Another top aide to Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool is out over failing to move to the city, as required under CPS’ residency rule.

Even before Matt Walter leaves his $140,000-a-year post, CPS has hired a new budget director to replace him — paying him nearly $30,000 a year more than Walter makes.

Walter, 36, was recommended for firing from his post in December, CPS acknowledges, after school system Inspector General Nicholas Schuler found that he lived in Evergreen Park.

But with CPS facing a financial crisis, Walter has been kept on.

Schuler declined to comment. But records show Walter submitted a letter of resignation in late January but is being allowed to remain in his job until March 31 — three months after Claypool and other top CPS officials were informed Walter’s Chicago address wasn’t really where he lives.

Walter, who did not respond to interview requests, is the second high-level Chicago schools employee to resign in 2017 in the wake of residency questions.

Jason Kierna, who followed Claypool to CPS from the Chicago Transit Authority, stepped down in January as CPS’ $165,000-a-year facilities chief amid questions about how much time he was spending at the La Grange Park home he owns with his wife. Sources say he, too, was interviewed by the inspector general’s office and then recommended for firing.

CPS officials say Kierna quit for family reasons.

In a letter of resignation, he wrote, “I had every intention of staying through the end of the week, but the recent events that unfolded have taken and continue to take an immense toll on my family and me.”

According to CPS, he will be paid $8,300 for 13 unused vacation days.

Another top official, Ronald DeNard, who as Claypool’s vice president of finance oversees the budget director, was granted a waiver of the residency rule in 2015 and allowed to keep living in Flossmoor, despite objections by the inspector general. He’s the last CPS official to seek such a waiver.

Brian Hamer. | LinkedIn

Brian Hamer has been brought in to replace Walter. Hamer, whoin January left his job as chief of staff to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, is being paid $169,700 a year by CPS. Hamer previously was city revenue director under former Mayor Richard Daley and state revenue chief under former governors Rod Blagojevich and Pat Quinn.

Asked about the nearly $30,000 difference in pay over what Walter makes, CPS spokeswoman Emily Bittner cites Hamer’s $186,000-a-year pay working for Preckwinkle and his “more than 25 years of public sector experience overseeing major government entities. As state revenue director, he managed 2,000 employees and directed the collection of $40 billion in revenue.”

Hamer, a lawyer who was editor of the law review at Columbia University, worked at City Hall when Claypool was Daley’s chief of staff in the early 1990s.

Walter is leaving as CPS is scrambling to make up for $215 million that city and school officials thought would be coming from the state until Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed that bill.

Bittner says: “Hamer’s role will be to manage CPS’ precarious budget and help do everything possible to minimize classroom disruption. Given the complexity of both district and school budgets, the district asked that Mr. Hamer overlap with Matt Walter . . . to ensure the smoothest transition possible.”

Walter initially came to CPS as a $68,000-a-year budget analyst in 2009, while living in Evergreen Park. Under CPS rules, he had six months to move to Chicago, signing off in October 2009 that he understood “falsification of my statement…shall constitute grounds of discharge.”

In 2014, he and his wife bought a house — also in Evergreen Park. Walter’s name has remained on the property-tax bill sent to the south suburban address, which his wife lists on her car registration and driver’s license. His license and voter registration, though, list a Chicago address on the Far South Side that’s about three miles away.

Before the inspector general’s investigation of his residency last year, Walter got two raises in 2016 — one for $10,000 in February and then $15,000 more in October.

Matt Walter, at the Chicago Board of Education meeting on Feb. 22. | Max Herman / Sun-Times

Melrose Park Mayor Ron Serpico is standing behind his deputy police chief amid new questions about the high-ranking cop’s moonlighting.

Several years ago, Serpico and the Melrose Park Village Board adopted a conflict-of-interest policy for village employees after revelations the deputy chief, Michael Castellan, was running a side business called Shirt Stop that sold police uniforms to underlings answering to Castellan.

Castellan’s business also had sold his own department more than a dozen Motorola radios, though he couldn’t say where the radios came from, and Motorola said he wasn’t one of its licensed dealers.

Now, Castellan has a different side job, as a plumbing contractor. On Feb. 13, a Chicago Sun-Times reporter saw him overseeing a crew fixing a leaking below-ground water pipe in a privately owned parking lot behind a North Avenue strip mall.

The name of the company Castellan initially said was handling the job is long defunct. Later, he said it was actually another company he owns. But that company isn’t registered with the Illinois Department of Public Health, as state law requires for such work. Also, records show Castellan isn’t a licensed plumber, and he acknowledges his workers aren’t, either.

