- Chicago Police long cozy with corruption -
ofr...@hotmail.com
Date: Oct 23 2000 20:48:26 EDT
From: "ofr...@hotmail.com" <ofr...@hotmail.com>
Subject:
- Chicago Police long cozy with corruption -
Police long cozy with corruption
October 22, 2000
BY NEIL STEINBERG STAFF REPORTER
Of all the bookies and juice loan enforcers, the hit men and mob capos
whose
names have appeared on the Chicago Crime Commission's intricate charts
of
organized crime, one name--Pierre Zonis--on the 1997 chart has a
unique,
dubious
distinction.
"He's the first active Chicago police officer to appear on the chart,"
said Wayne
Johnson, the commission's chief investigator.
Since 1919, the crime commission has been trying to shed light on the
connection
between the Police Department and mob corruption, a history that is, by
its very
nature, vague, murky and only occasionally snapping into focus in the
periodic
scandals that bring reforms and promises of reform that mollify the
public, until the
next time.
The Police Department's official attitude toward mob corruption is that
most officers
are by-the-book.
"Take a look at the long history of the Police Department, the
instances
are relatively
few, compared to the everyday actions of the men and women in the
police
department," said department spokesman Pat Camden.
"Organized crime and corruption of any kind, there's zero tolerance of
it in the Police
Department today."
Note the word "today."
The bad old days In bygone eras, corruption was a daily part of police
work.
Nineteenth century Chicago was riddled with brutal street gangs and
vice
operations--drug dens, brothels, low dives--that operated in full
public
view. The
nightly pay-off to police was part of the rituals of life in places
such
as the infamous
Levee District.
Bursts of effort to combat corruption were the exception rather than
the
rule. The
first of several 20th century police commissioners to lose his job
because of
gangland influence was Supt. Charles C. Healey, fired in 1917 after
being charged
with accepting graft from notorious gambler Billy Skidmore. (Healey was
defended
by Clarence Darrow, who saved him from jail.)
The 1920s were the heyday of gangland Chicago, and police corruption
was
again
endemic throughout city government. Al Capone donated more than
$100,000
to
Mayor Big Bill Thompson's campaign chest. Police barely bothered to
enforce
Prohibition. When gangsters machinegunned a Cicero speakeasy in 1926,
they
ended up murdering an assistant state's attorney, out partying with
mobsters.
After the "Pineapple Primary" of 1928, when mob bombings terrorized the
electorate, Chicago Crime Commission President Frank J. Loesch met with
Capone
and practically begged him to rein in his thugs so as to have an
orderly
November
election. "I'll have the cops send over squad cars the night before the
election and
jug all the hoodlums and keep them in the cooler until the polls
close,"
Capone felt
confident enough to reply.
In the late 1950s, an FBI bug at a mob meeting place, a high-end tailor
shop at 620
N. Michigan, found top bosses talking easily with police officers,
especially the
Central District commander and vice officers--about protection of 1st
Ward
gambling and South State Street vice.
In 1960, mobsters were able to select "a particular friend of theirs, a
police official
who had a glorious reputation in Chicago as a hoodlum fighter but who
was actually
in the pocket of the mob" as commander of a police district, according
to testimony
given before the Senate in 1983.
Shamed into reform Sometimes police formed their own gangs, as in the
Summerdale burglary ring, perhaps the worst scandal to rock the
department.
Just before New Year's 1960, a 23-year-old seasoned crook named Richard
Morrison--soon to be known as "the Babbling Burglar"--sat on a messy
bunk in the
Cook County Jail and set off an earthquake that rocked the city.
"If I have to go to the penitentiary for 20 years," he told
investigators, "I'm going to
take a lot of coppers with me."
He did. Six of the eight officers arrested in the Summerdale scandal
went to prison
for taking part in a burglary ring that saw cops placing orders for
stolen goods--TVs
were popular around World Series time--and carting them away in squad
cars.
Chicagoans were horrified. Police Commissioner Timothy O'Connor
resigned.
