Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 16

16 Section 1 Chicago Tribune, Sunday, June 13, 1982 Tip by a fellow officer led to cop drug probe Byrne's guns blaze; another near miss? By Philip Wattley cooperation with the Cook County state's attorney's office, arranged for. a listening device to be placed on an officer. That off'cer met with' one of the suspects. The recorded conversation led investigators to conclude that there might be substance to the allegations. Court approval was obtained for the use of electronic eavesdropping devices in building the cases against the suspects.

Federal authorities also were contacted, partly to provide the cash needed to buy drugs from the suspects. Purchases worth $15,000 were made in the investigation. Taking part in the nine-month investigation were the Police Department's internal affairs division, the state's attorney's office, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Illinois Department of Law Enforcement. Undercover investigators said they posed as drug dealers and users to buy cocaine, heroin and marijuana from suspects.

Once an investigator had won the confidence of a peddler, he was sometimes led to others. THE DRUG BUYS were tape recorded, photographed or videotaped, according to an official close to the investigation. Only three of the suspects were selling drugs from the backs of their squad cars, investigators found. Indicted on charges, of drug sales while on duty were patrolmen Jackson, William Brown, Henry Brown, 35; Carl Walston, 37; and Jerome Chapman, 32. Also indicted were patrolman McKnight and his estranged wife, Yvonne; patrolman Robert W.

Carroll, 30, and his wife, Ruth; and patrolmen Raymond Mills, 30; Michael Chigaros, 35; Erskin Melchor, 37; Edwin Phillips, 32; Robert Ervin, 36; and Paul Price, 32. Price was still being sought by authorities Saturday. Former police officer Charles Gary, 31, and. a friend of Phillips, Norman Lee, also were named in the indictments. quit June 2 as the investigation was ending.

AUTHORITIES ARE closely guarding the identity of the officer who tipped them. Officially, the department will not comment, but insiders say members of the department's internal affairs which investigates charges of police misconduct, were shocked last September when told of drug sales from clearly marked blue-and-white police cars. the direction of Lt. Richard Sandberg, the division set out to investigate the allegations. Initial efforts failed to confirm the allegations.

No drug sales took place from squad cars when an investigator was around. The usual surveillance tactics used by the division a van with a peephole in the back, a delivery truck, an officer disguised as a city worker pushing a broom did not work. 'ACCORDING TO A high-ranking police sojurce, the internal affairs investigators, in THIRTEEN PRESENT and one former Chicago policemen were indicted on drug charges last week because a fellow officer refused to tolerate such conduct, according to police officials. One of the indicted officers, Gregory Jackson, 31, a driver for Commissioner Lenora Cartright of the city's Department of Human Services, is accused of selling narcotics, from her official car without her knowledge. Patrolman William Brown, 32, a onetime driver for Cartright, also was 'indicted.

Police Supt. Richard Brzeczek called the indictments the worst charges of department misconduct in his 18 years as a policeman. Another of the 13 indicted policemen, John McKnight, 37, often spoke to South Side school students about crime prevention. Indicted with the officers were two of their wives, a friend of one of the officers and a former policeman who By David Axelrod IT WAS CLASSIC Jane Byrne an after-hours telephone call to give a reporter word of a "scandal" involving oneof her political enemies. The mayor proved again last week, for anyone who doubted it, that she is a fierce, no-holds-barred infighter who will employ almost any tools to discredit those who stand in her way.

This time, her target was Aid. Allan Streeter 17th, who has ridden an anti-Byrne campaign to the frontrun- ner's position in the June 29 special aldermanic election in his South Side ward. In an apparent attempt to derail Streeter, Byrne declared late Thursday that he is the subject of a federal investigation, suspected of accepting hundreds L1M7 News analysis of thousands of dollars in kickbacks and bribes in his years as an administrator in the city's Health Department. By Friday afternoon, U.S. My.

Dan K. Webb had shot down the allegations. Webb said he had examined evidence turned over by City Hall and had concluded that the case was not worthy of prosecution. BYRNE AND HER director of municipal investigations, James Maurer, presented reporters with documents that purportedly supported 'her charge, but the documents did not provide conclusive evidence of major wrongdoing. Though the mayor maintains that more information is 11 AM to 6 PM Allan Streeter Bribery case alleged by City Hall against the South Side alderman deemed unworthy of prosecution by U.S Atty Dan Webb forthcoming that could change Webb's thinking on the Streeter case, the episode began by weekend to take on a familiar look.