Those violations can bring a fine of $1,000 or more, plus misdemeanor charges, according to state health officials, who say the rules are meant to ensure that drinking water isn’t inadvertently contaminated and infrastructure isn’t damaged by unqualified workers.

“Licensed plumbers have a minimum four-year apprenticeship,” said Justin DeWitt, chief engineer for the state public health agency. “They have experience.”

The pipe that Castellan’s workers were fixing supplies fresh water to the strip mall, whose manager called in Castellan, officials said.

Castellan said he was taking a half day off from the police department but later decided to take off the entire day.

Castellan had his police-issued sport-utility vehicle at the work site. His boss, police Director Sam Pitassi, said he doesn’t have a problem with that because Castellan is always on call for emergencies.

Melrose Park Mayor Ron Serpico. | Sun-Times files

Serpico says: “Our inquiry with appropriate village offices indicates that Mr. Castellan was not in violation of any village ordinance in connection with work on the water pipe in question.”

Castellan, who first identified his company as Diesel Ventures, which state records show is defunct, later said his company is LT MAC Enterprises.

Melrose Park building commissioner Ralph Sorce said he understood LT MAC did the excavation and a licensed plumbing firm did the pipe work.

But Castellan said his crew fixed the pipe and that he called in another firm only when there was another leak later.

Sorce said Castellan was allowed to start the project before getting, or paying for, a village permit because it was an “emergency” job to halt a leak of water that taxpayers were paying for because the hole in the pipe was short of the strip mall’s water meter.

Castellan, though, said the leak was discovered a couple of weeks earlier and the only reason he did the work that day was that it was relatively clear and warm.

Castellan’s company didn’t have an insurance bond, as Melrose Park requires, when he began the work. He got that a day later, records show, and also got the permit.

“If I did something wrong, I’m totally sorry for that,” he said. “I’m a stickler for rules.”

As the Cubs made history last fall, the city of Chicago paid overtime — lots of it.

The city spent more than $18.8 million on overtime for public safety, traffic management and street cleanup during the Cubs’ march to their first World Series title in 108 years, according to records released Friday afternoon by City Hall in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed months ago by the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Series-related tab came as the Chicago police and fire departments together amassed a record $193.5 million in total overtime in 2016. That includes $143 million to the police department alone, an increase of 23 percent from the record total of the year before.

Most of the police overtime stemmed from the department’s response to a 60 percent surge in homicides and shootings in 2016 compared to the previous year. In July alone, the police department paid out $21.6 million in overtime, more than double June spending. As the death toll climbed to levels not seen in two decades, Mayor Rahm Emanuel ended years of retrenchment and proposed a two-year hiring surge that would add 970 officers over and above attrition.

The vast majority of Cubs-related overtime also came in the police department: $17.2 million. The title run also cost the city about $840,000 in overtime for the Office of Emergency Management and Communications and $743,000 for Streets and Sanitation, which provided extra traffic management and garbage collection, records show.

As the Cubs advanced, the overtime costs to the city soared: $14.7 million was spent just on police overtime for the World Series. The celebration parade and rally — which drew throngs estimated in the millions on a picture-perfect November day — cost more than $2.5 million in police and streets and sanitation department overtime.

Molly Poppe, a spokeswoman for the city’s Office of Budget and Management, “There is no reimbursement from the Cubs. This will be paid for by the city.”

Asked why, she said, “This is no different than most sporting events across the country. The teams and/or leagues do not typically pick up these costs.”

Asked about the overtime costs borne by taxpayers, Cubs spokesman Julian Green replied that the team commissioned a study that showed its postseason run generated $37.5 million in direct and indirect spending for the Chicago economy. The figure doesn’t include sales taxes generated as result of that spending, Green said.

The Cubs also paid $6.7 million in city and county amusement taxes in that time, Green said.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported last summer that the Chicago Police Department spent a record $116.1 million on overtime in 2015 — up 17.2 percent from the previous year — to mask a manpower shortage that had mushroomed under Emanuel, with police retirements outpacing hiring by 975 officers.

The new overtime numbers blow the old record away.

“The vast majority of the increase in police overtime spending last year was spent on public safety protections directly related to the Cubs’ postseason run and the World Series rally,” Poppe said. “Those events account for $17.2 million of the CPD increase in overtime last year.”

“Additionally, in 2016, the city used overtime in the police department as one tool to fight crime — just as they did when the city saw historic lows in shootings and murders in 2013 and 2014.”

Several individual police officers were paid nearly $80,000 in overtime in 2016, which the U.S. Justice Department has called a recipe for burnout. Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo agrees, but he acknowledged that there is no shortage of volunteers for the extra work.

