told the Reader that there wasn’t one.

According to a courthouse regular who’s familiar with Aspen’s mediation procedures, there was surely “an implicit understanding of confidentiality.” But such an understanding always exists when court-supervised settlements are being negotiated. And when the negotiations are over there’s no enforceable judicial order forbidding anyone from saying what went on in chambers. An implicit understanding falls far short of what Georges’s first deputy, Karen Seimetz, told the City Council Finance Committee on September 4. The committee was discussing a resolution submitted by aldermen Howard Brookins and Ed Smith that expressed outrage at the “estimated $10 million in legal fees accumulated defending both the city and the accused officers” and demanded that the payments cease and the Finance Committee swiftly approve a settlement in all outstanding cases. Seimetz responded that she was barred by a judicial order from discussing the settlement negotiations in the Hobley, Howard, and Orange cases. Brookins was furious. “We are the client,” he said. “She cannot be precluded from telling us what happened in court. She represents us.”

At that point committee chairman Edward Burke adjourned the public meeting in favor of a closed executive session of the Finance Committee. Brookins, not being a committee member, was kept outside. Georges herself spoke, but when the committee’s members emerged they said, according to the Chicago Tribune, that they couldn’t reveal what they’d heard, “citing warnings they received not to violate the court order.”

But there was no court order. Burns has not even consistently acted as if he thought there was. In his March 22 response to a plaintiff’s motion to enforce the settlement, Burns claimed to be operating under orders of confidentiality imposed by Aspen and Mason. But on the next page he apparently violated those orders—if they existed—by reporting what Aspen said and did not say during settlement discussions.

In the wake of the September 4 Finance Committee meeting, WBBM radio reported that Seimetz indicated one “holdout plaintiff” was holding up the settlement of the suits. But this plaintiff, Aaron Patterson, wasn’t even part of the Hobley, Orange, and Howard mediation so he wasn’t in much of a position to hold it up. There’s no apparent reason why the city can’t settle with Hobley, Orange, and Howard now and with Patterson later—indeed, in the wake of the September 4 meeting Alderman Toni Preckwinkle described the close-all-or-none approach as a “stupid legal strategy.”

For one thing, every day the Hobley, Orange, and Howard suits remain unsettled costs the city money—four private firms are being paid to represent the city and the individual defendants. And even when those suits, and Patterson’s too, are settled, the Burge civil-suit nightmare won’t be over. There’s now a fifth suit—it’s been filed by Darrell Cannon, the former El Rukn general released from prison this year who describes being tortured with a cattle prod in 1983.

Last fall, after terms were reached in the Hobley, Orange, and Howard suits, Judge Aspen held a mediation session in the Patterson case. Burns, Georges, Aspen, representatives of the city’s insurance company, and Patterson’s attorney, Frank Avila, were present. According to a source who’s spoken with two of the people who attended, Avila had sought assurances in advance from Burns that the negotiations would be swift (the Hobley, Orange, and Howard cases have taken years to settle) and a reasonable offer would be on the table from the get-go, but Avila got no reply. At the meeting, an offer of $1 million so infuriated Avila that at one point, when the judge wasn’t there, he said something on the order of “This is bullshit. Fuck you.” Given the timing of the meeting and the city’s stated desire to settle all four cases at once, it seems likely that the failure to settle with Patterson is Burns’s “mysterious issue.”

Avila won’t comment on what happened at that meeting, but he does believe the failure of Burns and Georges to settle with Patterson killed the deal in the other three cases. Avila says his client would accept around $5 million, maybe less if certain terms are met. One proposal would have Patterson, who recently received a 30-year prison sentence on federal drug and gun charges, shaving a million dollars off the settlement in exchange for a two-hour meeting with the mayor at which he would discuss prosecutorial misconduct and other matters. (Patterson met privately with Governor Ryan on Ryan’s last day in office, having been freed from death row the day before.)

Burns didn’t respond to questions submitted to him by the Reader last Friday asking why he seemed to be claiming there’d been a gag order when there hadn’t and why—if he thought there was one—he apparently violated it himself. Georges got the same questions and answered some of them. She said there was no written order but asserted that Judge Aspen had orally directed the parties to keep quiet and “the City has not violated the judge’s direction.”

As both Burns and Georges are supposed to represent the city’s interests, their negotiation of the secret clauses might give some aldermen pause. Did Burns and Georges intend to reveal those clauses to the council at some point? And who do Burns and Georges work for anyway? If a council member wanted to add his or her own secret clause, would Burns and Georges try to negotiate it? And presumably the plaintiffs didn’t accept the secret clauses just to be good sports—how much will those clauses cost the city?

Georges received stunningly bad reviews for her testimony in last year’s trial of Robert Sorich, the mayor’s longtime patronage chief. Georges testified that she was unaware of political influence in hiring. Jury foreman Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told the Tribune she was the prosecution’s least credible witness, and federal judge David Coar, who presided over the trial, said, “I found the Mara Georges position in all of this incredible.”

But Mayor Daley likes her. After Sorich was convicted he was quoted in the Tribune saying Georges has been a “very, very good corporation counsel . . . full of integrity, honesty, dedication.”

New developments in the settlement saga: Georges and Burns were to be grilled at Wednesday’s meeting of the Finance Committee; instead the committee passed Alderman Ed Smith’s motion to table the issue for two weeks. Smith, who’d earlier sponsored a resolution urging a settlement and an end to funding the private law firms involved in the case, indicated that the landscape was likely to change quickly.

In the discussion of Smith’s motion it became apparent that mediation with Judge Aspen had resumed on Tuesday and that the city had made an offer. It must have been a good one—plaintiffs attorney Flint Taylor supported Smith’s motion.

As to the alleged gag order, Georges told the committee that she’d clarified with Aspen the day before that the parties were bound to silence, though no written order said so. But mediation had resumed that day, putting standard mediation procedures requiring confidentiality back into effect.

2007-10-03T09:26:00.000-05:00

Watchdog must have done his job too well
CITY HALL | Inspector general pushed aside after rooting out corruption

9/9/07 BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist
David Hoffman has good reason to look weary. One, he's a new dad whose 2-week-old infant son is keeping him up at night. And two, he's Chicago's independent inspector general, who has fallen out of favor with the mayor.
Funny, at exactly the same time Hoffman was off on a two-week paternity leave, the City Council with record speed rammed a new ordinance through committee one day and to the floor for a vote the next, creating a new Office of Compliance. And lo and behold, that new office is designed to do pretty much what Hoffman's has been doing: monitor city hiring to prevent political patronage abuse that the federal Shakman decree has declared unlawful.

In a time of budget austerity and threatened tax increases, why would the city create a new, expensive, redundant department? Maybe to subvert Hoffman, who has been doing his job a little too well. The David Hoffman who today has a target on his back is the same one who came to work for city government in 2005 amid much fanfare. Daley stood right next to him at a mayoral news conference, hailed Hoffman's arrival and offered his ''full support . . . to root out and prevent misconduct -- whether in hiring, contracts or wherever it occurs.''

Note: In the Daley Dictionary, "full support" is not a synonym for "enduring.''
Yes, Hoffman had an excellent resume. A former assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago with a Yale and University of Chicago Law School pedigree, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist.

And yes, back when he was appointed, the Daley administration really needed him to publicly prove its reform-mindedness. The Hired Truck scandal was raging, and a federal probe of city contracts and political hiring was expanding. It included the outrageous case of the city handing a $50,000-a-year building inspector job to a well-connected, utterly unqualified 19-year-old named Andy Ryan. Bad press required a new broom. But as Sun-Times City Hall reporter Fran Spielman noted last month, "Now a marriage of necessity is showing serious signs of strain."

As Spielman reported, the mayor's office was not pleased when Hoffman recommended that Building Department boss Christopher Kozicki be fired for rigging the hiring of young Ryan. Kozicki, after all, was close to the Daleys. Or when Hoffman went after a Water Department foreman early this year for muscling co-workers to sign Daley mayoral nominating petitions. And City Hall sources say Law Department head and mayoral apparatchik Mara Georges did not like Hoffman's close working relationship with federal court hiring monitor Noelle Brennan, who helps make sure that the Shakman decree is followed.

Now it's showdown time. Pretty soon, U.S. District Court Judge Wayne Anderson will decide who will assume Brennan's duties once her work is finished. Brennan, as well as federal plaintiff Michael Shakman, believe it should be Hoffman, who has established a track record of integrity and independence. But the city, suddenly, wants yet another new broom. Hence, the creation of a suddenly necessary new watchdog agency headed by someone the mayor has yet to name.

Judge Anderson is not going to be suckered into buying any of this, I'm guessing.
But in the meantime, the Office of Compliance is off and running. Soon the mayor will announce who will head it. There undoubtedly will be another news conference like the one with David Hoffman. And the mayor, who no longer stands anywhere near his inspector general, will be at the side of his new appointee, pledging ''full support.''

New appointee, whoever you are, remember this:
David Hoffman isn't quitting. And under the law, the mayor can't fire him for another two years. Hoffman has established a track record of integrity and independence. But suddenly, the city wants yet another new broom.

2007-10-03T09:18:00.000-05:00

It's deja vu over deal for Daley's kin
Vanecko's feeding at public trough takes ethics back to the early '70s

September 25, 2007
BY MARK BROWN Sun-Times Columnist
Much has changed in Chicago since Mayor Richard J. Daley steered city insurance and law business to his sons in the early 1970s and then famously invited anybody who didn't like it to kiss his behind.

These days it's city pension business that's going not to the son but the nephew of Mayor Richard M. Daley, who not only makes no allusions to strategically positioned mistletoe, he says he didn't even know anything about his nephew's good fortune.

We've come a long way, baby.
If that seems overly cynical, sorry, but it's stories like this that tend to make us that way. I hope you caught Sunday's report by our investigative ace, Tim Novak, but if you missed it, here's the gist:

The mayor's nephew, Robert G. Vanecko, is a partner in a real estate venture that has received $68 million from five city-connected public pension funds. The venture is supposed to earn money for the pension funds by investing the $68 million in individual real estate projects of its choosing. The business just got started, so it's too early to say how well it's doing, but no matter how it does, Vanecko and his partner, mayoral ally Allison Davis, stand to collect at least $3 million in management fees from the arrangement. They could make as much as $8.4 million in fees alone over the course of their contract, which runs through 2014. That's aside from any profits they may make on the individual developments, which could include their own projects. In short, it's a nice deal if you can get it, which of course, you can't.

'I'm not on that board'
Naturally, though, everyone acts as if it's just a coincidence that it's the mayor's nephew who landed on this inside track. At an unrelated news conference Monday at Navy Pier, the mayor was asked by the Sun-Times' Fran Spielman if he thought this was a sound investment for the pension funds. "It doesn't matter," the mayor asserted. "They have to make their professional decisions. I'm not on that board. They make decisions. Pension boards do that every day." His comments ignored the fact that mayoral appointees serve on these pension boards and have been known to exert their influence, to put it nicely. The mayor was then asked if he would rather his nephew hadn't gotten involved with the pension funds. "Wait, wait, wait," Daley interrupted. "It could be any business. They could be in real estate. They could be in development. They could be in anything, and he's a professional young man, and he's going to make decisions."

As you probably appreciate, it's not a question of what profession the mayor's nieces and nephews have chosen to pursue, but whether they choose to pursue it while feeding at the public trough. Ever since the embarrassing revelations of the early '70's, the Daley family has seemed to operate under a philosophy that family members are either in government doing the people's business and settling for a public paycheck or they make a living in the private sector. There are exceptions, but unless we've missed something, they've drawn the line at working in the private sector while taking government contracts, a world where you can get rich at the public's expense. The Vanecko deal crosses that line. Vanecko, 42, is the son of the mayor's sister, Mary Carol. He was the first born of the late Mayor Daley's 22 grandkids.

The right people will know
Vanecko said he never told anyone at the pension funds about Uncle Rich.
"As a matter of practice, I don't disclose this relationship," he told the Sun-Times in an e-mail, choosing not to sit for an interview with Novak. "He is my uncle. I don't trade on his name." I'd guess he doesn't need to tell them. Whether he realizes it or not, there's always going to be somebody around to make sure the right people know. You can bet Allison Davis knew he was going into business with the mayor's nephew and understood the potential benefits of such a relationship, especially for a man whose business success is dependent on the continued goodwill of the city's political leadership. One of the projects Davis and Vanecko are eyeing is one of the big CHA redevelopment projects along the lakefront. They're going to need a lot of public subsidies to make that work. Back in the '70's, Richard J. Daley responded to his critics with a quotation from his mother: "There's a mistletoe hangin' from my coattail." Maybe it was my own mother who liked to say: The more things change the more they stay they same.

2007-10-03T09:10:00.001-05:00

TRIBUNE EXCLUSIVE

City withholds list of accused police
Lawyer had agreed to show aldermen
By David Heinzmann and Gary Washburn | Tribune staff reporters
October 3, 2007

The City of Chicago's top lawyer has denied at least one alderman's written request to see a list of Chicago police officers who have the most excessive force complaints during the last five years, a move that critics say contradicts what the lawyer told federal judges this summer.

Corporation Counsel Mara Georges recently sent a letter to Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th), denying her Aug. 23 request for an unredacted list of Office of Professional Standards complaints.

In July, when the city was arguing in federal court to keep the documents secret, Georges assured the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals that aldermen would have access to the confidential records.

"We have agreed to make the confidential documents available to any City Council member who requests them," Georges declared in the city's July 13 emergency motion seeking a stay of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow's order to unseal the records and make them available to the general public.

