Jon Burge and the Theater of Corruption

by Libby Hellmann

Studs Terkel once said Chicago is not the most corrupt American city… it’s the most theatrically corrupt.”

If that’s so, turn on the stage lights and cue the actors. The dénouement of one of the Chicago’s longest running police scandals is about to unfold. The villain is former Police Commander Jon Burge; the hero is U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald; and a supporting role will be played by Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow. If past is indeed prologue, we’re in for high drama next spring.


For those of you who aren’t familiar with the scandal, Jon Burge was a police commander in Area Two on the South Side of Chicago. For over 20 years, mostly during the ‘70s and ‘80s, he and his men allegedly tortured over 200 suspects into confessions for crimes they may or may not have committed. We’re not talking about your run of the mill police pressure, interrogations, or threats. We’re talking cattle prods. Alligator clips attached to body parts. Electric shocks. Suffocation. Radiator burns. Mock executions. And, of course, beatings, as described in the following trailer of a 2007 documentary:




Never before has there been such an extraordinary pattern of police abuse and brutality. Once the rumors and reports about the behavior surfaced, a series of complaints, investigations, and lawsuits followed. Burge was tried for police brutality in 1989 -- he was acquitted – and then tried again for civil rights violations. But he was never convicted of a felony, and after he was fired in 1993, he moved to Florida where he’s lived – unrepentant and free and collecting his police pension -- for 15 years. To date over 30 million dollars has been spent by the city and CPD in settlements and legal fees. Many believe Illinois’ stay on death row executions by former Governor George Ryan was prompted by Burge’s behavior.

Enter US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. On October 21 Fitzgerald finally arrested Burge in Florida and charged him -- not with torturing his victims-- but with lying. Fitzgerald, an aggressive, rising legal -- and probably one day political-- star is best known for his work on dramatic cases like the first World Trade Center bombing, the Valerie Plame scandal, and sending George Ryan to prison after the licenses for bribes scandal. (In Illinois you truly can be a hero one day, a felon the next. In fact, the story of Ryan’s career would make for great theater too… but I digress.)

Fitzgerald’s charges are themselves interesting. Because the statute of limitations on the actual torture ran out, the prosecutor used Burge’s denial of the torture in a 2003 federal civil rights case as fodder for charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. In his announcement, he compared Burge’s arrest to that of Al Capone who was arrested for tax evasion, rather than his mob and prohibition-related crimes.

It turns out Friend-of-the-Outfit (ours, not Capone’s) and best-selling author Jonathan Eig is writing a book about Capone and the man who nailed him (It wasn’t Elliot Ness). Eig says while the practice of using one crime to pay for another started with Capone, it wasn’t a slam dunk. Indeed, there was high drama there, as well.

They weren't crazy about the idea and they weren't sure it would work. Even the tax charge against AC was fairly weak. In the end, it worked, of course. My book will show that Capone actually got screwed during the trial. If he had a better lawyer he might have beaten the rap… It doesn't have to be tax evasion. Barry Bonds was indicted with the Capone method; instead of nailing him for steroids they (the IRS again) are after him for perjury. Countless terrorism suspects have been arrested for visa violations and locked up for long stretches on the assumption that they're probably dangerous. Burge fits the pattern perfectly.

When he's not pleading the 5th, Burge has – of course - said he's not guilty. The trial is set for May 1st and the judge is none other than US District court judge Joan Lefkow, whose husband and mother were tragically murdered three years ago by a disgruntled plaintiff. High drama there, too.

So, the pieces are in place. The characters’ back stories are fascinating; the issues are fraught with conflict, tragedy, and not at all pre-ordained. Stay tuned. This is going to be some show.

What about you? What corruption cases would make great theater in your neck of the wood?

A Chicago Cop's Story

by Libby Hellmann

This post isn’t meant to be an apology for or a defense of the Chicago Police Department. It’s not meant to excuse. Or explain. I’m just passing on information from a friend who’s a Chicago cop. Part of the rank and file.

I bring it up because I think it’s representative of many organizations that undergo significant and rapid change. And because, while I was on the other side of the barricades forty years ago, writing crime fiction has given me – if not an appreciation – a respect for the men and women who put their lives on the line with every traffic stop.



Given that, something is wrong in the CPD. Something beyond politics.

For those of you who don’t live in Chicago, the Chicago Police Department has a new superintendent. Former FBI Special Agent Jody Weis was brought in from Philadelphia by Mayor Daley last February. Weis’s mission was to shake up the Department after a wave of scandals threatened the city’s political and economic climate as well as Chicago’s Olympic hosting hopes.


Weis did what he was told. Within a couple of months, he’d dismissed 21 of 25 Commanders and made other wholesale changes to CPD’s leadership and structure. The objective was to weed out the worst of the rogue cops and the corruption. The problem is that Weis might have gone too far too fast. In trying to clean up, he has weakened the average cop's ability to do his or her job.

Now any officer who doesn’t dot every “I” or cross every “T” risks sanctions from the upper echelon. Although they may be guilty only of minor or procedural mistakes, they’re being lumped together with cops accused of criminal activity. Long time cops are being taken off the street and put into desk jobs -- mostly because no one knows what else to do with them. The administration doesn’t yet know how far Weis wants to go, or even exactly what he wants, so a lot of good officers are being sidelined and sentenced to a purgatory of bureaucratic limbo. In a way, my friend says, criminals have more rights than do police officers accused of misconduct. He knows of officers who've been stripped of their powers for over nine months and still haven't been told what the allegations are.

More problematic, the cops on the streets no longer know what’s expected of them. And because they don’t know, and can’t count on support from the administration, they’re not going the extra mile. “Why even try if they’re gonna be hung out to dry?” My friend asks. For a police force that, my friend admits, has always been pretty aggressive, this is a huge change. And not for the better.

Even worse, some of the organizations designed to help cops who’ve gone afoul of the rules aren’t. The Police Sergeant’s organization, for example, can’t represent its own members because one of the attorneys is already representing Keith Herrera, one of several SOS cops accused of robbery and kidnapping.

The result? There’s been a spike in crime. Chicago’s murder rate is up 13 per cent; so are shootings and other street violence. While a down economy is a contributing factor, the media is feeding on it, regularly bringing out stories critical of cops, some of which may or may not be significant. My friend didn’t mention it, but a case in point might be the tow truck bribe scandal, which is just now being reported, even though a federal investigation has been ongoing since 2003. An investigation, btw, that was initially brought to the Feds by the CPD.

Consequently, morale in the department never been lower. Some of it is because people still trying to figure out what “the new guy” wants, but much of it is the lack of support for the officer on the street. “It’s just not happening now,” my friend says. And he’s worried.

OK. To be fair, there’s another side to this. Some people feel that cops like my friend are just whining because they’ve finally been taken to task. That, for the first time, they don’t have carte blanche to operate in their erstwhile aggressive and freewheeling ways. Some are applauding the fact that a high profile case of police brutality was actually referred to the Feds by CPD. Some are encouraged that Weis is trying to clean house. And they’re happy that he's an outsider and the city finally has a Superintendent that's not beholden to the "Chicago Way."

Still, I feel uneasy when the people we count on to keep chaos at bay don’t feel they can do the job they’ve been trained to do. There are too many examples where it’s triggered the breakdown of something more fundamental.

What do you think?


Finally, depending on which side of the fence you’re on, you’ll either love – or hate – this.