“It’s almost an opportunity that people can’t say ‘no’ to. It’s good for your family budget,” Angelo said.

Still, “When you’re going through those types of numbers for overtime, it is a clear example that we don’t have manpower sufficient to handle our daily needs,” he said. “I can see special events. I can see the Wrigley Field detail. The playoffs ran into the World Series and the World Series ran into the parade.

“But, there is also a mechanism in place for record overtime that is a daily practice that has become commonplace. It started when we saw the lack of hiring, and attrition was increasing.”

The Fire Department spent $50.5 million on overtime — 66 percent over its allotted budget for 2016 — with the largest totals going to paramedics.

Retiring Chicago Firefighters Union Local 2 President Tom Ryan has blamed the city’s failure to honor a broken promise to add “at least” five ambulances by July 1, 2016, on a severe shortage of single-role paramedics. “Adding additional ambulances without also adding a sufficient number of single-role paramedics to staff them makes no sense and is unsafe and impractical,” Ryan has said.

Emanuel campaigned for a first term on a promise to hire 1,000 additional police officers, then revised the pledge after taking office by adding 1,000 more “cops on the beat,” more than half of them by disbanding special units. The other half were primarily officers working desk jobs reassigned to street duty.

The mayor also balanced his first budget by eliminating more than 1,400 police vacancies, declaring an end to what he called the annual “shell game” of budgeting for police jobs the city had no intention of filling.

When shootings and murders spiked and Chicago started making national headlines, Emanuel used runaway overtime to tamp down the violence, spending $100.3 million in 2013, $99 million in 2014 and $116.1 million in 2015.

Emanuel and his budget director, Alex Holt, spent years arguing that overtime was a more flexible and cost-effective substitute for police hiring because the city doesn’t have to bear the cost of pensions and benefits for new officers.

In late September, the mayor reversed course. Days before a major policy address on the outbreak of violence, Emanuel unveiled plans to launch a two-year hiring blitz that would fill hundreds of police vacancies and still add 970 police officers.

The hiring surge is the biggest since the mid-1980s.

Over the next two years, the Police Department has promised to add 516 patrol officers, 92 field-training officers, 112 sergeants, 50 lieutenants and 200 detectives. A class of 351 police officers, detectives and sergeants graduated from the police academy earlier this week.

In his final days as U.S. attorney, Zachary Fardon declared that, as Chicago has faced a surge in violence not seen in two decades, his office had made gun crimes a top target.

“Last year, this U.S. attorney’s office prosecuted more gun cases than we have in any year since 2004,” Fardon said before resigning Monday as part of a Trump administration purge of top prosecutors nationwide. “So anyone who suggests that we haven’t stepped up and stretched our resources to fight and help tamp down on gun violence is sorely mistaken.”

It’s true that federal prosecutors in the Northern District of Illinois opened 105 weapons cases in the year that ended Sept. 30. That was up from 73 a year earlier and was the highest annual total in at least two decades, according to court records.

But that’s just part of the picture. Few of the cases involved traffickers — those at the top of the illegal gun-distribution chain, according to a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of court data.

For more than 60 percent of the defendants, the most serious charge was illegally transporting or possessing firearms, the Sun-Times analysis found. For about 20 percent of them, it was using a gun in a drug deal. Even fewer were charged primarily with the more serious offenses of trafficking or selling guns.

And the number of gun prosecutions by the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago continues to trail many other big cities grappling with violence and gangs. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan and Detroit pursued about twice the number of gun cases last year as those in Chicago. In St. Louis, they pursued nearly three times as many.

Fardon has called such comparisons “apples-to-oranges,” noting that “different districts have different state gun laws and local prosecutor offices.”

Other law enforcement sources say U.S. attorneys in those cities have made it a higher priority to team up with police and state prosecutors to go after repeat gun offenders.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. | Getty Images

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered federal prosecutors to make gun cases a top priority.

“We need to use every lawful tool we have to get the most violent offenders off our streets,” Sessions said in a speech Wednesday. “This Department of Justice will systematically prosecute criminals who use guns in committing crimes.”

The Trump administration’s first budget blueprint proposes a $175 million boost in Justice Department spending to “target the worst of the worst criminal organizations and drug traffickers” in Chicago and elsewhere. It doesn’t say how the money would be used.

In an open letter on the city’s gun violence, Fardon said the U.S. attorney’s office for Northern Illinois has 12 fewer attorneys than it did a decade ago as a result of budget constraints imposed by Congress.

“If you want more federal gang and gun prosecutions, we need more full-time, permanent federal prosecutors in Chicago,” Fardon wrote.