But in a letter dated Sept. 11, Georges referenced the same appellate court proceedings in turning down Preckwinkle's request.

"These documents are the subject of a pending appeal that seeks to maintain their confidentiality, and we wish to avoid any possibility that allowing them to be reviewed would affect that appeal," Georges wrote. "I hope you understand that I will, therefore, be unable to fulfill your request."

City officials maintain that they made good on the promise to provide the information when they provided copies of the documents with the officers' names blacked out to aldermen in late July, said spokeswoman Jodi Kawada.

The disagreement over the documents comes amid a widening scandal involving the Police Department's Special Operations Section. The documents show that SOS officers have received a disproportionately high number of excessive force complaints.

Georges' argument in the July 13 motion made no mention of redacting names from the documents. And the city's appeal addressed only community activist's motion to make the list public, said Craig Futterman, the University of Chicago law professor who in 2004 filed the original lawsuit that produced the list on behalf of alleged victims. The city's appeal did not challenge Lefkow's order to turn the whole list, including officer names, over to aldermen, Futterman said.

"The judge didn't say 'turn over a redacted list,'" Futterman said.

Preckwinkle said she has not yet made up her mind on possible action, though she is considering whether "I want to go to the judge directly and ask what does she suggest I do."

The alderman made her request after Georges made the assurances to the appellate court.

"It is disappointing, but not surprising," Preckwinkle said Tuesday. "It is sort of consistent with bad behavior by the corporation counsel all the way along. ... This is distressing."

The city has been fighting to keep the records under a protective order in federal court while Mayor Richard Daley announced changes to OPS that he claimed were designed to make the workings of the police oversight agency more transparent.

In recent months the SOS scandal has broadened on multiple fronts. In August the Tribune reported that federal prosecutors were joining the Cook County state's attorney in the investigation. State prosecutors already had brought charges against seven officers accused of robbing and falsely arresting people.

Federal authorities are interested in investigating whether police commanders committed crimes, as well as whether the internal affairs division looked the other way and allowed the SOS officers to continue operating for years despite complaints piling up.

Last week, U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald charged a suspended officer, Jerome Finnigan, with plotting to murder a former officer who had been in his unit and had begun cooperating with investigators.

A copy of the documents with police officers' names redacted was made public in July. The records show that the top four police officers on the list, who all had 50 or more misconduct complaints in five years, were members of SOS. The top 10 Special Operations Section officers with the most complaints on the list had a combined total of 408 complaints during five years. Of those complaints, only three were sustained by OPS, and only one resulted in a suspension -- for 15 days. The other two cases ended with reprimands.

One SOS officer was accused of misconduct 55 times, with none of the complaints sustained, according to the documents.

Daley last week defended the unit as a critical law enforcement tool that has been unfairly marred by a few bad apples.

The documents were produced in a lawsuit against police officers and given to the plaintiff under a protective order keeping it secret. After the case was settled this year, Lefkow ordered the protective order lifted, making the records public.

But city lawyers objected, and the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals responded to Georges' July 13 motion by granting a stay while judges decide what to do about the case.

At a July 9 hearing before Lefkow, the judge said, "I do find it persuasive ... that aldermen of the city are interested in this information because it seems to me as our elected representatives they, of anyone, have an interest in this, a very legitimate interest."

The appellate court is expected to rule on the city's challenge later this fall.

dheinzmann@tribune.com

gwashburn@tribune.com

2007-10-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

Public Building chief is in line for new job
CITY HALL | Gayles boosted minority participation

October 3, 2007
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
After delivering the $254 million Kennedy-King College with record levels of minority participation, Public Building Commission executive director Montel Gayles is in line to inherit one of City Hall's biggest headaches: the Department of Procurement Services.

City Hall sources said Gayles has emerged as the front-runner to replace Chief Procurement Officer Barbara Lumpkin, who resigned last week, leaving behind a department that has struggled to boost black contracting and weed out minority fronts.

Led Kennedy-King project
Only a 10 percent share of the city's purchasing pie is awarded to African Americans, despite years of outreach and more recent efforts to break down barriers -- by raising the maximum net worth for construction contracts to $2 million and reducing to 10 percent the bonding requirement for contracts over $100,000.

Gayles would be a logical choice for the $169,452-a-year job. After serving as chief of staff to Chicago Housing Authority chief Terry Peterson, Gayles took over the Daley-chaired Public Building Commission at a critical time.

The commission was struggling to complete the Kennedy-King project, which was bogged down by $62 million in cost overruns and years of construction delays caused in part by community demands for a piece of the action.

Gayles satisfied those demands by dividing the project into smaller chunks to attract more minority bidders. He also engineered a city bailout that included a $10 million city loan, $20 million from tax-increment financing and $15 million in funds generated by putting off other City Colleges projects.

2007-10-03T08:50:00.000-05:00

Worker took city to court, now faces battery charge
STREETS AND SAN | Is it harassment because of suit? October 3, 2007
BY ERIC HERMAN Criminal Courts Reporter eherman@suntimes.com

Michael Sullivan -- the Streets and Sanitation worker who battled city patronage in federal court -- has found himself on the wrong end of the law.

Sullivan, 44, was arrested last Wednesday after shoving a fellow employee while trying to enter an office in a Streets and Sanitation building on the 2400 block of South Ashland, according to the Cook County state's attorney's office.

Prosecutors charged Sullivan with one count of misdemeanor battery. At a hearing Thursday, a judge set his bond at $1,000.

Plaintiff with Shakman
Michael Shakman, the lawyer whose federal anti-patronage lawsuit Sullivan joined in 2005, said Sullivan's arrest "was the result of harassment that has been brewing there for a long time because he has been a whistleblower with respect to patronage practices."

The incident came seven weeks after Sullivan went back to court, claiming he was denied city overtime because he had become a plaintiff in Shakman's lawsuit.

In 2005, Sullivan alleged the Streets and Sanitation Department gave better assignments and more overtime to workers with political clout, especially those with ties to Cook County Commissioner John Daley, the mayor's brother.

The city settled that suit in March, creating a fund for those denied jobs and awarding $25,000 to Sullivan.

In August, Sullivan went to court to enforce the agreement, with Shakman as his lawyer.

As for last week's incident, Sullivan "contends there was no battery," Shakman said.

Streets and San spokesman Matt Smith said a "violence in the workplace" incident was under investigation. He declined further comment.

2007-10-02T09:18:00.000-05:00

1,443 victims of rigged hiring?
'RAMPANT' PATRONAGE | Claims seek share of $12 million fund October 2, 2007
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter fspielman@suntimes.com
More than 1,400 people have staked claim to the $12 million fund created to compensate victims of City Hall's rigged hiring system, a federal monitor said Monday.

"It tells me what everyone has known all along: Political patronage continued to run rampant" in spite of the Shakman decree, said Ald. Joe Moore (49th).

Attorney Michael Shakman's landmark lawsuit was supposed to end political hiring and firing, but didn't.

Shakman suspects the number of victims is greater than 1,443. But some people are afraid of retribution, some chose to file their own lawsuits and others were unaware the reason they didn't get the job was the interviews were rigged, he said.

Referring to the 2006 trial that ended in the conviction of Mayor Daley's former patronage chief, Shakman said, "We know from the [Robert] Sorich trial that it was a wholesale process of rigged interviews and illegal hiring."

The $12 million fund is part of a settlement that allows the city to get out from under the Shakman decree on Dec. 31, 2008, if it can prove substantial compliance at that time.

Individual awards, capped at $100,000, will apply only to those who can prove they've been bypassed for jobs and promotions since Jan. 1, 2000.

On Monday, federal hiring monitor Noelle Brennan said 1,443 people filed claims by Friday's deadline and "hundreds" of those claims poured in at the end of last week.

2007-08-09T09:34:00.000-05:00

Sharpton puts city on notice
POLICE BRUTALITY | Establishing a base in Chicago, he plans to pressure mayor, state's attorney BY LISA DONOVAN Staff Reporter/ldonovan@suntimes.com
The Rev. Al Sharpton is coming to town.

The brash New York minister's civil rights organization is opening a Chicago chapter this week, in part to pressure Mayor Daley and the Cook County state's attorney's office to deal more swiftly with police officers accused of brutality. Controversy often follows the Rev. Al Sharpton, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination three years ago.

"There's been a consistent pattern of police misconduct, and a lot of people feel Daley has been getting a pass," Sharpton said.

He said that a zero-tolerance policy toward police misconduct must emanate from the city's highest elected office.

Sharpton, who sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, said his National Action Network has pushed for police to be held to the same standards as anyone accused of violent crime.

"As one that has worked police brutality cases successfully from Abner Louima on, I've gotten police officers . . . convicted," Sharpton said, referring to the high-profile New York police beating of a Haitian immigrant in 1997.

"You hear about problems in Chicago, but you don't hear what was done about those cases."

A spokesman for Cook County's top prosecutor says the office doesn't shy away from charging police officers.

"In the 11 years that Dick Devine has been state's attorney we have charged at least one police officer a month. That's more than 130 police officers who have been charged," said John Gorman, a Devine spokesman. "This office has an unblemished record of prosecuting any police officer where there is sufficient evidence to charge."

Sharpton has had his own controversies, dating back to the 1987 Tawana Brawley case, in which the minister led protests on rape allegations. The 15-year-old eventually admitted she made up the story that six white officers raped her.

Jackson: We'll work together
The announcement that Sharpton will be opening up shop in Chicago comes as the mayor prepares to name a new police superintendent.
An attempt to reach a spokesman for the mayor was unsuccessful.

Sharpton is already a regular voice in Chicago with his syndicated radio show broadcast on WVON-AM (1690).

Now Sharpton, these days thinner in body and pompadour, will become a regular face here -- moving in on territory where the Rev. Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow PUSH/Coalition are firmly rooted.

Heading Sharpton's Chicago effort is a civil rights force in her own right. A South Sider, chapter president Jeri Wright, 41, is the daughter of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor to presidential hopeful and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama.

Jackson said he'll work with Sharpton, as he has in the past. Earlier this year, they teamed up to push CBS to fire Don Imus after the radio host made controversial comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team. But Jackson sees Sharpton's Chicago mission as somewhat duplicative of his and other local civil rights groups.

"We've been focusing on the Jon Burge torture cases," through radio and cable access programming, Jackson said. "We confronted . . . music distributors on language degrading women -- those are cultural issues.

"On the other hand, the disparity in educational funding, the disparity in health care, the disparity in sentencing, the gun laws that deny people equal protection under the law -- these are the great civil rights issues of our time."

Cops not 'out of control,' Daley says of 2 killings

2007-08-09T09:31:00.000-05:00

LAW ENFORCEMENT | He urges residents to await investigations

August 9, 2007
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter fspielman@suntimes.com
The Chicago Police Department is "not out of control," Mayor Daley said Wednesday, urging family members and community leaders angry about the death of two men at the hands of police in the last week to await the outcome of internal investigations.
"Every day, Chicago Police are called. They get thousands of calls. Yes, these are two instances. They're very serious instances. They're . . . looking at it. But this is not an easy job out there," the mayor said.

Gefery Johnson, 42, died Saturday after police used a Taser and pepper spray to subdue him at his Gresham home after being summoned by family members.

Two days later, police shot and killed 18-year-old Aaron Harrison in the West Side's North Lawndale community after Harrison allegedly pointed a gun at an officer chasing him on foot.

On Wednesday, Daley withheld judgment on whether police officers acted properly. But he did not hesitate when asked about the angry reaction to the Monday night shooting. Residents threw bottles at police during what was described as a near-riot.

"Anybody starts throwing bottles at anyone else -- it's not respectful. I mean -- you may disagree or something like that. But you have to withhold" judgment, he said.

He also didn't hesitate when asked whether the community reaction to both incidents stems from distrust that the newly revamped Office of Professional Standards will conduct its investigations fairly.

"No. Historically, people don't like police. . . . They like you when they come. But they don't like the results," Daley said.

Meanwhile, some West Side church ministers and Harrison's relatives are expected to call on the U.S. Justice Department today to conduct a separate investigation on this week's shooting.

"There are a lot people who know about the shooting, but they don't feel secure talking to the police and they don't trust them," said the Rev. Robin Hood, pastor of Redeemed Outreach Ministries Church.

2007-07-18T07:56:00.000-05:00

What are they hiding?
CHICAGO POLICE | List of officers with more than 10 complaints remains a secret

July 17, 2007
BY FRANK MAIN AND ABDON M. PALLASCH Staff Reporters
Records involving cops with more than 10 complaints against them will remain secret until a federal appeals court decides whether to make them public.

The city is trying to keep the potentially embarrassing documents under wraps. They include a list of 662 Chicago Police officers -- one of every 20 cops on the 13,200-member force -- with more than 10 civilian complaints lodged against them between 2001 and 2006.

A week ago, U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow ordered the city to release the list, but the city appealed. On Monday, just before the 5 p.m. deadline that Lefkow imposed for the documents to be released, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted the city a stay that keeps them secret until the court can decide if they are public. "The city of Chicago spends unprecedented resources fighting to keep from the public the data about how the Police Department polices itself -- while at the same time, they publicly profess the virtues of openness and transparency," said Jon Loevy, an attorney seeking to bring the documents to light.

Some have more than 30 complaints
The list will show if a complaint against an officer was "sustained" and if it resulted in discipline -- or if the department deemed it to be "unsustained" or "unfounded" or determined the officer was "exonerated."
The records will identify some officers who have received more than 30 complaints but who did not face any "meaningful" discipline, Loevy said. The documents also will identify the police units with the highest concentrations of cops with 10 or more complaints against them.

