Four former Chicago police officers implicated in the Special Operations Section scandal have been charged in the case, a sign that the state and federal probes of one of the city's biggest police corruption scandals ever is coming to a head, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the investigation. Bart Maka, 30; Brian Pratscher, 35; Donovan Markiewicz, 38; and Guadalupe Salinas, 41, turned themselves in at a police station Thursday. They are scheduled to appear in Cook County Circuit Court Friday to be arraigned on a host of charges, including robbery, home invasion and official misconduct, according to court records.
The four are expected to eventually plead guilty in exchange for cooperating with the investigation. They would testify at trial and have already provided grand jury testimony about their alleged involvement in a ring led by former Officer Jerome Finnigan. The group is accused of making false arrests, committing robberies and home invasions for several years, acting under the guise of busting street gangs and rounding up guns.
More police officers swept up in the probe have also cooperated and may have charges and plea deals announced in the coming weeks, a law-enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation said. The cooperating officers were part of a group of more than a dozen officers who were implicated in the scandal but not originally charged when the case broke in September 2006.
Chicago police officials declined to comment.
Before this week's developments, six officers had been indicted with Finnigan. Charges against two of the officers were dropped this year, partly because victims mistook them for other officers involved.
The new cases against the four men in Circuit Court signal that federal indictments in a parallel investigation run by the U.S. attorney are finally ready to be filed, sources said. Federal prosecutors and the FBI entered the case in 2007 to investigate whether there was a coverup by Chicago Police Department supervisors. Federal indictments, expected in coming weeks, could include charges against several ranking officers, sources said.
SOS was once one of the department's elite crime-fighting units, praised by department brass as the best at making gang and drug arrests. But while they were racking up arrests in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they were also tallying thousands of complaints of false arrest and thefts.
When the scandal broke, it was the first and biggest domino in a line of misconduct cases that led to the early retirement of then-Supt. Philip Cline, whom Mayor Richard Daley replaced with Jody Weis, an ex-FBI official. The unit was disbanded in October 2007.
The city has settled numerous lawsuits against SOS officers connected to the alleged Finnigan crew, but several pending suits have been delayed by the criminal investigation.
Soon after federal authorities entered the case, they developed information that Finnigan was trying to hire a hit man to murder one of the SOS officers who was cooperating with investigators, officials said. Finnigan was arrested in September 2007 in that case and remains in the federal jail downtown without bail.
Poster Comment:
One of the police officers tried to hire someone to hire another so he could't talk.
"Two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead."
Only four people involved in a conspiracy, and it falls apart.
Yet "Truthers" (sic) think thousands of people can keep their mouths shut for their entire lives.
Every cop knows, find one of them, press them, and they immediately sing to get the least punishment.
Talk about deluded...that's the defining characteristic of a conspiracist.