At a meeting with other police chiefs Thursday in Washington, D.C., Supt. Eddie Johnson asked Sessions to hire more federal prosecutors to go after gun cases in Chicago.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions (center) meets with big-city police chiefs, including Supt. Eddie Johnson (second from right), at the Justice Department on Thursday. | Getty Images

“For a city that’s struggling with gun violence, we have one of the lowest federal gun-prosecution rates, and that should not be,” Johnson told Sessions, according to police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

Johnson also asked the Justice Department to assign more federal agents to work with police in high-violence areas and also to expand Project Exile, which targets felons in possession of guns for federal prosecution.

Sessions has praised that program but made no promises to Johnson, according to Guglielmi, who says, “The attorney general was very, very receptive.”

President Donald Trump has tweeted repeatedly about violence in Chicago, threatening to “send in the feds,” though never saying what that might mean. Sources in the Trump administration have said dozens more federal gun agents are coming to Chicago.

Deputy U.S. Attorney General nominee Rod Rosenstein. | Getty Images

Rod Rosenstein, the Maryland U.S. attorney awaiting hearings on his nomination for deputy U.S. attorney general, has been credited with boosting gun prosecutions in his state. Johnson was expected to meet with him Friday.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland says many federal gun-related cases in Maryland are prosecuted through Project Exile because sentences for gun crimes generally are higher in federal courts than in state courts. The spokeswoman says that, beyond illegal gun possession, the cases often involve violent crimes such as armed robbery.

U.S. Rep. John Shimkus, the downstate Republican who is the senior member of his party’s congressional delegation from Illinois, is leading the search for a nominee to succeed Fardon.

“The congressman’s focus will be on finding people who will address corruption and the violence in Chicago,” says Jordan Haverly, a spokesman for Shimkus.

The Sun-Times reported in October that gun prosecutions in Chicago had remained flat for years despite a surge in violence to levels not seen since the 1990s. It also reported that federal prosecutions here lagged behind New York City, Baltimore, Milwaukee and other cities.

Sources in his office and in other law-enforcement agencies say that, following the publication of that story, Fardon pushed for more gun cases.

Joseph Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for the U.S attorney’s office, denies that Fardon made such a push but declined to comment further.

Fardon has said his office focused on pursuing gun cases that would make an impact and not trying to boost numbers to look good.

In one case that went after a source of weapons on the city’s streets, Warren Gates, a convicted felon from Chicago, was sentenced in January to 63 months in prison.

Gates was one of 11 people indicted in connection with a 2015 theft of more than 100 Ruger firearms worth an estimated $51,000 from a Chicago rail yard. Federal authorities accused the group of flooding Chicago streets with the stolen firearms.

Gates bought some of the guns and resold them, court records show. Six other defendants in the case face trial next month.

One of the recovered Ruger firearms has been linked to a shooting in Chicago on Jan. 22, 2016.

But, in the majority of cases federal prosecutors pursued under Fardon’s leadership, the most serious charge was illegal transport or possession. Such charges take gun offenders off the street but rarely reach high-level traffickers.

In December, Arian Bailey, a convicted felon, pleaded guilty in federal court to possessing a gun in connection with drug dealing. He was sentenced to 65 months in prison.

Bailey was arrested last year in Jeffery Manor on the city’s Southeast Side after police officers reported seeing him duck behind a car to hide a loaded .40-caliber Glock handgun.

“In a city that has seen its shootings and homicides skyrocket in the past year, drug distribution and carrying guns to further that distribution should not be tolerated,” federal prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo.

But Bailey’s attorney, Yelena Dolgosheeva, says he carried the weapon for protection, noting that he had previously been shot and that the mother of his children had been murdered.

“He was, on the evidence, a minor, occasional drug dealer, and he lived in a neighborhood where, unfortunately, for a lot of reasons, a lot of people carry guns,” she says.

Dolgosheeva doesn’t think the U.S. attorney’s office would have pursued Bailey’s case before the big increase in the number of killings in Chicago last year. “There has been a lot of pressure on the federal government to take on a lot of cases they would not normally take on,” she says.

Other law enforcement agencies want the U.S. attorney’s office to prosecute even more felons caught carrying guns, which they say has been a key part of the aggressive approach in other cities struggling with violence.

Guglielmi says such cases are essential in sending a message that illegal guns won’t be tolerated.

“You’re changing the culture of carrying a weapon,” he says. “Where there’s demand, there’s supply. In Chicago, there’s no repercussion for carrying a gun.”

Eighteen city employees made more than $100,000 in overtime in 2016 — most of them more than doubling their salaries, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Another 476 city workers were paid between $50,000 and $99,999 in overtime, while 2,325 collected between $25,000 and $49,999.