After the Summerdale scandal broke--carrying so much humiliation that
the 20th
police district changed its name--Mayor Richard J. Daley brought in
reformer O.W.
Wilson, but his "New Breed" of cops was no more immune to the lure of
mob
money than the old breed had been.
Ain't ready for reform Capt. Clarence Braasch of the East Chicago
District, along
with four sergeants and 14 patrolmen, was convicted in 1973 on federal
charges for
running a large scale tavern shakedown "club."
Nineteen other officers in the Austin District were also indicted that
year for
shakedowns.
Years later, in 1996, seven Austin officers were indicted on federal
corruption
charges for aiding street gangs. Prosecutors said one of the officers,
Edward Lee
Jackson, kept a picture of himself flashing gang signs in his locker at
the Austin
District.
All were convicted of a wide range of crimes from narcotics conspiracy
to extortion,
racketeering and weapons violations.
The Austin Seven had long-ranging effects. Supt. Matt Rodriguez drafted
the first
departmental order barring gang association, only to later lose his job
himself for
consorting with a known criminal.
In 1980, former acting police Supt. Joseph DiLeonardi and former Deputy
Superintendents William Duffy and James Zurawski claimed they were
demoted
after failing to do the bidding of City Hall as directed by 1st Ward
politicians
controlled by the mob. No one was arrested, but the scandal riveted the
city for
months.
The big corruption trial in the late 1980s came after Sgt. Stanley
Zaborec made a
1987 arrest on gambling charges. According to U.S. attorneys, Arvell
West walked
into the Wentworth station and said, "Sergeant, you're messing with my
man. I'm
paying the commander's secretary good money to run my operation. You
just don't
get it, do you? I own you."
Fifteen people, including nine Wentworth police officers, were tried
for
taking
payoffs from gamblers and drug dealers.
Don't hold your breath As obvious as the need for police officers to
avoid the
company of mob criminals is, not everyone agrees. In 1996, Fraternal
Order of
Police President Bill Nolan said it is natural that many Chicago
officers are friends
with mob members.
"You can't expect police officers to get up and move out of a
neighborhood just
because their friends and neighbors are known gang members," he said.
"What do
you do with police officers who have family ties to some gangs? A lot
of
these guys
grew up in the same neighborhoods. They're friends since childhood."
The most recent case came two years ago, when a highly decorated
22-year
veteran
of the force, Joseph Jerome Miedzianowski, was charged with protecting
and at
times running a major Miami-to-Chicago drug ring.
Wayne Johnson, chief investigator of the Chicago Crime Commission, said
that gang
corruption is a never-ending story.
"In the early to mid-1980s, some federal investigators made premature
claims of
victory over organized crime," he said, noting that corruption is a
particular problem
in the Police Department.
"Organized crime influence in law enforcement is endemic," he said.
"It's Chicago."
In the case of Zonis, that one cop who appears on the commission's mob
chart, the
Town Hall District officer denies any ties to organized crime.
He has been questioned by police investigating three separate murders,
including one
over a mob debt. While he was suspended without pay, he is back on the
force.
Police spokesman Camden said Supt. Terry Hillard would like to see
Zonis
fired but
is prevented from doing so by the police board.
***
Cop suspected of leaks
BY FRAN SPIELMAN, FRANK MAIN AND STEVE WARMBIR STAFF
REPORTERS
The first time Mayor Jane Byrne heard anything bad about her lauded
chief of
detectives was when his name popped up in the phone book of a mobster
who had
just survived a bungled hit in 1983, she told the Chicago Sun-Times.
William Hanhardt, 71, is charged with masterminding a national jewelry
theft ring
that included a reputed mob hit man. While he had been questioned for
years about
his friendship with criminals, the federal indictment last week was the
first official
accusation that he crossed the line.
Hanhardt was promoted in 1979 during the Byrne administration to chief
of
detectives by police Supt. Richard J. Brzeczek. Byrne's chief of staff,
Bill Griffin,
had recommended Hanhardt for the job, she said.