Several times before, Byrne has leveled devastating but scantily documented charges against her foes in the heat of battle, creating headlines but never indictments Byrne's rise to power began with such a salvo In 1977, with her influence as city consumer services commissioner dwindling in the wake of Mayor Richard J. Daley's death, Byrne charged that Daley's successor, Michael Bilandic, and several aldermen had "greased" the way for what she considered an unwarranted taxi-fare increase. THE IMPLICATION was that some City Hall powers had accepted bribes from the taxi companies to ease passage of the fare increase in the Chicago City Council Byrne's charge led to her firing as a commissioner, which paved the way for her political resurrection as a mayoral candidate and ultimately contributed to her victory. But the federal grand jury assigned to investigate Byrne's charges came up empty-handed Two of the principal villains in Byrne's story were Aldermen Edward R. Vrdolyak 10th and Edward Burke 14th.

She testified against them before the grand alleging that they were among the fare increase greasers. TODAY, HOWEVER, they are two of the mayor's key allies in the council. She backed Burke in his losing bid for state's attorney in 1980 and engineered Vrdolyak's ejection as Cook County Democratic chairman this year On another occasion, after her election as mayor, the Byrne administration attacked one of her council foes in a more oblique, but no less devastating, way Byrne's acting police superintendent, Joseph DiLeonardi, in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times, hinted that Aid. Clifford Kelley 20th was a suspect in the murder of a North Side cocktail waitress. Kelley was pressing at the time for a council investigation of city payments to a firm owned by a friend of the mayor's husband, Jay McMullen.

Kelley, a patron of the bar in which the murdered waitress worked, was merely questioned as a potential witness in the case. He was never charged. If there is a top line on the mayor's list of political enemies, the name Richard M. Daley, son of the late mayor, almost certainly would be written there. And Byrne unleashed one of her more dramatic broadsides against Daley 10 days before his 1980 election as state's attorney.

Byrne called reporters to her office to allege that Daley and one of his allies, County Assessor Thomas Hynes, had used their influence in the city's Building Department to systematically exclude blacks from settling in their South and Southwest Side wards- THE MAYOR offered as evidence a letter from a man she described as a black builder who had been blocked from constructing homes in Hynes' 19th Ward for racial reasons. A Tribune' investigation revealed, however, that Byrne's black builder was a white man with a long criminal record and history as a slumlord. Byrne came back by declaring that she had information gathered by her Office of Municipal Investigations, This Saturday and Sunday only you will find extra special savings at Wickes. You can save on a huge selection of fine home furnishings in every department. Our already low prices have been reduced even further for this 18-hour selling spree.

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attorney and the state attorney. But the story died with Daley's. election as state's attorney. No action was ever taken. Fired teacher gets $40,000 damages Reg.

$99.95. Popular bentwood rocker provides stylish seating for any room! Walnut finished hardwood frame, hand-caned seat and back; easy to assemble. LAST DAY PIERRE, S.D. (APV-A former teacher who says she was fired for her union activities was awarded $40,000 in damages Saturday. A federal court jury ordered the damages paid by the Kadoka School District but said Pattl Hinkle cannot recover damages from the eight school officials who fired her.

WHEELING I "290 1 XNILES M4 21 IV Members of the school board testified this week that they had fired Hinkle, an English teacher, in 1979 because they believed she used an obscenity in an argument with a student. The argument took place in ITASCA IX I 7 CONVENIENT LOCATIONS 1 front of other students, the board members testified, NORTH RIVERSIDE WICKES HAS A CREDIT PLAN TO FIT YOUR I B3 1 I I WILLOWBROOK ITASCA: NILES: HOMEWOOQHARVEY: NORTH RIVERSIDE: The six-member jury found that she was fired because ehe was active in a teachers union involved in a labor dispute with the school district, not because she had 65 WHEELING: HINSDALEWILLOWBROOK: MERRILLVILLE, INDIANA: Phone: 219-738-2140 You can charge your purchase with Ths American Express' Card, your MasterCard or Visa credit card. Or, If you prefer, open Wicket Revolving charge account. HARVEY cursed in the presence of a student. MERRILLVILLE I 30 Open Monday thru Friday 10-9, Saturday 10-6, Sunday 12-6 The jury's award covers damages to Hinkle's reputation and her financial losses from being fired.

The jury turned down a request for punitive damages of $200,000 each against the seven school board members, the school superintendent and the school district. jt A.