In all, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration paid out a total of nearly $266 million in overtime last year, with one out of every four city workers making more than $10,000. Seven of every ten employees took home at least $1,000 in overtime pay, according to the data provided in response to a Sun-Times Freedom of Information Act request.

Topping the overtime pay list was Chicago Police Officer Timothy A. Walter, one of the police department’s most prolific writers of DUI tickets. Walter made $147,877 in overtime over and above his $93,240-a-year salary.

Walter has been City Hall’s king of overtime in previous years, but never before has his overtime pay reached the levels seen in 2016.

“Officer Walter’s overtime is also due to extension of tour and mandatory appearances for court cases,” police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

Thirteen other police officers joined Walter in taking home more than $100,000 in overtime last year, along with three employees of the water management department and one from the Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

Eight of the top overtime earners were not identified by name, but listed only as “sergeant” or “police officer.” City Hall said they weren’t named because they work as undercover police officers.

Three of those in the $100,000-plus club were identified as detectives — at a time when a severe shortage of detectives had triggered an abysmal clearance rate for homicides and shootings that’s still hovering around 25 percent. They are: Edward W. Heerdt, whose $130,537 in overtime amounts to 138 percent of his $94,584-a-year salary; Anthony F. Noradin, whose $126,343 in overtime was 129 percent of his $98,016 in regular pay; and Jose L. Castaneda, whose $106,376 in overtime pay exceeds his $94,584-a-year salary by $11,792.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, outgoing OEMC Director Gary Schenkel, OEMC Executive Director Alicia Tate-Nadeau on the call-taking floor of OEMC last March. Brian Jackson/Sun-Times file photo

The only non-police officers in the $100,000-plus club were Ramona Perkins, an OEMC police communications operator who made $128,092 on top of a $75,240-a-year salary; water department operating engineer Kevin Chavez, $108,851 in overtime on top of a $98,675-a-year salary; operating engineer Jorge Vasquez, $100,365 in overtime over and above a $98,675-a-year salary; and assistant chief operating engineer Joseph Morabito, $102,632 on top of an annual salary of $108,534.

In all, the police department accounted for $143 million in overtime — about 54 percent of the city total. It was followed by fire ($50 million), water ($21 million), streets and sanitation ($14 million), aviation ($13 million) and OEMC ($11 million).

Police Board President Lori Lightfoot, who co-chaired Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Task Force on Police Accountability, said the police overtime numbers recorded in 2016 are a recipe for burnout and the poor decision-making that can come with it.

“It’s definitely concerning. That means that a single person is working an extraordinary amount of overtime. . . . Things like this are exactly the kind of issues that should be evaluated by the public safety” inspector general, Lightfoot said.

She pointed to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision to hire 970 additional police officers over the next two years above and beyond attrition. “There’s been a recognition that prolonged periods of significant overtime is not a viable strategy,” she said.

Molly Poppe, a spokesperson for the city’s Office of Budget and Management, defended the costly use of overtime.

“Public safety is a top priority of the administration, and we will continue to use overtime in support of public safety, as needed,” Poppe wrote in an email.

But she argued that the Emanuel administration “does work to manage overtime expenses” and that progress has been made to rein it in.

“Recent steps include filling firefighter vacancies in the fire department – which you saw the impact of those hirings on overtime expenses – and filling vacancies within the operating engineer crews at the Department of Water and Management,” Poppe wrote.

She noted that the budget office and the Department of Human Resources are working with 911 center chief Alicia Tate-Nadeau “to identify time and attendance processes to help address overt absenteeism and [Family Medical Leave Act] issues, which are large drivers of OEMC’s overall overtime cost.”

The Sun-Times reported this month that the Chicago Police and Fire Departments wracked up $194 million in overtime in 2016, $72 million of it during July and November alone.

The spike in July — to $21.6 million in police overtime, more than double June spending — stemmed from a 60 percent surge in homicides and shootings that would ultimately prompt Mayor Rahm Emanuel to end years of retrenchment and propose a two-year police hiring surge.

Only $425,933 of the July overtime was tied to the Lollapalooza music festival, City Hall said.

The $29.9 million police overtime tab in November had more to do with the Cubs winning their first World Series since 1908. In all, the city spent $17.2 million on police overtime during the Cubs march to their first World Series title in 108 years.

The abandoned factory that the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. left behind in Bridgeport has been like a wad of gum stuck to the shoes of Chicagoans.

First, Wrigley shut down the factory, sending 600 jobs to the far suburbs, in 2006 — four years after Mayor Richard M. Daley gave the company $16 million in tax breaks to keep its headquarters in Chicago.