"Most police officers do their jobs without attracting any complaints," Loevy said. "It's this tiny portion that cause most of the problems." Critics of the department hoped the documents would surface before Thursday, when the City Council is scheduled to consider a proposed ordinance that would change the office that investigates complaints against cops. Under the measure, the head of the Office of Professional Standards would report to the mayor and not to the police superintendent; summaries of the investigations would become public, and OPS investigators would receive subpoena power. Loevy called those changes "window dressing" and a "P.R. stunt."

The information on complaints against cops was gathered by attorneys for Diane Bond, who sued the city claiming she was abused by officers working in a Chicago Public Housing building on the South Side in 2003. She received a $150,000 settlement from the city, records show. Loevy represents Jamie Kalven, a writer who entered the case as a third party to make the documents public. "We're at a kind of historic moment in the city in terms of real and meaningful police reforms, and the information in the disputed documents is directly relevant to the public debate that's going on right now," Kalven said. A spokeswoman for the city's Law Department did not return a call, but in court papers the city argues that the documents should not be released because they did not become part of the court proceedings in Bond's lawsuit and would invade the officers' privacy. On July 9, Lefkow ruled that the documents were still presumed to be public, writing "the public has a significant interest in monitoring the conduct of its police officers and a right to know how allegations of misconduct are being investigated and handled."

2007-07-18T07:55:00.000-05:00

Cop complaint list released -- names hidden
POLICE | Activist calls it a stunt ahead of Council vote

July 18, 2007
BY FRANK MAIN, FRAN SPIELMAN AND ABDON M. PALLASCH Staff Reporters
Two days before a key City Council vote on the way claims of Chicago Police misconduct are investigated, the Daley administration quietly provided aldermen Tuesday with a controversial list of 662 officers with 10 or more complaints against them over the past five years.
But there was a catch: the names on the list -- which the administration has been fighting in federal court to keep secret -- were blacked out.

An activist trying to force the city to make the list public sees Tuesday's release to aldermen as a way for Mayor Daley to defuse opposition just before a Thursday City Council vote to reform the police department's Office of Professional Standards. The office investigates police misconduct.

"The names are the essence of it -- this feels a little bit like a desperate stunt on the part of the city with the vote of the City Council fast approaching," activist Jamie Kalven said.

Pfleger, Jackson want list
Earlier Tuesday, activist priest Michael Pfleger urged Daley to release the full list. After appearing with Daley to publicize a gun turn-in, Pfleger said the list and other secret documents would help the public understand how the Police Department investigates complaints against cops. "We need to know the officers that there's a lot of complaints against," he said.
The mayor put Pfleger on a panel to recommend changes to OPS. On Thursday, aldermen are expected to vote on some of the panel's suggestions, such as making OPS answer to the mayor and not the police superintendent. Some aldermen don't think the reforms go far enough.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who also appeared with Daley Tuesday, echoed Pfleger, saying, "If police dishonor their badge by being brutal, they should be removed and they should be exposed."

Daley said he cannot make the documents public because the city's contract with the Fraternal Order of Police prevents the release of personnel data. The documents were sealed when they were turned over to Diane Bond, who sued the police department claiming she was abused by officers in 2003.

This month, a federal judge ruled the documents were public. The city appealed. Daley said he will wait for an appeals court to decide.

2007-07-18T07:50:00.000-05:00

Daley pal implicated in mob bombing
July 18, 2007
BY STEVE WARMBIR Staff Reporter/swarmbir@suntimes.com
Outfit hit man Nicholas Calabrese on Tuesday implicated a close friend of Mayor Daley's, Fred Barbara, as taking part in the bombing of a suburban restaurant in the early 1980s. Calabrese is the star witness in the Family Secrets mob case and testified that Barbara, now a multimillionaire businessman, was one of six men who split up into teams to throw bombs on the roofs of two restaurants. Barbara has never been charged in the case but allegedly teamed up with Chicago mob captain Angelo "The Hook" LaPietra and reputed mob killer James DiForti to bomb Horwath's Restaurant in Elmwood Park, which was a well-known hangout for mobsters.

FAMILY SECRETS TRIAL
On Tuesday: Star witness Nicholas Calabrese described a series of mob bombings and murders he took part in and implicates a close mayoral friend in the bombing of a suburban restaurant from the early 1980s.

Expected today: Nicholas Calabrese will detail even more Outfit murders.
On the same night, Calabrese allegedly joined up with his brother, Frank Calabrese Sr., and reputed Outfit killer John Fecarotta to throw a bomb on the roof of Tom's Steak House in Melrose Park. Nicholas Calabrese testified he didn't know why mob higher-ups targeted the restaurants. They shared a common owner.

It's not the first time Barbara has been accused of having ties to the Chicago mob.
Barbara was arrested in 1982 with three reputed mobsters, including his cousin, Frank "Tootsie Babe" Caruso, in an extortion sting set up by the FBI. A federal jury acquitted Barbara and the others. In a court filing in that case, prosecutors said Barbara was "believed to be a major participant" in the illegal gambling operation run by LaPietra. Barbara is a nephew of the late Ald. Fred Roti, who has been identified as a made member of the Chicago mob. Barbara has made millions of dollars through the years in trucking and real-estate deals with the city of Chicago. Nicholas Calabrese's testimony made clear he did not see Barbara and other mobsters bomb Horwath's. Calabrese was busy bombing the restaurant he was responsible for. But when all the men met back after their work was done, the Horwath's group made clear their bomb went off, Calabrese said. Barbara could not be reached for comment but has disavowed any connection to organized crime.

"Show me my connection to organized crime," Barbara said in an interview three years ago with the Sun-Times. "Did I turn the corner? You show me anything in the last 24 years that reflects to that nature." A spokeswoman for the mayor could not be reached for comment. In a full day of testimony, the mention of Barbara was a small part of Nicholas Calabrese's testimony.

Nicholas Calabrese described a series of arsons he did for the mob. He also detailed how he killed people for the Outfit, allegedly with his brother, Frank Calabrese Sr., who sat just yards away from him in court and appeared to suppress a smirk throughout the testimony. Nicholas Calabrese has pleaded guilty and admitted to killing at least 14 people for the mob. As part of his plea deal, he is testifying against his brother and other reputed mob leaders.

Nicholas Calabrese testified that when Frank Calabrese Sr. told him in 1970 they were going to have to find a place to dig a hole for a body, he figured his brother was kidding. It was to be his first mob murder. The brothers found a spot, inside a factory that was being built a few blocks away from White Sox park. They lured a man, Michael "Hambone" Albergo, who Frank Calabrese Sr. feared would testify against him in a juice loan investigation, Nick Calabrese testified. Inside a car, Nicholas Calabrese held one of Albergo's arms while another henchman held the other, and Frank Calabrese strangled the man with a rope, Nicholas Calabrese testified. Frank Calabrese Sr. slit the throat of Albergo even though he was already dead, just to make sure, Nicholas Calabrese testified.

They dumped him in a hole they had dug, threw lime in and filled the hole with dirt. "At this point, I wet my pants I was so scared," Nicholas Calabrese said.
In another murder in Cicero in 1978, Nicholas Calabrese and Frank Calabrese Sr. teamed up with other mob killers to rub out two men in a closed restaurant -- one had run crossways with the Outfit, the other was an innocent bystander, Calabrese testified. The brothers referred to the killings by code, calling the Cicero one "Strangers in the Night." It was the song playing on the restaurant jukebox as the Calabrese brothers allegedly killed the men, Nicholas Calabrese said.
In another murder in 1978 of burglar John Mendell, Calabrese Sr. strangled him, while Nicholas Calabrese helped hold the man down, Nicholas Calabrese testified.
This time, Calabrese Sr. allegedly gave his brother the knife to make sure the burglar was dead.

Contributing: Shamus Toomey and Carol Marin

Dear Mr. President (Pink)

2007-06-12T08:44:00.001-05:00

Pink- Dear Mr President - Live

2007-06-12T08:41:00.001-05:00

2007-05-15T12:30:00.000-05:00

Things That Just Piss Me Off: High Court Helps Government Officials Hide Corruption

2007-04-16T12:04:00.000-05:00

Things That Just Piss Me Off: High Court Helps Government Officials Hide Corruption

Eugene Wzorek

2007-04-12T11:28:00.001-05:00

CITY WILL PAY FOR CLOUT HIRING!

2007-03-22T14:52:00.000-05:00

$12 million fund set up for victims
March 22, 2007
BY FRAN SPIELMAN AND STEVE WARMBIR Staff Reporters
Mayor Daley agreed Wednesday to establish a $12 million fund to compensate victims of City Hall’s rigged hiring system and abandon his five-year-old effort to vacate the federal Shakman decree banning political hiring.
“I don’t believe this is the cost of corruption…This settlement is illustrative of the city’s desire to move forward with its reform efforts…It’s a new day…We are going to have no tolerance for anyone gaming the system,” said Chief of Staff Ron Huberman.
Plaintiff Michael Shakman said the city “should have fixed its hiring system a long time ago” — long before Daley’s patronage chief was convicted of rigging city hiring.
“The mayor has an opportunity. He’s either going to be remembered by history as the mayor who presided over the last big-city hiring machine or the mayor who fixed it,” said Shakman, whose 1969 lawsuit triggered the long-running dispute over political hiring and firing in Chicago.
The $12 million fund, disclosed last month by the Chicago Sun-Times, would be administered by federal hiring monitor Noelle Brennan, who would become a fixture at City Hall — at least for the next 21 months.
The agreement establishes a $100,000 cap on individual damages. The awards will apply only to those who can prove they’ve been bypassed for city jobs and promotions since Jan. 1, 2000. Last year alone, 120,000 people applied for city jobs.
“We anticipate the quantity of applicants will be extremely high… The monitors will have to set up a process to establish standards. They’ll have to say, `This dollar compensation requires this level of evidence,’ “ Huberman said.
Brennan, whose team has already been paid $1.65 million in legal fees, said the amounts paid out will depend on how many claims forms are submitted. Corporation Counsel Mara Georges said the monitor has been directed to interpret claims “liberally.”
“She’ll be looking to the city if she has a question about a particular hiring sequence and say, `Let me see the documents.’ If we’re unable to demonstrate..that the most qualified people were hired, I would think she would hold those claims valid,” Georges said.
The out-of-court settlement requires the mayor and city department heads, on or after Dec. 31, 2008, to sign certificates of compliance. It opens the door for City Hall to get out from under the Shakman decree. It will be up to Brennan to determine whether “substantial compliance” has, in fact occurred.
Until that time, Brennan will remain the city’s hiring czar. A new hiring system is expected to be put in place by April 30 that relies heavily on lotteries for so-called “willing-and-able” positions where tests are not relevant.
The agreement also envisions a key role for Inspector General David Hoffman.
After May 31, Hoffman will become the primary investigator for hiring abuses with the power to recommend disciplinary action and even prosecution. The inspector general’s investigations could ultimately lead to monetary damages after a new city arbitration process. A new executive order will require city employees to report complaints of political discrimination to the inspector general.
“This is an important milestone in creating a system of integrity in city hiring….Given the proper resources, we will be able to become a strong independent watchdog to ensure integrity in hiring and promotions,” said Hoffman, who was directed to try to wrap up each hiring investigation within six months.
Another key element of the agreement is the additional flexibility it affords the city in filling top jobs.
Instead of honoring the city’s request to more than double the 1,186 policymaking jobs exempt from the Shakman decree, the agreement creates a new category of 935 senior management jobs. Political considerations will be verboten, but the hiring process for those jobs will be expedited. Department heads will have more discretion. Referrals will be permitted.
“We now have the additional flexibility we’re seeking…Commissioners and other individuals can make specific referrals of names to add to a hiring list and it’s an expedited process that doesn’t go through all the normal hoops,” Huberman said.
The terms are expected to go over like a lead balloon with Chicago aldermen, who have accused Brennan of invading their turf. They have also railed repeatedly about the monitor’s legal fees, her ever-expanding role in city hiring and about the effect those controls have had on their ability to deliver neighborhood services and get their people placed in top jobs.
“We’re very concerned about the diversity issue,” said Ald. Ed Smith (28th), chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus.
Brennan was appointed in August, 2005 by a federal judge livid with the city for making a mockery of the Shakman decree, which was supposed to end political hiring and firing.
Eleven months later, Daley’s former patronage chief was convicted of rigging city hiring and promotions to benefit pro-Daley armies of political workers.

fspielman@suntimes.com

Former top Daley aide indicted

2007-03-22T14:27:00.000-05:00

March 22, 2007
BY NATASHA KORECKI AND FRAN SPIELMAN Staff Reporters
A federal grand jury has indicted Al Sanchez, a former top aide to Mayor Daley who also was a key leader of the mayor's Hispanic Democratic Organization, authorities said.
The charges against Sanchez, who was the city's Streets and Sanitation commissioner from 1999 until 2005, come as prosecutors continue to probe promotion and hiring practices at City Hall.
Indicted with Sanchez was Aaron del Valle, who recently mounted an unsuccessful campaign for 25th ward alderman against incumbent Daniel Solis. Del Valle — who finished fifth out of seven candidates in the Feb. 27 election, also worked for HDO and in the Department of Streets and Sanitation.
During Sanchez's tenure in the city agency, hundreds of members of HDO, which was a key source of political workers for the mayor, got jobs there and in other city departments.
Asked earlier today if his client had been charged or if he expected charges, Sanchez lawyer Daniel Pierce said: "Not to my knowledge." He could not be reached for comment after the indictment was unsealed.
Late last year, prosecutors charged John Resa, a city Water Management Department worker and HDO coordinator, with lying to a grand jury. Prosecutors charged that, when he wanted to reward HDO campaign workers with city jobs or promotions, Resa would turn to someone identified only as "Individual A." Sources have identified Sanchez as "Individual A."
Sanchez left his city post in June 2005, when a city hiring scandal was escalating.
Sanchez was a founding member of HDO, which Mayor Daley started in the early 1990s. HDO grew to about 500 members. Sanchez began working for the city in 1974 and became a key member of the 10th Ward Democratic organiation of then-political powerhouse Edward R. Vrdolyak.

