A City Council committee Monday quietly approved a $250,000 settlement with the mother of a West Side man who died last year in a struggle with officers, including the son of a top Chicago cop. The Finance Committee agreed to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the mother of Gregory Riley, 31, who died after a June 14, 1999, drug arrest. The full City Council will consider the deal Wednesday, said Jennifer Hoyle of the city's Law Department. [continues 368 words]
As suburban youth increasingly try heroin, more users are being treated in Chicago area emergency rooms than in most other big cities, and doctors believe the drug is causing a surge in life-threatening asthma cases. Doctors are studying whether the increase is due to more first-time users snorting instead of shooting up a drug that has become more pure and less costly. "We're seeing a lot of life-threatening asthma associated with heroin inhalation," said Dr. Cory Franklin, director of the medical intensive care unit at Cook County Hospital. [continues 687 words]
He says he's an assistant manager at a grocery and lives with his mom in the Mount Greenwood neighborhood on the Southwest Side. Michael Nowakowski, 27, also fit the profile of a typical crack-cocaine customer during a police sting in Robbins last week. Nowakowski said he walked 35 minutes from his home to a darkened parking lot of a public housing complex where undercover members of a Cook County sheriff's task force were selling fake crack Wednesday night. He said he learned about the open-air drug market from a friend. [continues 546 words]
The Chicago Police Board fired three officers and suspended a fourth Friday for their roles in the fatal shooting of unarmed motorist LaTanya Haggerty. In a case that sparked weeks of protests and forced a major training overhaul at the Chicago Police Department, the board unanimously decided to dismiss officer Serena Daniels, who fired the bullet that killed Haggerty after a June 4 car chase. Officers Michael Williams and Stafford Wilson, who also fired their weapons, were dismissed by narrower margins. The board decided to continue the unpaid suspension of the fourth officer, Carl Carter, through June 12. [continues 535 words]
Two Chicago police officers and a Cook County sheriff's correctional officer are expected to be indicted as early as next week in the widening federal probe of a drug ring allegedly run by a rogue cop. The correctional officer is a cousin of former Chicago police officer Joseph Miedzianowski, who is accused of masterminding a Miami-to-Chicago drug pipeline from 1988 through his arrest in December 1998. The correctional officer was stripped of his badge and gun on Thursday pending an investigation, said Bill Cunningham, spokesman for the sheriff's office. The officer, a firearms instructor, was transferred to a less sensitive assignment in a minimum security wing of Cook County Jail, Cunningham said. [continues 221 words]
The son of one of the Chicago Police Department's top cops was named Friday in a lawsuit involving the death of a suspected drug dealer last summer. The lawsuit claims that officer Daniel DeLopez, whose father is a deputy superintendent, and officer Mark A. Zawila killed Gregory Riley, 31, during a June 14 drug arrest on the West Side. DeLopez's father, Joseph A. DeLopez, was promoted Feb. 1 to deputy superintendent of the Bureau of Technical Services. The wrongful-death suit had been filed last year in Cook County Circuit Court on behalf of Riley's mother. It was amended Friday to include the officers' names. [continues 290 words]
Renna Patton watched as Chicago police officer Serena Daniels stood behind a gray 1986 Oldsmobile Cutlass last summer. Then a shot rang out. Patton heard Daniels shout, ``Oh, s - - -!'' and watched LaTanya Haggerty, 26, fall onto the pavement as police opened the passenger door. Patton's account of the June 4 South Side shooting came on the first day of testimony in the police board hearing at which Daniels and three fellow officers--Michael Williams, Carl Carter and Stafford Wilson--are fighting for their jobs. [continues 448 words]
Chicago is on pace to have its lowest murder count since 1967, thanks in part to a 30 percent drop in gang-related slayings through November, police officials said Monday. Through Monday, the city's murder tally stood at 632, a 9 percent drop over the same period last year and a far cry from 1992, when the count peaked at 943 murders. If 15 or more murders don't occur between now and New Year's Day, Chicago's murder count will hit a 32-year low. The city had 647 murders in 1968 and 552 in 1967. [continues 382 words]
The letter from police to parents from Glen Ellyn to Naperville must have been heart-stopping: Sometime this year, your car was used in a West Side heroin deal. As part of an ongoing sting aimed at stemming the tide of suburbanites trekking to Chicago to buy drugs, police sent out 70 letters to the owners of cars used in drug buys, police said Tuesday. Some of the suspected buyers were DuPage County teens. In 40 instances, arrests were made. DuPage County Sheriff John Zaruba said he was unaware of any fatal heroin overdoses among DuPage County teens this year--and hopes the July-October, multijurisdictional sting helped explain why. [continues 462 words]