Then, Wrigley sold the 31-acre site including the shuttered chewing gum factory for nearly $4.9 million. The buyers? A group of Lombard businessmen who, within months, had Daley’s nephew, attorney Patrick Daley Thompson, working to cut their property taxes on the land.

Then, Thompson’s clients got $8 million by selling 13 acres of the Wrigley land to ComEd so the utility could build an employee training center, a $41 million project that its electricity customers throughout northern Illinois are covering through their monthly bills.

Now Thompson, who has since been elected alderman of the 11th ward — which includes the partially demolished gum factory — will have a big role in what happens to the rest of the Wrigley property owned by the Lombard businessmen.

Thompson and his Loop law firm started handling the tax appeals on the Wrigley property in 2012 and continued after his election in 2015. Altogether, they have saved the Lombard group more than $525,000 in taxes on the land, records show.

The owners’ plans call for a shopping center and stores on the remaining 18 acres, including the old factory — projects that will need Thompson’s approval as alderman.

Thompson wouldn’t discuss his relationship with the Lombard businessmen or their company, 3535 Ashland LLC, named for the address of the former chewing gum factory.

Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson. | Sun-Times files

This is a story about how a shuttered factory has caused a series of economic hits for Chicagoans. First, the Daley administration doled out millions in subsidies to Wrigley with the expectation its factory would remain open. Then, the city lost hundreds of manufacturing jobs when the factory was shut down by Wrigley. Now, ComEd customers are paying higher electric bills to cover the cost of redeveloping the land that Wrigley left behind.

It all began in 2002, when Wrigley began talking about relocating its corporate headquarters to the suburbs. Daley and the Chicago City Council agreed to give the company $16 million in taxpayer subsidies to stay in Chicago, where it was founded in 1891.

Wrigley agreed to stay and build a headquarters, lab, research facility and parking garage on Goose Island along the Chicago River, just south of North Avenue on the North Side.

In the negotiations with Wrigley, the mayor said he was given assurances that the Bridgeport factory, about a mile west of his boyhood home, would remain open. City officials pledged to get that commitment in writing.

But everything changed in 2005, when Mars Inc. bought Wrigley. The Goose Island project was downsized to two, rather than four buildings — the lab and the research facility. And the company announced it would close the 95-year-old factory where it made Wrigley’s Spearmint, Juicy Fruit, Big Red and other popular chewing-gum brands, moving production to Yorkville.

Daley, it turned out, had never received a written guarantee that Wrigley would keep the plant open.

Since all of the planned construction on Goose Island wasn’t completed, though, city officials have said Wrigley will get no more than $11.1 million in tax subsidies.

The chewing gum manufacturer reportedly wanted $19 million for the abandoned factory site when the “for sale” signs went up in 2009. Wrigley sold the sprawling property on April 30, 2012, to 3535 Ashland LLC, a company managed by three Lombard businessmen: James Avgeris, Bradley Gdowski and Stewart Mills. They paid nearly $4.9 million.

They hired Thompson, an attorney with the law firm of Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella who at the time was also an elected member of Cook County’s sewage treatment agency — the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago.

Thompson — who lives about a mile east of the Wrigley property in the bungalow where his late grandfather Mayor Richard J. Daley lived — convinced Assessor Joseph Berrios to reduce his proposed higher assessments on the Wrigley buildings and land in 2012. He saved the Lombard group more than $83,000 in taxes for that year.

ComEd Training Center, 3536 S. Iron St. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

ComEd says it began looking at the vacant Wrigley property in April 2014 to build a training center, as mandated by Illinois legislators in 2011 when they overrode Gov. Pat Quinn’s veto to approve a $2.6 billion ComEd plan to upgrade its distribution system and provide customers with “smart meters.” Quinn had argued ComEd’s plan would cause “blockbuster annual rate hikes.”

The Chicago training center “was something the Legislature wanted them to do to create jobs,” says former state Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-Moline, who sponsored the ComEd legislation.

ComEd spokesman John Schoen says the utility focused on the Wrigley property after rejecting three similar-size sites — 3000 S. Damen, 2500 S. Corbett and 2000 W. 32nd St. — that ranged in price between $6.5 million and $12 million. The Corbett property was too close to a heliport in Thompson’s ward. ComEd couldn’t reach a deal with the other property owners, who included businessman Fred B. Barbara, a Daley friend.

The Wrigley property — on the southwest corner of 35th and Iron streets — “did not have the limitations the above sites had,” according to Schoen. “The site was well located, was easily accessible to employees and the public through main transportation arteries, had the necessary space to build and operate the training center. The environmental concerns were manageable, and the surrounding properties did not present any potential concerns or interference.”