Judge approves preliminary settlement in patronage hiring case

2007-03-21T14:36:00.000-05:00

March 21, 2007 (CHICAGO) - A federal judge on Wednesday approved a preliminary settlement between the city of Chicago and attorneys representing the Shakman decree, which bans political hiring for all but about 1,000 of the city's 38,000 employees.
U.S. District Judge Wayne Andersen asked both sides to return to court on May 31 for a hearing on whether to give final approval to the settlement, which would also require approval from the Chicago City Council.
The 1983 decree resulted from a lawsuit filed more than 30 years ago by attorney Michael Shakman, who has feuded with City Hall over patronage abuses ever since.
The city has tried in court to get out from under the ban.
In 2005, Andersen appointed a federal monitor to keep an eye on city hiring after Mayor Richard M. Daley's former patronage chief was arrested on charges that he and others conspired to rig the city's hiring process. They were convicted last summer by a federal jury.
The court-appointed monitor concluded in December 2006 that while there had been improvements at City Hall to reform hiring, there remained "pockets of resistance" from employees and a small group of aldermen who "have openly expressed a preference for a patronage system," where jobs are doled out based on political loyalty, the monitor's report said.
That court-appointed monitor has said the Shakman decree had been violated almost since its inception.
Daley has defended his administration's efforts to clean up city hiring.
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

2007-03-20T08:44:00.000-05:00

County hospital contracts scrutinized

2007-03-20T08:30:00.000-05:00

March 20, 2007
BY STEVE PATTERSON AND STEVE WARMBIR Staff Reporters
Cook County officials are investigating whether hospital contracts were doled out to firms using unqualified workers or, in some cases, firms not doing the work at all.
Board President Todd Stroger was vague in announcing findings Monday by hospital chief Dr. Robert Simon, but a spokesman said there are "specific instances" of concern involving "mismanagement and impropriety."
Stroger's announcement mentioned "a number of contracts" involving "managerial services." The announcement also noted that Simon has ousted "several" hospital leaders involved with billing, which has been a major source of budget shortfalls in the hospital system.
The findings have been forwarded to both the state's attorney and inspector general.
Billing and collections at the hospital have long been a concern of commissioners. They have repeatedly asked about the number of companies doing the work and how much each is collecting -- and have been getting few answers.
Janitorial deal approved. Also Monday, the county board voted 9-8 on Stroger's request to approve a no-bid contract with a cleaning company that has ties to Stroger's political organization and to Cicero-based mob figures.
We Clean Maintenance & Supply got the $357,000 contract to clean the county building for the next 135 days, replacing county janitors laid off because of budget cuts.
Company officials, citing the "security of our clients," declined to comment.
By August, county officials expect to award a competitively bid cleaning contract.
We Clean is headed by Julie Leopold, mother of Anthony Leopold, who testified in the criminal trial of ex-Cicero Town President Betty Loren-Maltese that the firm was loaned money by Michael Spano Jr., son of town mob boss Michael Spano Sr. Leopold paid some of the money back to Spano, but also to another man convicted in the case, John LaGiglio.
The $179,000, it was revealed, was illegally pilfered from town funds and led to Loren-Maltese's conviction.
spatterson@suntimes.com

Chicago Engineering firm pleads guilty to fraud

2007-03-19T13:08:00.000-05:00

2/1/07
IDOT among state , municipal contractors overcharged estimated $5.5 million
Springfield, IL--Roger Heaton, US Attorney for the Central District of Illinois, announced that the principal owner of Shah Engineering, Inc., Manu Shah, entered pleas of guilty to overcharging the Illinois Department of Transportation and other state and municipal entities from 1997 to 2004. Shah, age 70, of Oak Brook, is the sole shareholder, owner, operator of Shah Engineering in Chicago.

A federal investigation of Shah Engineering's business practices was initiated by the Illinois Department of Transportation following a department audit in January 2004. Manu Shah plead guilty to two counts of mail fraud and one charge of submitting false documents to IDOT auditors as charged. The corporation has agreed to plead guilty to one count of mail fraud as charged at a 2/27/07 hearing.

Pursuant to the plea agreement, there was no final determination of the amounts over billed which will have to be repaid as restitution; however Shah is required to deposit $2.5 million with the US Clerk of the Court within 15 days of the date the plea agreement was filed, January 23, 2007. Thereafter, Shah is required to deposit $1 million every 30 days until the $5.5 million is held in escrow to be used to pay restitution to the agencies defrauded and/ or a fine. At sentencing, the government has agreed to recommend to the court that Shah be sentenced to 41 months imprisonment, and that Shah's firm be fined $500,000 and placed on probation. Sentencing for Shah is scheduled for June 4, 2007, before US District Judge Jeanne E. Scott. The information and plea agreements reflect that Shah Engineering Inc. was a primary contractor or subcontractor on various projects for engineering and architectural services for IDOT and other state government agencies as well as for the city of Chicago from 1997 through 2005. These entities include the following: Illinois State Tollway, Metra, Chicago Department of Transportation, City of Chicago, Chicago Transit Authority, Chicago Department of Aviation, Chicago Department of Construction and Permits, Chicago Park District, Chicago Department of Sewers, Chicago Department of Water and the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Chicago. Shah Engineering also acted as a subcontractor on additional jobs financed or directed by these state and municipal agencies.
IDOT and the other entities used several billing procedures in its contracts for services during the period of the fraud scheme, beginning in 1997 through 2004. These billing procedures included "lump sum" and "variable sum" contracts as well as "cost plus" and "direct labor multiplier" contracted. Each involved a different way of calculating the relationship of costs for direct labor and overhead expense.

During court proceedings and in court documents, Manu Shah admitted overcharging IDOT and other entities when submitting contract invoices in several ways:
*Direct billing fraud in which Shah Engineering misrepresented the amount of work its employees performed on certain contracts, by both overstating the number of hours actually worked by individuals, and by 'shifting' hours worked by individuals from less profitable projects to more profitable contracts or to overhead categories;
* Overhead fraud in which Shah Engineering materially misrepresented its indirect expenses attributable to overhead, using false and fraudulent entries, invoices, calculations and documentation. These artificially inflated overhead expenses were filed with IDOT as "Statements of Experience and Financial Condition". The SEFC form was used to calculate the rate IDOT and other contractors paid Shah Engineering for overhead in "cost plus" and "direct labor multiplier" contracts and others. Using the inflated numbers, Shah Engineering was able to negotiate higher reimbursement rates than would have been paid otherwise;
* Overstatement of employees to misrepresent that certain part-time, contract or independent workers on certain projects were employees of Shah Engineering to fraudulently claim overhead expenses or enhance the billing with a "multiplier" that would be allowed only for legitimate full-time and full-benefit employees of the contractor.

Manu Shah also admitted to falsifying record for an audit conducted by IDOT in 2003 and 2004. Shah was asked to supply documentation for certain direct labor and overhead expenses claimed for IDOT and other contracts in prior years. Shah presented auditors with false and fraudulent documents including an invoice purportedly from "Associated Engineering and Technology," which had been altered to read "office rent" (an overhead expense) which was actually for the delivery of other services.

Cleaning House On Janitors Has Stroger Under Fire Again

2007-03-19T12:32:00.000-05:00

Firm Wins $375,000 Contract Without Bidding

The Cook County board president was once again under fire for his latest hire.
Todd Stroger laid off dozens of janitors Friday in order to replace them with a janitorial firm that has made annual donations to his campaign.
Berwyn-based We Clean Maintenance & Supply won the $375,000 contract without bidding on the job. Stroger said he let go of the county-employed janitors due to budget cuts.

Is something dirty here?

2007-03-19T08:41:00.000-05:00

Waste hauler with alleged mob ties doing state work
March 19, 2007
BY CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporter Sun Times

A waste-hauling firm that's repeatedly been accused of having ties to the mob is still doing taxpayer-funded work and has surfaced on a government-produced list of environmentally friendly businesses.
In recent days, a dumpster from D&P Construction was on site at a Metra station construction project in Edison Park. D&P also saw a longtime snowplowing contract it has with the University of Illinois at Chicago renewed last year. Besides that, D&P and a sister company, JKS Ventures, are listed in a state government "Green Your Space Database," which helps people find "environmentally friendly building products you may use to improve your home or office."
Firm on 'Green Space' list D&P was widely publicized as having alleged mob links in 2001, when the Illinois Gaming Board took issue with it hauling trash from a casino site in Rosemont. "The owner of D&P, Josephine DiFronzo, is married to Peter DiFronzo and is the sister-in-law of John DiFronzo, individuals who have been identified as known members of organized crime," board officials wrote at the time. In November 2005, a Gaming Board hearing officer -- citing a memo from the FBI -- wrote D&P was "controlled" by the DiFronzo brothers. Josephine and Peter DiFronzo declined to return messages left at D&P's Northwest Side office. John DiFronzo's lawyer did not return a call. D&P's continued involvement in government work angers the president of the Chicago Crime Commission. "I can understand if it's a private company, but we're dealing here with taxpayer money," said Jim Wagner, who headed the Chicago FBI's organized-crime squad and was the Gaming Board's investigations chief before being hired by the crime-fighting group in 2005. "Is it in the best interest of the public to do business with people who have a history of intimidation as reported by law enforcement?" he said.
Rail agency to investigateMetra officials didn't know D&P had a Dumpster at the Edison Park station site until being contacted by the Chicago Sun-Times. Neither Metra nor its general contractor were aware of the firm's alleged mob links, spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet said.
D&P was hired recently to haul bricks left by a subcontractor "and it doesn't sound like a lot of taxpayer dollars have gone toward them," Pardonnet said. The rail agency plans to investigate whether future dealings with D&P should be prohibited, she said.
UIC officials last year renewed D&P's longtime snowplowing contract because the firm was the low bidder and met all legal criteria, UIC spokesman Mark Rosati said. UIC paid D&P $55,169 under the deal last winter. The final tally for this winter is pending.
Susan Hofer, a state spokeswoman, said the Green Space Database makes clear that all firms named, including D&P, are not being endorsed by the state.

Guilty plea in Hired Truck

2007-03-16T08:45:00.000-05:00

Woman who fronted company run by husband admits lying
March 16, 2007
BY STEVE WARMBIR Staff Reporter

A woman whose Hired Truck company took in millions of taxpayer dollars from the city's corruption-plagued program pleaded guilty Thursday to lying to federal investigators.
Nicola A. Cannatello, 59, admitted lying to the FBI in a March 10, 2004, interview when she told them that her husband, John Cannatello, was never involved in the business operations of their trucking company.
In reality, her husband hired, fired and dispatched truck drivers, marketed the company, bought, sold and fixed GNA trucks and negotiated leases. He was sentenced last year to 27 months in prison for his role in the scam.
Nicola Cannatello's lie about her husband not running the business was important because the city had certified that GNA was owned and run by women, allowing the company to get the leg up on certain city business deals.
Once denied clout The Chicago Sun-Times first wrote about the Cannatellos in 2004 as part of a series that uncovered the waste, fraud and corruption in the city's $40 million-a-year Hired Truck Program.
At the time, Nicola Cannatello denied having any clout to get in the program. John Cannatello has deep ties to the city's 11th Ward.
"I don't dig that kind of stuff," she said in an interview. "I'm just blessed they took my application."

swarmbir@suntimes.com

Five face charges in building safety probe

2007-03-16T08:43:00.000-05:00

City workers, 2 others accused of bribery
March 16, 2007
BY FRAN SPIELMAN AND NATASHA KORECKI Staff Reporters
Three workers for the City of Chicago and two other men were charged this week as part of a growing probe of shakedowns in two departments that oversee building safety.
The federal charges are a result of an unprecedented joint investigation by the city inspector general's office, federal prosecutors and U.S. postal inspectors.
The five are accused of receiving or paying thousands of dollars in bribes to skirt permit and zoning approval. Failing to get such approval can bring fines of up to $1,000 a day, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Gary Shapiro said Thursday.
'Allegations at this point'Kurt Berger, an $85,308-a-year project manager in the Department of Buildings, is accused of taking a $1,000 bribe for dismissing a code violation complaint. The bribe was passed from two contractors through a city worker cooperating with the feds. The worker, central in the broader probe, is expected to be charged later.
Electrical inspector Darryl Williams, 46, of Chicago is accused of looking the other way while a contractor added residential units to an extensive remodeling project without building permits. Williams got a pair of $8,000 cash payments stuffed into Wendy's bags, according to the charges. Williams makes $77,000 a year.
Miguel Diaz, a building inspector, allegedly took $1,000 to arrange for a phony letter of intent for a licensed plumbing contractor. Theletter is needed as part of the permit application process. Diaz, 40, of Chicago, makes $67,644 a year.
Sorin Adrian Oros, 32, a self-employed contractor in Glenview, was charged with paying a $12,000 bribe to a city inspector. Oros was trying to speed up zoning approval for a residential project, the feds said.
Steven Wallace, 28, a Chicago contractor, was charged with conspiracy for allegedly creating fake letters of intent to help projects in exchange for cash bribes.
Berger, Diaz and Oros appeared in court Thursday and were released. Williams appeared Tuesday, and Wallace has not yet been arrested.
"These are allegations at this point. Our concern is getting him back to his wife and three kids," Berger's lawyer, Keri Ambrosio, said. The other men or their lawyers would not comment.
On Tuesday, the inspector general and postal inspectors raided City Hall offices of the Department of Construction and Permits and left with computers and scores of documents.
Daley plays it down"The building safety rules in the city of Chicago must not be for sale," city Inspector General David Hoffman said.
The arrests mark the latest in a series of scandals for the two city departments charged with guaranteeing building safety in Chicago.
But Mayor Daley tried his best to play it down as a "minor thing." He said it wasn't as bad as Conrad Black, former CEO of the company that operates the Chicago Sun-Times on trial for allegedly stealing about $84 million from Hollinger International.
"These are ... people [who are accused of] misconduct, and you have Conrad Black," the mayor said. "This is a minor [thing]."
Shapiro had a different take: "We view these crimes as extremely serious."

