BY CHRIS FUSCO AND TIM NOVAK
Over the past seven years, Chicago
police Officer Richard A. Rizzo has been arrested four times by fellow members
of his department. The charges included domestic battery, child endangerment and
aggravated assault with a gun.
Each time, officers booked Rizzo and took his mugshot. Each
time, prosecutors filed criminal charges against him.
And each time, prosecutors ended up dropping the charges
against the 15-year police veteran.
There’s no public record showing
Rizzo ever has been disciplined for violating Chicago Police Department rules
and regulations, which generally target officers who break the law or otherwise
bring discredit upon the department.
So Rizzo, 44, is still a member of the department, making
$80,724 a year, records show.
But the department says Rizzo was relieved of his police
powers on June 13 — six days after the Chicago Sun-Times asked about his status.
Rizzo is among the fraternity of Chicago cops who, despite
repeated run-ins with the law, have continued working for the department.
Some have been convicted of misdemeanor crimes — including
assault and battery and theft. By law, the police department can’t employ
convicted felons.
Just how many officers have misdemeanor convictions, the
department won’t say. Three have been convicted of misdemeanors since Mayor Rahm
Emanuel took office in May 2011, but the department won’t say how many others
were convicted before then and remain on the job.
The department has stripped 74 officers of their police
powers. Sixteen of them have been suspended without pay, and five have taken a
leave of absence.
The other 53, including Rizzo, are on “call back” — working
desk jobs. That’s less than one half-percent of the department’s workforce,
according to a spokesman for police Supt. Garry McCarthy.
A former police superintendent, Jody Weis, says, based on
what he’s seen, “I’m pretty sure you can survive a misdemeanor conviction but
not a felony.”
During his three-year stint as superintendent, Weis tried to
get 66 police department employees fired. Of those, 19 ended up being fired by
the Chicago Police Board — a nine-member panel of mayoral appointees.
“It was frustrating,” Weis says of being unable to rid the
department of officers he saw as bad cops. “Oftentimes, these guys are
recidivists, where they’ll go out and embarrass the department again.”
But no Chicago police superintendent ever asked the police
board to fire or otherwise discipline Rizzo, who has gotten seven pay raises
since the first time his fellow officers arrested him nearly eight years
ago.
That was on Sept. 7, 2005. Rizzo was charged with domestic
battery after his live-in girlfriend accused him of pulling her out of his car,
dragging her in to their apartment and slamming her against the floor of their
bedroom. “Victim had numerous bruises and lacerations about the body,” the
police report said.
Five years later, on Dec. 30, 2010, Rizzo was arrested for
aggravated assault with a gun and domestic battery after a fight with a
40-year-old man and the man’s 18-year-old son. Both of them lived with Rizzo in
a Garfield Ridge bungalow. The arresting officers said Rizzo punched the older
man, grabbed the gun, put the muzzle in the man’s eye and told him, “How about I
shoot you in the face?”
A month later, on Jan. 31, 2011, Rizzo was arrested again,
this time for domestic battery, after officers said he grabbed his girlfriend
“by her throat and began to strangle her.” The arresting officers said she broke
away and locked herself in a bedroom. They said Rizzo kicked in the door just
before they arrived.
The officers “photographed alleged injuries to victim and
damage to the bedroom door,” and the incident was referred to the city’s
Independent Police Review Authority for investigation.
It’s unclear what came of that review because even when IPRA
recommends that an officer be fired, it’s barred from identifying the
officer.
On Dec. 6, 2011, the police arrested Rizzo for child
endangerment, accusing him of leaving his 8-year-old son home alone for two to
three hours. When police interviewed Rizzo a week later, they wrote afterward,
he “did not inquire as to the well-being of [his son], however asked several
times how this incident would impact his job with the Chicago Police
Department.”
Attempts to reach Rizzo were unsuccessful.
Among the other cases in which former Chicago cops had
multiple run-ins with the law but continued working for the department:
◆ Officer Gerald W. Callahan Jr., who quit last October, ending
an 18-year police career a month after Supt. Garry McCarthy moved to fire him
over a 2008 assault arrest at a Niles bar.
Callahan already had served two suspensions — one for 30 days
for being drunk while off-duty in 2004 — when he was arrested for aggravated
assault in an earlier incident, on March 25, 2006. In that incident, Callahan
was on duty at the city’s 311 non-emergency call center and lunged at and
threatened a sergeant and mouthed off to other superiors who wanted him to take
a Breathalyzer test, according to police board records.
“You are lucky he’s here, or I would hurt you more,” those
documents say Callahan told the sergeant.
“You can tell that rat mother - - - - - - . . . that I swear
on Ireland I will rip his f - - -ing head off and p - - - down his f - - - ing
throat,” Callahan is quoted as telling other cops during that incident. “I swear
to God I’ll kill the son of a b - - - -.”
Then-Supt. Phil Cline asked the police board after that
incident to fire Callahan, the son of a Chicago cop who has since retired.
Instead, Callahan was given an 18-month suspension, which ended on Feb. 15,
2008.
Three months later, Callahan was armed and off-duty when he
was arrested for battery in Niles. He was accused of punching a 61-year-old man
and a 50-year-old woman inside a bar in the 6800 block of North Milwaukee
Avenue. Niles officers, with the help of a police dog, found Callahan hiding in
nearby bushes.
Callahan complained to them of chest pains, and they called
for paramedics. While waiting for paramedics, the Niles cops said Callahan told
them, “I can’t believe you would do this to another officer. I’m going to sue
you and own your house, you mother------.”
Callahan was convicted of two counts of battery, sentenced to
60 days in the Cook County Sheriff’s Work Alternative Program and ordered to pay
a $1,325 fine. Now 47, he will be eligible for a police pension when he turns
50.
◆ Sigmund Naszke Jr., whose police disciplinary record cites a
“robbery” in October 2002 but doesn’t indicate whether he was ever arrested or
disciplined for it. At that time, he had been a cop for four years.
Later, in August 2004, the police pulled over Naszke’s BMW
after he allegedly struck a woman on a sidewalk outside Northwestern Memorial
Hospital on a Sunday afternoon during the Chicago Air & Water Show. Naszke,
who was off-duty, said he was trying to take his girlfriend to the hospital, but
he never did, police board records show.
Cline moved to fire Naszke on April 27, 2006. Nearly a year
later, the police board agreed — citing as part of its reasoning that Naszke had
made racially insensitive remarks to the woman he’d hit with his car, who was
black. Naszke appealed his firing in court but lost.
◆ Richard S. Teresi, who had two run-ins with fellow Chicago
cops that prompted two different superintendents to try to fire him.
Teresi was involved in a shooting at a building he owned in
the 5100 block of North Elston Avenue on July 28, 2004. Teresi witnessed the
shooting but failed to take action, then lied to police about what happened,
police board records show.
While Teresi’s actions were still under investigation, he was
arrested on Jan. 12, 2006, and charged with having an unregistered gun and
running illegal card games and video gambling in the building on Elston.
On March 3, 2006, Cline asked the police board to fire Teresi
over the shooting. Instead, the board gave Teresi a one-year suspension, saying
Cline didn’t prove Teresi had seen the shooting.
Teresi’s suspension ended on March 8, 2007. Weeks later, on
April 20, 2007, acting police Supt. Dana Starks moved to fire Teresi over the
gun and gambling allegations. This time, the board fired Teresi — because he had
an unregistered weapon. It found there was insufficient evidence to prove Teresi
had knowingly permitted gambling on his property.
Though the criminal charges against him were dismissed,
Teresi lost a court battle to get his job back.
Callahan, Naszke and Teresi couldn’t be reached for
comment.