David Kolata, the Citizens Utility Board’s executive director. | Sun-Times files

The Lombard businessmen agreed to sell ComEd 13 acres for $8 million — 63 percent more than they paid Wrigley for the entire 31 acres — in September 2014. The purchase was approved by ComEd management, though not its board of directors.

“There was supposed to be a training center,” says David Kolata, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, a consumer group. “Certainly, they didn’t have an obligation to build it where they built it.”

ComEd spent about $8.5 million to clean up the property — costs Schoen says “were in line with or lower than other sites.”

ComEd management hired Elzie Higginbottom, a clout-heavy contractor and campaign fund-raiser for Daley and many other Democrats. Higginbottom’s Burling Builders was among “approximately nine contractors” that submitted bids to build the 50,000-square-foot training center, according to Schoen, who says, “We are not at liberty to disclose the identities of the competing bidders or their confidential submittals.”

Elzie Higginbottom. | Sun-Times file photo

ComEd won’t say how much it paid Higginbottom to build the $41 million training center, which opened in February 2016. It includes classrooms, other indoor training space, an auditorium and a 240,000-square-foot outdoor training yard. There is an indoor pole yard and space to teach splicing for underground cables. ComEd estimates 4,000 employees will be trained there every year.

While ComEd was negotiating to buy the land in 2014, Thompson’s law partner Thomas Boyle appealed the county’s revised assessments for the Wrigley property, getting him to lower them — which saved the Lombard group more than $324,000 on its 2014 property taxes, records show.

“One of my partners at the firm asked me to handle the appeal,” says Boyle, who’s now at another law firm. “It was Patrick Daley Thompson. It was his client.”

Boyle says he doesn’t know why Thompson asked him to file the appeal, which came as he was preparing to run for alderman.

A few months after Thompson was elected alderman in May 2015, Boyle filed another appeal, saving the Lombard group another $120,000.

As alderman, Thompson got the City Council to approve signs for ComEd’s training center. He and Mayor Rahm Emanuel were among officials at a ceremony marking the opening of the ComEd facility, which so far is the only project built on the old Wrigley land.

But Stewart Mills, one of the Lombard businessmen, says another deal is in the works.

“We have 12 of the 18 acres under contract for a shopping center,” Mills says. “We hope to do retail on the other six acres.”

As alderman, Thompson has significant input on development in his ward — including the remaining Wrigley property owned by the businessmen he has represented. Those developments will likely need permits that will need Thompson’s approval.

Retired alderman Jim Balcer (right) with his successor, Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11th), in February 2016. | Sun-Times files

When Thompson was running to succeed Ald. James Balcer, Balcer got the City Council to amend the zoning regulations for the “Stockyards Planned Manufacturing District” that includes the Wrigley property. The revised rules give city officials more control of commercial development of the old Wrigley land.

Under those rules, construction of a shopping center covering more than two acres of the Wrigley site or of any store over 60,000 square feet need approval from city officials, including a thumbs-up from Thompson.

READ MORE:

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With Daley nephew abstaining, City Council authorizes $1.1 billion borrowing, June 17, 2015

Patrick Daley Thompson in tough spot on property-tax hike, Sept. 15, 2015

THE WATCHDOGS: Daley nephew Patrick Thompson — running for alderman — faces conflicts, Feb. 16, 2015

Lives in late mayor’s Bridgeport home, might one day head machine, June 1, 2008

After getting clearance for takeoff from City Hall a month ago, a clout-heavy group of business interests stands to profit richly from providing expanded restaurants and stores at Chicago’s No. 2 airport.

Not long after the Midway Airport deal was finally approved, restaurateurs with a stake in the winning proposal showed their love for Mayor Rahm Emanuel — in the form of big contributions to the mayor’s campaign fund.

City records show three brands from Richard Melman’s Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises Inc. — Big Bowl, M Burger and R.J. Grunts — will be among the restaurants doing business at Midway under the new deal between the city and concessionaire Midway Partnership LLC.

As part of the team the Emanuel administration chose over other bidders, the three restaurants will offer their menus to the captive audience of travelers beyond the airport’s security checkpoints.

OPINION

Since the City Council vote to ratify the mayor’s preferred concessions plan, the Chicago for Rahm Emanuel campaign committee has reported getting contributions worth $86,200 from Melman family members, Lettuce Entertain You employees and many of its restaurants.

On Feb. 28 — six days after the Midway bid won final approval — people and restaurants associated with Lettuce Entertain You gave 20 separate contributions for a total of $48,800 to the mayor’s political fund.