fspielman@suntimes.com

Buildings project manager arrested, charged with bribery

2007-03-15T11:09:00.000-05:00

March 15, 2007
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter
An $85,308-a-year project manager in the city of Chicago’s Department of Buildings was arrested Wednesday night and charged with bribery, in a growing investigation into shakedowns in the two city agencies that are supposed to make sure buildings are safe.
Kurt Berger’s arrest came one day after the city inspector general’s office and agents working for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service raided the City Hall offices of the Department of Construction and Permits and left with computers and scores of documents.
On the same day that Inspector General David Hoffman led that raid, an electrical inspector assigned to Construction and Permits was charged with accepting $16,000 in bribes. In exchange for a pair of $8,000 cash payments allegedly stuffed in Wendy’s bags, Daryl Williams is accused of looking the other way while a contractor added residential units to an extensive remodeling project without obtaining the required zoning change or building permits.
The investigation against Williams was reportedly aided by a building inspector who was similarly accused but won’t be prosecuted in exchange for his undercover cooperation.
Berger’s arrest marks the latest in a series of scandals for the two city departments charged with guaranteeing building safety in Chicago.
Two years ago, a residential permit was issued in a planned manufacturing district to a developer who took then-Building Commissioner Stan Kaderbek’s top deputy no a spring break trip to Brazil.
The department also was at the center of the city hiring scandal for its role in hiring the 19- and 23-year-old sons of Carpenters Union officials as building inspectors. And another building inspector was accused of falsifying a report on a building where a porch railing snapped, killing a 9-year-old girl.
The Buildings Department has been without a permanent commissioner since December, after the resignation of John Knight. City Hall sources called Knight a bad fit from Day One.
fspielman@suntimes.com

State senator's brother back at city job

2007-03-14T08:28:00.000-05:00

By Gary Washburn Tribune staff reporter

Published March 12, 2007, 7:37 PM
The brother of a state senator has returned to duty in the city's Water Management Department amid an investigation into an on-the-job fight that left a co-worker bloodied, officials said Monday.Martin Munoz and John Orlando, both hoisting engineers, allegedly got into an argument that led to violence on March 1 inside the department's yard at 3901 S. Ashland Ave.

The police were called, both men underwent drug and alcohol testing and both were put on paid administrative leave as the Personnel Department's Violence in the Workplace office began an investigation, officials said. Both Orlando and Munoz, the brother of state Sen. Tony Munoz (D-Chicago), were allowed to return to work while the investigation continues.Patrick McDonough, a Water Management Department employee and sometime critic of the department's practices, said he was at the yard on the day of the alleged fight when Orlando walked into the superintendent's office."He had a bloody rag on his face and had a cut between the temple and the left eye," McDonough said of Orlando. McDonough questioned why Munoz had returned to work while the investigation was pending.Thomas LaPorte, spokesman for the Department of Water Management, denied that any special treatment was given. Sen. Munoz is a co-founder of the controversial Hispanic Democratic Organization and an ally of Mayor Richard Daley."The determination of when to call somebody back is made on a case-by-case basis," LaPorte said. "In this case, we didn't know how long the investigation would take, and we didn't want them sitting at home getting paid. We also understand they are not going to file criminal complaints against each other."Though officers were called to the scene after the fight, "we have no paperwork on it," said Police Department spokeswoman Monique Bond. "Apparently the individuals involved in the dispute decided to resolve it on the scene."Kimberly McMorris, a Human Resources Department spokeswoman, confirmed that an investigation is under way. Her department "will make a recommendation as to whether claims are sustained and recommend corrective action if needed," she said. Attempts to reach Munoz and Orlando were unsuccessful.

gwashburn@tribune.com

Former chairman of the Hollinger International Inc. newspaper empire, faces charges of racketeering, mail & tax fraud, and money laundering

2007-03-14T08:22:00.001-05:00

Hard to find jury of Lord Black's peers
Jury selection starts today in media baron's trial
March 14, 2007
BY MARY WISNIEWSKI Business Reporter Chicago Sun Times
No British lords will appear in the jury pool at the start of Conrad Black's criminal fraud trial today. So how will Black's defense team select a jury of his peers, sympathetic to his side?
The defense will look for jurors who are smart enough to understand a complex case, and who won't be shocked by the idea of someone making millions of dollars in fees, according to Chicago white collar crime attorneys.

Rich could be sympathetic

"The defense will be looking for wealthier people, who may not be stunned by some of the dollar amounts involved," said Thomas M. Durkin, of Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, who has both prosecuted and defended white collar criminal cases. He said the defense needs a jury "who understands it's not a crime to make money."
Conrad Black, 62, former head of the company that owns the Chicago Sun-Times, goes on trial along with three others today on charges of stealing about $84 million from the company. The defendants all have pleaded innocent. Jury selection starts today, and opening statements begin Monday.
A key prosecution witness will be David Radler, Black's former business partner and publisher of the Sun-Times, who pleaded guilty to fraud charges.
The case includes allegations that Black misused company money for personal expenses, such as a trip to Bora Bora on a company jet. The defense will want business people on the jury who might be more sympathetic to those kinds of expenses, noted Leonard Cavise, a DePaul College of Law professor and a former criminal defense attorney.
May be easier for feds"The prosecution wants the ordinary person," Cavise said. "The prosecution will say, 'Ladies and gentlemen, when we go to Bora Bora, we have to pay for it.' They want people who think these big corporate CEOs are all crooks anyway."
Steve Miller, of Reed Smith Sachnoff & Weaver, said the defense will seek jurors skeptical of people in high places. Those would include such possible witnesses as former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson and conservative political adviser Richard Perle -- both former directors of Hollinger International, the former name of Sun-Times Media Group.
Much of the defense team's strategy during jury selection will depend on the lawyers' theories of the case, said Michael D. Sher, of Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg, who has done white collar defense.
"If the theory is 'Yes, something happened, but my client wasn't aware of it,' you may want someone who spent a lot of time in a big organization," Sher said. That juror would know that "the guy in the corner office may not be aware of what the guy two doors down is doing," Sher said.
Whatever the defense theory, the defense will have a harder time than the government finding sympathetic jurors.
"The government won't have much difficulty finding people who won't identify with the defendants, especially Mr. Black," Sher said.

Former judge arrested in domestic abuse case

2007-03-13T08:51:00.001-05:00

March 13, 2007
BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Legal Affairs Reporter
Former Cook County Judge Oliver Spurlock was arrested Sunday after his former girlfriend accused him of shoving her as she tried to move her belongings out of his apartment, according to police and the Cook County state's attorney's Office.
Spurlock made headlines when he was thrown off the bench in 2001 for allegedly sexually harassing four female prosecutors in his court. He was never criminally charged with harassment and so keeps his $54,000-a-year pension. But the prosecutors' testimony before the Illinois Courts Commission convinced members that Spurlock was "an embarrassment to the robe."
Last year he was charged with punching an ex-girlfriend several times in the face. That charge was stricken when the ex-girlfriend did not appear in court.
Spurlock's attorney, Eugene Pincham, said Monday: "The girl is telling a lie. She has been stalking him, following him around. She said she was going to embarrass him." It was the same ex-girlfriend both times and neither charge is true, Pincham said.
Spurlock was released on $5,000 bond and is due back in court April 12. In addition to domestic abuse, he is charged with not having a firearms identification card because a weapon was found in his home.
apallasch@suntimes.com

2007-03-12T14:40:00.000-05:00

While searching the web, I have come across several blogs and articles. Check out a few of their comments:
Also, a Sun Times article on Sunday March 11, 2007 stated that LSC chairman Tom Ramos Jr. was a city worker, I did a little research and I am positive that this Tom Ramos Jr. is the same Thomas R. Ramos, Jr. who is a Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation laborer. Is he HDO? Is that why Daley is attempting to intervene? That's the next thing we'd like to know. If someone could find out.

A March 2, 2007 article in the Sun Times says:
There is a internal investigation of Tom Ramos, stemming from a bribery allegation reported to the inspector general by ousted principal Jones. Inspector General Jim Sullivan confirmed that he is investigating several allegations against Ramos on a tip from Jones, one including a charge that the LSC chairman "solicited a vendor for $400."

Posted by: JulieWoestehoff January 23, 2007 at 01:29 PM
I used to be on the council and I know that Tom Ramos Jr. is only there for personal gain. Mrs. Jones refused to allow him to take several members on a trip because it wasn't for student benefit. He wanted to spend money that was suppose to used by students. When he no longer had a child in school, he got guardianship of a relative so he could get Mrs. Jones out as principal. I wish the board of ed would get involved.

Posted by: former lsc member January 25, 2007 at 06:46 PM
I was at the last meeting 1-20-07 and it was completely disgusting! I am a student at Curie highschool and it scared me to see the people on the LSC who will ultimetly be deciding our fate. several of the LSC members didnt even speak english! my mom asked one of the members, in spanish, what she knew about curie and the woman didnt know anything; this was the same woman that looked over to Ramos when it came time to vote. She didnt have a clue what was going on! Also, Valle who was translating, wasnt translating everything. There were several instances where a young man from the audience stood up and patched up her translating job! she was only translating what she wanted. I was dissapointed with the whole situation there. I know thats how politics work but its not right and change will only happen if we stand up and are not intimidated!

Posted by: February 01, 2007 at 04:59 PM
I sure hope that if you are truly interested in what is going on at Curie you will take the time to read all of this. I will certainly not state any of my personal information here for fear of retribution. I also will not state any names since this is not the point here. The Edwards School LSC went through this same issue two years ago and at that time there was no blog to report on the things that were taking place. A current member of the Curie LSC was a member of the Edwards LSC two years ago and was the ringleader of the troubles started there. She was quite emboldened by PURE who took advantage of lack of interest in LSC elections to get a small renegade group the power to make very important decisions about the future of our communities. It is amazing that we give parents the power to make decisions in schools when those parents don't even have a grasp on their own children. I would think that it would be most important to first be sure that the parent representatives children are meeting the established benchmarks before allowing them to dedicate so much time to some other endeavor. It is also interesting to see unemployed individuals who have time and skills to dedicate to making these decisions but don't have the time or skills to get a job. My point here is simply what is happening at Curie is what happened at Edwards and many other schools in the system. We give the most precious of positions to the least qualified simply because many of the majority are too busy taking care of their own children and working to notice what is happening at a given school until the damage is done and it is too late. And PURE has learned to take advantage of this low voter turnout and participation. They completely orchestrated the election at Edwards simply by getting a small handful of people out to vote while noone else even knew what was going on. At Edwards, 30 votes out of 1,200 students will get you this power. This is a huge problem. PURE is making the selections of principals and not LSC's. I have nothing against language at all. What I do have a problem with is parents who have to look at someone in order to be told how to vote. And this happened at Edwards countless times. They are not looking at that someone because they don't understand the language, they are looking because they want to be sure that they are being directed properly by who put them in that position in the first place. Lastly, at Edwards there was a huge push to get a Hispanic in as principal. The LSC even nearly made the crucial mistake of advertising that the applicant must be Hispanic before PURE corrected them and informed them of the legal implications of doing that. But Edwards is a school of 90% Hispanic students. Curie is a high school of a much more diverse cultural body. Having a Hispanic at Curie as principal would not be nearly as necessary. Do we have any Asian candidates? That would throw everyone for a loop. This current LSC will not approve a renewal of Jones' contract, guaranteed. And then the real fun will start. Watch the parade of candidates come through and see what the real motivation is here. At Edwards, the final three candidates were all Hispanic. The outgoing principal was African American. I don't really think that anyone else was seriously considered. This is completely about getting a Hispanic in the position of control at Curie High School. Which would not be a bad thing by itself. But it is the motivation that is behind this that is wrong. No candidates will matter if they are not Hispanic which means you are throwing out a huge portion of the pool of candidates and limiting the possibilities for the students. I will predict now with 100% accuracy that by the end of this LSC's cycle the principal at Curie will be Hispanic. I just hope we are not overlooking the most talented and qualified person for the job because of other motives.

2007-03-12T10:08:00.000-05:00

ILLINOIS REALLY IS MORE CORRUPT
(Chicago Sun Times- Sunday March 11, 2007: James Merriner)

Compared to our neighbors, we're No. 1

Minneapolis, Minnesota thinks it can teach Illinois something about political corruption. No, really, Minnesota, by reputation the home of squeaky clean goverment. You might remember that in '98 Minnesota elected Gov. Jesse Ventura, the Reform Party candidate and former pro wrestler. Witty Minnesotans soon sported bumper stickers- "My governor can beat up your governor." Some Illinoisans had enough pride to respond, "My governor is a bigger crook than your governor," said a National Taxpayer Union of Illinois bumper sticker in 2000. That's the spirit, We're No. !!!