"The only thing I ever heard about him was good things," Byrne said.
That is, until she was told Hanhardt's name was found on reputed
gambling kingpin
Ken Eto's phone list in 1983 after Eto was shot in the back of the head
three times.
The bullets bounced off and Eto staggered to a phone booth.
Byrne said she was concerned about the discovery of Hanhardt's name
because she
was preparing for her re-election campaign, which she lost.
"I did call Brzeczek in about that and I asked him what he had heard,
and he said a
lot of the people you might find in his book are `stoolies,' " Byrne
said. Similarly, a
cop's number would be in a stool pigeon's book. "He also said he was
doing a lot of
undercover work with the feds in regard to organized crime."
A retired police official confirmed Byrne's recollection about the
phone
list, although
a former prosecutor on the Eto case said he was not aware of Hanhardt's
name
surfacing in connection with Eto.
Federal authorities already had suspected Hanhardt of leaking
information to the
mob as early as the 1970s. And his name appeared in the "black book" of
mob-connected multimillionaire Allen Dorfman, who was gunned down in
1983.
"He had connections to get information," Griffin said. "Some of them
were people in
organized crime. That doesn't shock me . . . If you were in that
business, that would
make sense."
But Hanhardt was long suspected of mixing the crime-busting business
with the
Outfit's business--the same accusation that had haunted other cops
going
back to
Prohibition days, former police and prosecutors say.
In one case, there were suspicions that he had leaked information about
a pending
federal investigation of mobsters who met at a Chicago police officer's
home in
1979, a source familiar with the case said.
Federal authorities were looking into the meeting of Nick Civella, head
of the
Kansas City crime syndicate, and Chicago Outfit boss Joey Aiuppa at the
home of
Civella's nephew, Chicago patrol officer Anthony Chiavola.
Federal investigators met secretly with Chicago police and informed
them
of their
surveillance, but the feds later overheard the officer, whose phone was
tapped,
talking about being watched by them, the source said.
The mob-infested 1st Ward had its hooks in the police department for
years, former
police Supt. Joseph G. DiLeonardi said. But he believes organized
crime's sway
over the department has been crippled since the 1980s.
"I believe it was cleaned up after Mayor Richard Daley took over and
let
it be
known that he would not condone this and you would get terminated,"
DiLeonardi
said. "You don't have a 1st Ward influence controlling certain parts of
the city."
DiLeonardi, who last year retired as U.S. marshal in Chicago, pointed
to
police
Supt. Matt Rodriguez's retirement in 1997 after reports of his
friendship with a
convicted felon were revealed. Sources said Daley asked Rodriguez to
resign
immediately, although the mayor publicly said the decision was
Rodriguez's alone.
"Organized crime's influence in the police department, whatever it was
before, is
certainly less now, as it is everywhere else," said Douglas Roller, who
was a top
Chicago prosecutor of organized crime in the late 1970s and early
1980s.
Among the factors in the wane of organized crime is the changing face
of
the city
itself: Tight-knit ethnic enclaves where the Outfit once drew members
are
diminishing.
And prosecutors were given new tools to crack down on mobsters,
especially with
the passage of the 1970 Racketeer Influenced & Corrupt Organizations
Act, which
allows them to charge people with running a criminal enterprise.
While Hanhardt now faces such charges, Byrne remembers him as a cop's
cop.
One of her most vivid memories of him was when he arrived at
Northwestern
Memorial Hospital after First Deputy Supt. James Riordan was shot to
death in
1981 in a restaurant in Marina City.
"There were loads of policemen down there. It was chaotic," she
recalled.
Brzeczek was in the room with Byrne when Hanhardt walked in and said:
"Mayor, I
loved him. Can I do this one?" she said. "I turned to Brzeczek and I
nodded to
Brzeczek and Brzeczek nodded back and said, `By all means.' He wanted
to
be in
charge of the investigation. That's what I remember about him."
--
- Outlaw Frog Raper -
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