The Center for Ethical Business Cultures recently sponsored a conference, "Exploring Public Corruption- Its Causes, Consequences and Remedies, at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis. One of the panelists, Joseph Friedberg, a criminal defense lawyer, wondered why they even bothered. "The bribes that are talked about (here) would be considered insults in Chicago rather than bribes." "If I specialized in defending cases of public corruption, I would starve to death."

Illinois, where few lawyers specializing in such cases starve, once staged a similar forum. Professors, attorneys and reformers discussed how crooked the government is and how we might cleanse it. The University of Illinois at Springfield sponsored,"Politics and Ethics in Illinois- Past, Present and Future" in April 2003. Have you noticed our politics getting any cleaner since then?

"The unholy trinity of states are New Jersey, Louisiana, and Illinois," says professor at University of Virginia- Larry Sabato.

The former deputy chief of staff for George Ryan; Richard Juliano spoke at the Minneapolis ethics conference. He said that Ryan's operatives were "conditioned" to "considered all of these (corrupt acts) to be minimal transgressions....as long as the media didn't find out about it, in which case we would have a political problem, it would be OK....the goal was to win the election. As long as we win the election, everything else will take care of itself."

To quote Sabato once more on the culture of corruption: it "depends heavily on what average voters will tolerate from their elected officials." The feds are vigorously investigating the administrations of Gov. Blagojevich and Mayor Daley. We just elected them by landslide margins.

The 10 most corrupt states in order of most corrupt are: North Dakota (1), Louisiana (2), Mississippi (3), Alaska (4), Montana (5), Kentucky (6), South Dakota (7), Ohio (8), Illinois (9), Florida (10).

The 10 least corrupt states in order of least corrupt are: Oregon (1), Nebraska (2), Iowa (3), New Hampshire (4), Minnesota (5), New Mexico (6), Utah (7), Kansas (8), Colorado (9), Washington (10).

CROOK-AGO (CHICAGO)

2007-03-02T09:13:00.000-06:00

(Note the Daley/Cardenas sticker on pole)

RCI (Rojas Concrete, Inc.) at Alderman George Cardenas' ward office. Now what is a convicted felon who has been award millions of dollars in curb and gutter concrete contracts by the City of Chicago, that quit the Hired Truck Program two weeks after the Chicago Sun Times raised questions about his felony drug conviction. RCI had secured the following contracts prior to applying to the Hired Truck Program, instead of the city of Chicago revoking RCI's contracts; the city extended these contracts and raised the dollar value.

Sidewalk and miscellaneous Concrete (Curb and Gutter removal) for CDOT:

1. Contract #T24752 awarded 7/2/02- Beginning award amount: DUR (depends upon requirements) originally scheduled to end 11/2/02. Three time and dollar modifications:

a) Modified 5/8/03 to end 12/31/03- amount added: $2,076,163.43

b) Modified 5/4/04 to end 12/31/04- amount added: $1,805,359.50

c) Modified 11/8/04 to end 12/31/05- amount added: $1,959,169.50

Paid $5,915,371.47 as of 11/29/06

2. Contract #T24756 awarded 7/2/02-Beginning award amount: DUR . Again, three time and dollar modifications:

a) Modified 5/8/03 to end 12/31/03- amount added: $1,656,128.80

b) Modified 4/30/04 to end 12/31/04- amount added: $720,100

c) Modified 11/9/04 to end 12/31/05- amount added: $1,570,890.25

Paid $3,035,854.02 as of 12/1/06

Subcontracted for Jalpa Construction on contract #T24754 (paid $517,371.12 as of 10/26/06)

Subcontracted for Sumit Construction on contract #T24751 (paid $147, 466.45 as of 1/29/07)

The City of Chicago is like a casino, YOU HAVE TO PAY TO PLAY. Daley takes care of his cronies, if you're not one of them, then forget about it.

ON AUGUST 2, 2006 AT A CDOT PRIME & SUBCONTRACTORS NETWORKING SESSION, ACTING COMMISIONER CHERI HERAMB WAS NOTIFIED OF THIS AND SHE CLAIMED THAT SHE "WOULD LOOK INTO IT". TO DATE, NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE, AS YOU CAN SEE. ROJAS IS STILL GETTING PAID!!

2007-03-01T13:22:00.000-06:00

Rojas Concrete political contributions
Rojas Concrete Inc
Cardenas, George
1/20/2006
$3,000
Rojas Concrete Inc
Munoz, Ricardo
9/20/2005
$2,500
Rojas Concrete Inc
Munoz, Ricardo
4/13/2005
$2,500
Rojas Concrete Inc
Flores, Manuel
5/3/2006
$1,500
Rojas Concrete Inc
Cardenas, George
5/18/2006
$1,000
Rojas Concrete Inc
Cardenas, George
10/4/2006
$1,000
Rojas Concrete Inc
Flores, Manuel
10/19/2006
$1,000
Rojas Concrete Inc
36th Ward Dem
8/21/2006
$500

2007-03-01T13:19:00.000-06:00

http://www.ilcampaign.org/cgi-win/icpr_Filer_chicago.exe?id=11456&sYR=2006#Contributors

Cardenas, George (2005 - 2006 Cycle)
Office Held:
12Ald
Office Sought:
12Ald
Result:
Party:
N
Contributor Information
Expenditure Information

Contributor Information 2005 - 2006
Political Fund Activity
Contribution Analysis
Beginning Balance:
$10,470
Bus/Prof:
$228,465
Total Receipts:
$270,463
Ind/Small:
$57,328
In-Kind Contributions:
$3,165
Misc/Unknown:
$23,660
Total Expenditures:
$313,858
Party:
$6,000
Ending Balance:
$23,071
Labor:
$1,125
Investments:
$0
Self/Loan:
$0
Top 15 Contributors
Amount
Contribution Category
Mark Properties Inc
$15,500
Bus/Prof
Supermercado El Guero
$9,000
Bus/Prof
Recycling Systems Inc
$6,500
Bus/Prof
Promira Real Estate LLC
$6,000
Bus/Prof
TK Enterprises of IL LLC
$6,000
Bus/Prof
Auto Parts Service Inc d/b/a Frank West Side Auto Parts
$5,500
Bus/Prof
Citizens for Antonio (Tony) Munoz
$5,000
Party
Rojas Concrete Inc
$5,000
Bus/Prof
Robert A Levin & Associates
$4,000
Bus/Prof
McKinley Gardens LLC
$4,000
Bus/Prof
Mulcair Construction Co Inc
$4,000
Bus/Prof
Plaza Azteca
$4,000
Bus/Prof
Imperial Realty Co
$4,000
Bus/Prof
Emerald Homes LLC
$4,000
Bus/Prof
Cardenas , Martin
$3,720
Bus/Prof
View Top 50

Expenditure Information 2005 - 2006
Expenditure Analysis
Election Expenditure Detail
Election Expenditures:
$257,604
Staff & Operations:
$163,375
Non-election Expenditures:
$52,539
Campaign Literature:
$30,704
Political Contributions:
$12,460
Direct Voter Contact:
$28,646

Fundraising Expenses:
$28,328

Campaign Media:
$6,551

Top 15 Expenditures
Amount
Expenditure Category
Not-itemized Expenditures
$26,778
Misc. Election Expenses
Sanchez, Juana P
$13,988
Staff Salaries, Expenses, Payroll Taxes, Insurance
Peralta, Veronica
$12,097
Staff Salaries, Expenses, Payroll Taxes, Insurance
Comunicad Inc
$12,050
Literature-design, print, copy, mailing (over $500)
Graphic Arts Consultants
$11,749
Candidate Promotion Items - buttons, bumper stickers, etc.
CPH LLC
$11,500
Rent/utilities
Moretti's
$8,816
Fundraising Expenses -food, facilities, entertainment, prizes, print
Adelante Consulting
$8,000
Political Consulting
Expenses less than $150
$7,991
Misc. Election Expenses
Cingular Wireless
$7,927
Telecommunications
American Campaigns
$6,930
Bill Boards & Yard Signs
Sanchez, Juana P.
$6,867
Staff Salaries, Expenses, Payroll Taxes, Insurance
Maggiano's
$6,519
Fundraising Expenses -food, facilities, entertainment, prizes, print
Latinos for Education Foundation NFP
$6,385
Loans made to individuals, private organizations or corporations
Home Depot #1986
$6,284
Rent/utilities
View Top 50

2007-02-28T12:16:00.000-06:00

Fall of the 7th Ward shocks political dynasty's boss 'hog'
February 28, 2007
BY MARK BROWN Sun-Times ColumnistI watched Tuesday afternoon into evening as one Chicago political dynasty fell to the wayside and another stepped up to take its place. And the funny thing is, I didn't even realize what was happening until it was all over.
The Beavers dynasty fell flat. The Jackson dynasty is just gaining steam.
But that wasn't apparent as I tagged along with Darcel Beavers on Tuesday afternoon as she made her final campaign rounds through the 7th Ward where her father, William, had ruled since 1983. I watched as voters recognized her and hugged her and as her father's precinct captains reassured her that they had everything under control and that she would easily defeat Sandi Jackson, the wife of U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.
But they didn't. And she didn't.
"I think we're going to win it straight out but without a runoff," William Beavers, now a Cook County commissioner, had told me at 2 p.m. when I showed up at the 7th Ward office on 79th Street.
"I'm still feeling good," he said when I checked back at 6 p.m. after following his daughter around the ward for a few hours.
By 8 p.m., though, an hour after the polls closed, Beavers was saying, "It's starting to look like there could be a runoff."
Fifteen minutes later, he said, "It's getting tough."
By then, it was already over, and he knew it. But he couldn't bring himself to say so. Not as the clock ticked away and the vote totals mounted with Sandi Jackson carrying many precincts by a 2-to-1 margin. Beavers, known in his profession as somebody who can count votes, wouldn't concede the plain message in front of him. He kept talking runoff as his campaign workers charted the totals by hand the old-fashioned way and argued how to do percentages, by now basing their hopes on their own mathematical errors.
Stroger saga opened windowIn another room, his stunned precinct captains already knew the truth as they picked over their plates of soul food.
"This was the hardest fight I've been in," said one. "The Jackson name. The name worked," said another.
"He's a do-nothing congressman," said a third.
"His daddy was a great man. He ran for president, remember," came the answer.
"I knew it was rough out there," said the first.
Back on the other side of the 7th Ward office, Darcel Beavers was still smiling and telling the television cameras that she was going to wait until all the votes were counted.
She's a nice lady. I could see that as I made the rounds with her, watching her making friends with even the Jackson precinct workers. She worked behind the scenes in her father's office for 22 years, making sure the garbage was picked up and street lights repaired and potholes fixed.
William Beavers, an ex-cop, took over as alderman of the 7th Ward in 1983, riding to victory with the Harold Washington tidal wave.
Darcel Beavers said she hadn't considered herself the alderman-in-waiting during those years in her father's office.
"You know, I never even thought about it. I was just there to make sure everything was taken care of for my father," she said. But when the opportunity presented itself, she decided, "Why not me?"
And maybe her father could have handed her the baton if he hadn't gotten himself involved in the whole messy John Stroger-Todd Stroger saga, which helped embolden Sandi Jackson to run.
But he did, and she did, and the Jackson dynasty worked its own magic with an attractive, energetic candidate and lots of money poured into mailings and billboards and automated phone banks. Also making a difference was the help of the Service Employees International Union, which had once thought of backing the congressman for mayor.
Only question is -- how high?And now you have to wonder how far the Jackson family can take its dynasty. It seems unlikely it will want to stop with a congressman and an alderman and a man who ran for president.
William Beavers remains on the County Board for now, having just been elected to a four-year term, so his dynasty isn't dead yet. A few weeks back, Beavers was quoted as saying: "I'm the hog with the big nuts." Ever since then, I've been wanting to get him to translate, but when I cornered him Tuesday night, he declined.
"If I said it, whoever I said it to, they know what it meant," Beavers said with a twinkle in his eye before the bad news erased it.
That's just as well. Because now he'd have trouble backing it up.

2007-02-26T12:10:00.000-06:00

Do We Dare Hope?
By Ben Joravsky February 23, 2007
AT THE RISK of sounding hopelessly naive, I don’t mind admitting that I believe political reform in Chicago can come from the City Council.
I know we’ve grown used to a council filled with blowhards, scoundrels, and mayoral suck-ups. But if we work from the assumption that Daley’s going to be reelected, and we believe it’s wrong for one man to commandeer the government of this city, then we must look to the council for change.
It’s not as though the aldermen don’t have the power. By design, Chicago has a strong council/weak mayor setup. As Harold Washington learned during his troubled years as mayor in the 1980s, the city’s 50 aldermen have the authority to control budgets and appointments and school and transportation policies—if they choose to exercise it.
There are a few signs of rebellion. Last year the unions got 34 aldermen to take a stand against Daley on the big-box living-wage ordinance, forcing him to exercise his first mayoral veto. The council also managed to drag him, kicking and screaming, to an agreement to ban cigarette smoking in public places.
A majority of independents in the City Council would be nice, but you’d be surprised at how much only a few of them can accomplish. The mainstream media are largely reactive, and they’re always in need of stories driven by flashy personalities. If two or three aldermen dared to denounce, oh, the expensive and unnecessary underground station at Block 37, for instance, or using TIFs to capture tax revenues in wealthy neighborhoods, coverage would follow. Just look at all the excitement roused by our foie gras ban. And reporters are one thing Mayor Daley can’t completely ignore—failing to defend his programs, he might even change them. This is how Forrest Claypool, Mike Quigley, and Tony Peraica are forcing Cook County Board president Todd Stroger to adjust his budgets and policies.
Aldermanic candidates are far too cautious when it comes to Daley. More than one has told me that it’s just too dangerous for a challenger to criticize even his lamest ideas. They figure that would alienate voters who support him and scare off voters who fear him. So most either endorse Daley or pretend he doesn’t exist. “There’s a feeling that you can’t get things for your ward if you criticize the mayor,” says Martin Oberman, a former independent alderman from Lincoln Park. “You and I know that’s not true, but it’s a fear.”
Many candidates assure me privately that once elected, look out, they’re going to be tigers. We’ll see. Michele Smith, a candidate in the 43rd Ward, had the nerve to show up at a public CTA hearing on February 14 to blast the breakdown of the Red Line. The silence from north lakefront incumbents (Burt Natarus, Tom Tunney, Helen Shiller, Vi Daley, and Mary Ann Smith) is deafening.
In the 3rd Ward, Pat Dowell is a harsh critic of TIF waste. It’s no wonder Daley’s working to reelect the incumbent, Dorothy Tillman. Six other candidates who are smart and not afraid to speak out—Toni Foulkes in the 15th, Nick Sposato in the 36th, Greg Brewer in the 50th, Peter Zelchenko and Rachel Goldstein in the 43rd (they’re even more confrontational than Smith), and Bob Bank in the 45th—will all probably lose for the wrong reasons, lack of money being the chief one. But if even one gets elected it will mean more scrutiny of budgets, policies, public projects, and TIFs—especially TIFs. If one alderman—that’s right, just one—were willing to blow the whistle on the TIF scam, reporters other than me might have to cover it.
Of the incumbents, aldermen Joe Moore in the 49th, Toni Preckwinkle in the 4th, and Rick Munoz in the 22nd have shown some guts in defying Daley. I used to have high hopes for Sandi Jackson, who’s running in the 7th, but her husband, Congressman Jesse Jackson, went soft and she may too.
Residents of the 35th Ward may be the luckiest people in town. Whoever wins there will probably join an independent crusade if one emerges in the council. Miguel Sotomayor is running with the support of local reformers. Vilma Colom, the former alderman, is so eager to prove she’s renounced her old machine ways that she’s vowed to vote against TIFs in wealthy areas. And although many of his independent buddies have turned against him over development issues, the incumbent, Rey Colon, has voted against the mayor on several key bills.
If I lived in the 48th Ward, I’d write in Chris Lawrence for alderman, if only to protest the way incumbents use election laws to stymie opposition. Lawrence, who served in Iraq, is enraged that Alderman Mary Ann Smith was able to knock him off the ballot on a minor technicality. “This system’s fixed—it’s rigged, it’s an outrage,” he says, ripping into “waste, fraud, and patronage.”
That’s just the sort of cage-rattling rhetoric the City Council desperately needs more of.
For more on Chicago politics, see our blog Clout City.

2007-02-26T12:02:00.000-06:00

John Kass Chicago Tribune
Daley has canary-yellow constituency Published February 23, 2007
Chicago politics is bossed by the politically ruthless who understand the obligations of their craft.Because without ruthlessness, a boss is considered weak, unable to hammer the squabbling, greedy and competing interests into line.Without ruthlessness, there can be no Chicago political version of the Stockholm Syndrome--fear transforming into frantic, desperate adoration.Without ruthlessness, a boss couldn't pound the living face of the city into something resembling his own and allow others to call it legacy.Chicago Mayor Richard Daley has held that hammer for a long time. As the city trudges toward Tuesday's election, with his weak challengers splitting the opposition vote as if by design, he's likely to hold that hammer for years.Daley isn't the first mayor to understand the obligations of ruthlessness. They all learn it. His late father knew, as did the late Harold Washington. Their behinds were also smooched publicly, tentatively at first, then quite completely, the frequency of the smooching commensurate with their increasing power.The campaign limps on quietly. The media politely declined to demand that Daley debate his challengers. Ex-con aldermen ran for their old jobs. The comic antics at the Cook County Board, with the media punching bag named President Todd Stroger, reinforced City Hall's subliminal message: Without Daley, all is lost.It is a lie, artfully told. Yet it encourages Chicago to close its eyes to corruption, and to the suburban power elite funneling millions to the Daley campaign to protect their real estate interests.So I've been considering this fascinating fellow who runs things, even though his trains don't run on time; the frightened little guy I once admired and defended when he was weak; the bully who grew more powerful than his father, without opposition, without much dissent.And of the cronyism that rules City Hall, addressed by those who wag their fingers at deals for his friends, but who eventually recover and come down on the side of what the establishment calls stability. Yet how would we treat him if he were black?Harold Washington was slammed by critics for nickel-and-dime corruption--and I was one of them--but since Daley was elected in 1989, hundreds of millions of dollars have been shoveled out of City Hall, the cycle of excuses made and accepted and made again, continuing.Yet both major papers have endorsed the mayor for re-election. Even the saintly Barack Obama--promising to change our nation's politics if elected president--has endorsed Daley. That Obama is content to change Washington but not Chicago, and is not called out for this by his national media camp followers, speaks to their childish yearning for Camelot. But Chicago politics is no fairy tale. I think of Daley in the back of his car, reading the papers, smiling and smirking, his driver Silent Sam Roti wheeling through the South Loop toward City Hall, the mayor bruised by criticism and federal inquests, but still in control. I've been in that car, with Sam driving, the mayor reading the papers, joking, wisecracking about his critics, heaping even more contempt on those who try to curry favor by genuflecting in prose.He has that same laugh, that same defiance, today, the mayor for life wearing his heart on the sleeve of that snazzy canary-yellow sports coat in his TV campaign commercials. The coat has been nicknamed the "Freddy Barbara Jacket" after his friend, the Bridgeport trucking boss/recycling consultant who wears stylish sportswear and is now a wealthy man courtesy of City Hall.Daley campaigns without interference, talking of selling off invaluable city assets like the airports for short-term cash, offering Olympic dreams to his cheerleaders, bedazzling middle-class homeowners. They're the ones who subsidize the real estate cliques protected by tax increment financing districts. They don't quite get it, but they feel the squeeze. I'm reminded of a line used by Ald. Edward Burke (14th), quoting another Irishman, Edmund Burke, no relation, but a bright fellow nevertheless, who had a career long ago across the sea. "In politics there are no permanent enemies, no permanent friends, only permanent interests," said Burke quoting Burke years ago.Burke still uses it, and I'd pay him to say it in his heavily accented South Side Irish Spanish, as the 14th Ward becomes Latino and the old ward organizations fade away.Still, the interests remain constant. The first traders gave whiskey to the Indians for pelts. Now it's contracts and construction permits benefiting lawyers and real estate investors contributing to Rich "The Builder."The Burkean line about interests accounts for human appetites and ambition in forming policy. But it is considered cynical by those who want Camelot and fairy tales.There are no unicorns here. The politicians love it when we spin stories about them--full of mist and the sound of pipes hidden in the rhythm of the words--yet at bottom, political Chicago is a realistic place.The mayor is the mayor is the mayor.He holds the city, quite still, in his palm.----------jskass@tribune.com

2007-02-26T11:48:00.000-06:00

Judge calls timeout on stalling tactic
February 25, 2007
BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist
It is a really bad idea to try and fool a federal judge. It is an especially stupid idea if that guy in the black robes is highly respected U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Aspen.
But here we are, just two days before the Chicago mayoral election, and it looks like Mayor Daley's Law Department has pulled a stunt from which it and he will not easily recover.
Oh, sure, Daley will still get re-elected to a sixth term on Tuesday. But he could soon be forced to testify about the always-unpleasant topic of torture by Chicago police officers, cases that date from 1973 to 1991, which happened under his watch as Cook County state's attorney and mayor.
This week we learned secret negotiations have been conducted by Aspen between the city's lawyers and attorneys for three former Death Row inmates who in 2002 were pardoned and set free.
It seems the city agreed in November to pay $14.8 million to Madison Hobley, LeRoy Orange and Stanley Howard, but only if they didn't criticize the mayor, depose him or make him a defendant in future cases. In other words, the city's terms for settlement were "take the money and shut up."
But perhaps the Feb. 27 election was still too close for comfort. The city's lawyers in consultation with unnamed officials "at the highest levels" suddenly screeched to a halt, threw themselves into reverse, and burned rubber to back away from the settlement they had orally agreed to in front of the judge.
Now the mayor and Mara Georges, head of the city Law Department, are claiming there was no deal.
Imagine Aspen's surprise.
In open court, the judge was heard to say the city's conduct was ''unprecedented.'' Translated, I take that to mean: "Mayor Daley and Ms. Georges, brace yourself. The gloves are coming off.''
Let's be clear.
Were black suspects tortured at the hands of former Chicago police commander Jon Burge and his all-white band of detectives?
Yes.
How do we know?
The city said so.
The very same Law Department that has spent at least $10 million of our tax money defending these cops, and is still defending them to this very day, is the same Law Department that confirmed the torture.
Back in 1992 as it was preparing to suddenly fire Burge right after spending a million bucks defending him, the city's lawyer detailed seven cases of suspects being tortured, ''spitting blood,'' ''pants pulled down . . . electroshocks,'' and threats to a prisoner to ''blow his black head off.''
The city's attorney back then called it an ''astounding pattern'' of conduct by Burge and his boys.
The only thing that remains astounding today is that the city is still fighting what it long ago admitted was true. And should have settled. And apologized for.
So now, picture this.
The mayor's lawyers have until March 22 to explain themselves to yet another federal judge, James Holderman, who is the chief U.S. district judge in Chicago.
And it is entirely possible that Aspen could be called as a witness. Meanwhile, a third federal judge, U.S. Magistrate Judge Geraldine Soat Brown, has now ordered Daley to answer questions under oath about police torture.
Friday, around the same time that Brown was entering her strongly worded ruling, the city got even more bad news over at federal court.
A jury awarded almost $10 million because of another horrible cop case. One in which the city knew the cop was guilty, knew the parties suing had been wronged, but couldn't do the right thing and admit it.
Instead, the mayor's Law Department fought the claims of ATF agent Michael Casali and his wife, former ATF agent Diane Klipfel. At trial, the couple successfully proved that Chicago Police retaliated against them after they reported the criminal conduct of Chicago Police officer Joseph Miedzianowski, who threatened and stalked Klipfel. She had to move her kids out of state for awhile.
Miedzianowski, who is now serving a life sentence for gun running, drug dealing and protecting murderers, was one of the most corrupt cops the Police Department has ever produced and yet, jurors concluded, his superiors chose to cover up his conduct rather than really investigate it.
City taxpayers will pay the freight on that $10 million settlement, too -- an amount that could have been far less years ago when Klipfel and Casali were pleading to close this awful chapter of their life and take much less cash.
But the city law department said no.
Notice a pattern here?
I bet those federal judges down on Dearborn Street do.
Daley could soon be forced to testify about the unpleasant topic of torture by Chicago police officers.

2007-02-23T12:42:00.000-06:00

BELOW IS AN EMAIL THAT WAS FORWARDED TO OUR BLOG. IINJUSTICEXPOSED IS CURRENTLY INVESTIGATING THIS MATTER.

to spatterson@suntimes.com

date Feb 19, 2007 9:22 AM

subject Attacked and arrested at Daley Center

Good morning Mr. Patterson,
My name is Jaime. I am contacting you this morning in reference to what happened to you at Stroger Hospital last week. An almost similar incident happened to me on the morning of Friday Feb. 2, 2007. Myself and a few others were invited by a friend to attend their court proceeding at Richard J. Daley Center in Judge Donegan's courtroom. In an act of citizens lawfully fighting to uphold our country's Constitution amidst judicial corruption, I was falsely arrested and detained for hours in the basement of the Daley Center, because of a Cook County Sheriff Deputy's false claim that myself and others who were with me were disrupting Judge Donegan's courtroom. When this "so-called" disruption occurred, this sheriff deputy was outside of the courtroom. We did not cause any sort of commotion while we were on the premises of the Daley Center. As we were escorted out of the courtroom, more Cook County Sheriff deputies and a sergeant rushed down the hallway towards us. As I am trying to explain to the officers, that this is a public place; we were invited here to witness a court proceeding and we remained civilized the whole time we were there. They arrested me and told me that I am trespassing and if the others did not want to be arrested, they'd better leave now and not come back inside the building. I was not allowed to phone my family to let them know what had happened to me. The Sheriff Department would not release any information when people called to inquire as to why I was being held.
Later in the evening after being treated like I was a criminal, I told the deputy sheriffs that were nearby, that I was having chest pains, they shackled my ankles, (my hands had been in cuffs already); and escorted me to Northwestern hospital for treatment. Upon arrival, I was shackled to the bed as if I were a madman. The doctors and nurses there seemed as if they were in cahoots with the sheriff dept. One of the doctors who was attending to me, a Dr. Lerman, I overheard her telling the sheriff deputies that she would medicate me and call in a psychiatrist. This doctor knew nothing about me to decide that I needed medication, all she knew is that I came in with cuffs and chains; she assumed that I was a criminal. This whole ordeal I was treated inhumane by the Cook County Sheriff Department and some of the staff at Northwestern Hospital.
I was released late Friday (into Saturday) with false charges against me: Criminal trespassing as well as numerous other false charges. The following Monday, I went to pick up my property. One of the deputy sheriffs, Deputy James, told a white shirted sheriff, that I do not get my property back because I failed to sign some form. Deputy James and other deputies that were in the office look through code books and on a computer, trying to find an excuse to not give my property back. After looking for a while they thought that they had come up with something and gave it to the white shirted sheriff, he in turn made a phone call. He then came over to me with my belongings, everything was there except for my cell phone, my belt and a jacket. They claim that they never had these items. These items were on me when I was falsely arrested for simply just exercising my constitutional rights. I saw the picture of your bruised wrist, I have pictures of my bruised wrists and ankles. If you could contact me, I can give further detail including names and other details.

2007-02-23T11:42:00.000-06:00

Feb 16, 2007 10:40 AM
Bill-Boards for Walls
from Clout St by Newsdesk
Posted by E.A. Torriero at 8:15 a.m.
What does a congressman do with unused political billboard space?
Give it away - even without an endorsement.
It seems U.S. Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) had some blank billboards available after an aldermanic candidate dropped from a race. So, Davis spokesman Ira Cohen said, he decided to split the space among the city's two black mayoral candidates.
For longshot William "Dock" Walls, the gift was the largest contribution he received during his campaign. Walls, who has raised barely $16,000, received an additional $5,000 worth of billboard space from Davis.
"We're going to put (Walls) face on it," said Walls co-campaign manager Bruce Crosby, adding that the billboards will dot the West Side. "That's what you do with billboards. You put a Bill on it."

2007-02-23T11:41:00.000-06:00

Posted by Dan Mihalopoulos at 11:02 a.m.
Only five of the city's 50 aldermen declined to help Mayor Richard Daley's re-election campaign do the political dirty work of collecting nominating signatures.
According to campaign, the five dissenters were Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th), Freddrenna Lyle (6th), Ricardo Munoz (22nd), Toni Preckwinckle (4th) and Joe Moore (49th).
Daley turned in far fewer signatures than in past elections, when groups such as the Hispanic Democratic Organization used legions of patronage workers to campaign for the mayor. That practice all but ended with the ongoing federal investigation of City Hall hiring fraud.
Instead, Daley campaign manager Terry Peterson reached out to ward organizations, often led by aldermen.
Moore said he got a call from Peterson, but the conversation was vague.
"Not that I necessarily would have done it, but he never really put the ask on me," Moore said. "Maybe he thought I wouldn't do it. He said he was calling to touch base."
Moore and the mayor have clashed over the big-box wage ordinance and the foie gras ban, both of which were sponsored by Moore.

2007-02-23T11:36:00.000-06:00

CAN ANYONE RELATE TO THIS; THE CITY FAILING TO INVESTIGATE REPORTS OF CORRUPTION. WILL SOMEONE FINALLY INVESTIGATE MAYOR DALEY!!!!!!!!!! CHECK THIS ARTICLE OUT

$9 mil. award for crooked cop's terror
Relieved ATF agents: 'We didn't want to sue the city at all'
February 23, 2007
BY NATASHA KORECKI Federal Courts Reporter Two ATF agents say they waited 15 years to see justice against corrupt Chicago cop Joseph Miedzianowski.
On Thursday, justice came in the form of $9.75 million.
A federal jury awarded Diane Klipfel and Michael Casali the significant sum after finding the city failed to properly investigate their reports of corruption by Miedzianowski, leaving him free to terrorize the couple for years.
Klipfel quietly put her hand over her mouth as she heard the jury verdict. Her husband patted her on the back.
"I'm relieved the 15-year ordeal is over with and that justice was served," Casali said.
Klipfel criticized the city for spending resources to defend a bad cop who is now serving a life sentence for operating a major drug ring and protecting gang-bangers and murderers.
"If they would have just turned that into some kind of investigation in the police department," Klipfel said. "We didn't want to sue the city at all. All we wanted was Miedzianowski taken care of."
Suffered for yearsAs an ATF agent, Klipfel worked on a case with Miedzianowski in 1992 when she reported he robbed a drug dealer.
The couple claims the city and police department encouraged a code of silence that kept anyone from reprimanding Miedzianowski.
Klipfel, who said she was later forced to leave her job, said Miedzianowski turned the investigation on her.
The couple said they suffered for years as Miedzianowski stalked them and surveilled their house, forcing her to live apart from her husband and move her children to other states.
Miedzianowski was charged criminally with other corrupt acts years later.
The couple said the police department's probe into Miedzianowski was a sham.
And so did jurors.
"What investigation did the Chicago Police Department do?" juror Joe Karl said. "Mike and Diane were wronged. It was the city's policies that created that."
Juror Megan Cox said the police investigation into Klipfel's complaints "lacked thoroughness," and she called it "incompetent."
'A scary, scary man'Cox, Karl and juror Steve Friedman said seeing Miedzianowski and hearing him talk -- even though it was video testimony -- convinced them of the couple's story.
"He is a scary, scary man," Karl said. "A frightening man."
The trial stretched five weeks and saw Chicago Police Supt. Phil Cline testify he had a role in three internal investigations of Miedzianowski, but the officer was never disciplined in any of them.
The couple's lawyer, Sally Saltzberg, said the city never offered to settle.
The city said it negotiated but was unable to reach an agreement.
"We're disappointed with the verdict and we're reviewing our appellate options," said Chicago Law Department spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle.
nkorecki@suntimes.com

2007-02-23T11:35:00.001-06:00

by Newsdesk
Posted by Dan Mihalpoulos at 8:58 p.m. 2/20/07
Chicagoans long have known that they may vote from the great hereafter. Similarly, a political campaign worker aced a city job interview a few years back, even though he had died a few days earlier.
And Mayor Richard Daley's swelling re-election campaign fund now has received money that originally was donated for the political account of Democratic powerbroker George Dunne. The late George Dunne.
On Monday, almost nine months after Dunne's passing, the Daley campaign reported receiving a $10,000 contribution from the George W. Dunne Campaign Fund.
Since Dunne died, other beneficiaries of the fund have included Todd Stroger's successful bid for Cook County Board president ($5,000); losing Democratic congressional candidates Dan Seals and Tammy Duckworth ($1,000 each); the International Ministry in Chicago ($10,000); and the University of St. Mary's of the Lake in Mundelein ($3,000).
On Tuesday, the county is holding a ceremony to dedicate its building at 69 W. Washington to Dunne, who was county board president.

2007-02-23T11:33:00.000-06:00

Feb 21, 2007
The checks really are in the mail
from Clout St by Newsdesk
Posted by Dan Mihalopoulos at 1:21 p.m.
After promising a big push against politically mobilized labor unions in this year’s city elections, the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce finally is putting some money where its mouth has been.
In recent days, the chamber has delivered checks to the campaigns of embattled incumbents Burton Natarus (42nd), George Cardenas (12th), Darcel Beavers (7th) and Vi Daley (43rd). Natarus and Daley got $10,000 each, while Cardenas received $8,000 and Beavers accepted $7,500.
“Over $80,000 will be distributed by the end of [this] week,” said the chamber’s leader, Jerry Roper.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. gave the chamber $25,000 for its political fund Monday.
The chamber endorsed only one challenger in Tuesday’s election, 49th Ward candidate Chris Adams, whose wife is a former member of the chamber’s board of directors. The chamber on Tuesday donated $5,000 to Adams.
Adams is facing incumbent Joe Moore, who antagonized big business with his leading role in pushing for the big-box “living wage” ordinance and the foie gras ban. Roper said he wants to send a message to Moore because he believes the North Side alderman is angling to succeed U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).
“She has been all over them," Roper said. "They are building their farm team. That’s what they do.Who would have thought four years ago that Barack Obama would be where he is now?”
Meanwhile, the chamber’s foes in organized labor have reported spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund aldermanic candidates. That includes more than $100,000 in the 12th Ward alone for challenger Carina Sanchez and about $200,000 for 15th Ward candidate Toni Foulkes. Labor has almost entirely funded the Sanchez and Foulkes campaigns and heavily supported several other candidates.
The big business bucks largely have gone to Mayor Richard Daley’s re-election bid. None of that money has trickled down to the aldermen who vote almost always as the mayor’s office directs them.
But some observers speculate that Daley is waiting to see which incumbents end up in run-off elections. By then, according to this theory, Daley will be assured another term and he will use some of whatever’s left from his gigantic campaign fund to salvage flailing council allies.

2007-02-23T11:32:00.001-06:00

2007-02-23T11:28:00.000-06:00

Daley to pay students $100 for Election Day help
Opponent says stipend equal to 'buying' support
February 22, 2007
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter Mayor Daley's campaign is paying college students $100 apiece to get out the vote for the mayor on Election Day -- and replace an army of precinct workers diminished by the City Hall hiring scandal.
Mayoral challenger Bill Walls accused the mayor of "buying" student support. He likened the $100 stipends to employment promises made to members of the Hispanic Democratic Organization and other pro-Daley armies at the center of the scandal. The mayor's former patronage chief and three others were convicted last summer of rigging city hiring.
"He gave HDO promises of jobs and promotions. He's giving these young people instant gratification in the form of money. Quid pro quo: Work for me, and we'll give you money. It's the same thing," Walls said.
Buying lunch is normal: foeMayoral challenger Dorothy Brown said it's not unusual for politicians to buy lunch for precinct workers on Election Day. But she argued that $100 is "an inordinate amount of money" to offer people to staff phone banks, go door-to-door and drive people to the polls.
"They're not breaking the law. But if you have to resort to paying people $100 a day -- if you're the incumbent mayor and you can't get people to volunteer for your campaign -- that tells me you don't have a lot of support in the community."
Terry Peterson, the mayor's campaign manager, said Daley has "a ton" of volunteers -- including union members, ministers, block club presidents and college students. Daley is also getting help from Democratic ward organizations he worked around for many years.
But Peterson argued that there's nothing wrong with offering $100 apiece to college students willing to spend the day getting out the vote.
"A lot of them are going to volunteer because they want to volunteer," he said. "But what's wrong with paying a college student who might want to make a little extra money for school or to help them out with their books?"
fspielman@suntimes.com

2007-02-23T09:01:00.000-06:00

Court orders Daley to talk
Federal judge's ruling clears way for deposition in cop torture case
Michael Higgins and Jeff Coen, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter Rudolph Bush contributed to this report
Published February 23, 2007
In a rare ruling, a federal judge on Thursday ordered Mayor Richard Daley to answer questions under oath about whether he or others permitted Chicago police to physically abuse suspects in the 1980s.Lawyers for pardoned Death Row inmate Madison Hobley had fought for two years to take the deposition of Daley, who was Cook County state's attorney at the time of Hobley's arrest in 1987.

City attorneys have argued that Daley has no information about police misconduct under former Cmdr. Jon Burge that Hobley's lawyers couldn't get from other sources.But on Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Geraldine Soat Brown disagreed.The facts in Hobley's case "support a conclusion that Mr. Daley may have information about the activities of Burge and other police officers, about who in the city and police administration knew about those activities, and about whether any action was taken on the basis of such knowledge," Brown wrote.Brown instructed the two sides to talk about a possible time and place for Daley's deposition and to be prepared to discuss the issue at a Wednesday court date.City officials said Thursday they may appeal Brown's ruling to U.S. District Judge Marvin Aspen, who is assigned to the case but has referred preliminary matters to Brown."There is a high standard for deposing public officials," Law Department spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle said. "Our position has been that the mayor has no unique or new information" about the case.Brown's ruling came on the same day that U.S. District Chief Judge James Holderman gave the city until March 22 to respond in writing to claims it has reneged on a settlement with Hobley and two other men who have claimed police torture. Attorneys for Hobley, Leroy Orange and Stanley Howard contend they agreed to a $14.8 million settlement late last year, which the city seemingly has abandoned. Daley said this week there was no agreement, and after court Thursday, city Corporation Counsel Mara Georges stood by that position. Hobley told reporters outside court Thursday that he is disappointed about the settlement dispute. "Sadly, it doesn't seem like I can get on with the rest of my free life," said Hobley. Brown's ruling, however, was cheered by lawyers for the three former inmates."It's about time he had to sit and face some serious interrogation about his role as state's attorney and later as mayor in the long-standing torture scandal," said Flint Taylor, an attorney for Orange.Brown's ruling opened the door for Daley to be questioned about a 1982 letter from then-police Supt. Richard Brzeczek regarding signs that police had abused murder suspect Andrew Wilson. The Illinois Supreme Court later reversed Wilson's conviction."There is evidence that in February 1982, the state's attorney's office, and perhaps Mr. Daley personally, was put on notice of allegations of physical abuse of suspects" through the letter, Brown wrote in a six-page opinion. Plaintiffs suing the city have asked to depose Daley in dozens of lawsuits since he became mayor, but Hoyle said she knew of only one or two cases in which he has sat for a deposition.In the ruling Thursday, Brown said plaintiffs may not use depositions to harass high-ranking government officials, or merely for "publicity value."But she said public officials aren't immune from depositions. Brown cited the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1997 that forced President Bill Clinton to sit for a deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case. Kurt Feuer, an attorney for Hobley, said Brown's opinion confirmed his view that a Cook County special prosecutor had not adequately questioned Daley during an earlier deposition.The special prosecutors' report, released last year, concluded that Burge had engaged in decades of torture, but that he could not be prosecuted criminally because the statute of limitations had run out.The special prosecutor's deposition of the mayor "contains little useful information," Brown wrote.
mjhiggins@tribune.com
jcoen@tribune.com