According to campaign-finance disclosure reports, those contributions included support from:

• Two Melman family members.
• Lettuce Entertain You President and CEO Kevin Brown.
• Big Bowl President Howard Katz.
• An executive chef for Lettuce Entertain You.
• In-house accountants and lawyers.
• An executive administrative assistant.
• The Beatrix, Hub 51, Wildfire, Joe’s Stone Crab, Mon Ami Gabi, RPM Italian, Three Dots and a Dash and L. Woods restaurants, as well as the Shaw’s Crab House outpost in Chicago. All are Lettuce Entertain You restaurants.

Then, earlier this month, Chicago for Rahm Emanuel got a total of $37,400 more in 12 contributions from Lettuce Entertain You.

This time, the contributors included three more Melmans and Scott Barton, the president of M Burger.

Another $5,600 had been given to the Emanuel campaign on Feb. 16 by Christopher Meers, the executive partner and president at 11 Lettuce Entertain You restaurants.

Through a spokesman, Melman declined to comment.

A similar pattern emerged in 2014, around the time the city allowed Big Bowl, R.J. Grunts and the company’s Wow Bao brand to open at Terminal 5 of O’Hare Airport. That time, the Chicago Tribune reported Melman family members and others involved in Lettuce Entertain You gave more than $59,000 to the mayor’s campaign fund.

On the first day he took office nearly six years ago, Emanuel promised not to take contributions from companies that do business with the city. But the self-imposed prohibition doesn’t cover campaign cash from those who are part of the concession bid teams.

It’s a giant loophole. Emanuel has no qualms about exploiting it for all it’s worth.

“Lettuce Entertain You is an incredible Chicago based company and success story,” said Emanuel campaign spokesman Pete Giangreco. “We are proud to have them as part of the project at Midway, which is creating hundreds of jobs. Since they are not a contractor, but a licensor, the contributions to the campaign are in compliance with the mayor’s executive order.”

Adam Collins, the spokesman for the mayor’s office, says Emanuel “has not and does not get involved in contracts of any kind, including this one.” He also says the Emanuel administration’s Aviation Department approved the winning bid last year after “a fair, impartial and independent selection process.”

There’s no reason to necessarily stop restaurateurs from giving political contributions to the mayor or aldermen. Almost anybody who lives, works or invests in any city needs something from local government at some point.

There’s a big difference, though, between doing business in a city and enjoying the rare opportunity to do business at some of the nation’s busiest airports.

When Emanuel accepts so much cash from Lettuce Entertain You so soon after his administration grants it such lucrative privileges, it smacks of the Chicago-style, Democratic machine power politics he promised to leave in City Hall’s sordid past.

Five people killed. More than 1,000 injured. A cost to Chicago taxpayers of about $16 million.

That’s some of the toll exacted by crashes involving CTA buses the past two years, according to interviews and records examined by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Altogether, CTA buses were involved in more than 500 crashes in 2015 and 2016, with injuries reported by about 550 bus riders, 250 bus drivers, 200 other drivers, 55 pedestrians and 20 bicyclists.

Beyond the human toll, there’s a financial cost. The $16 million included settlements, judgments and other legal expenses. In all, more than 380 lawsuits were filed against the CTA in 2015 and 2016 as a result of bus crashes, though suits “filed in 2015 could include accidents from 2014, as there is a one-year statute of limitations and would also include re-filings,” according to the public transit agency.

Aimee Coath’s family has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the CTA after she was hit by a bus and killed. | Facebook

As part of one pending wrongful-death lawsuit that’s likely to result in a hefty payout by the CTA, the agency recently admitted fault in a 2015 accident in which, according to records and interviews, a bus blew a red light downtown, striking and killing a pedestrian, Aimee Coath, a 51-year-old Flossmoor mother.

If accidents involve deaths, a hospital trip, property damage of at least $25,000 or even a tow, the CTA is required to report that to the Federal Transit Administration, a federal agency that regulates public buses and trains.

Among the bus-related injuries the CTA reported to the federal agency:

• On Jan. 21, 2015, a bus heading east on 79th at Bishop hit a 12-year-old boy who’d darted into the street between two parked cars while “chasing a dog,” records show. “The right front corner of the bus made contact with the pedestrian who then landed on a parked vehicle,” the report said.

• Days later, a vehicle “traveling at a high rate of speed” went out of control at 82nd and King Drive “and made contact with the bus’ left front bumper,” according to an accident summary. “As a result, 7 CTA passengers and the operator were transported to various hospitals.”

• In September 2015, a bus turning at Archer and Damen struck a pedestrian in a motorized wheelchair.

• Last July, a bus was “attempting to make a left turn” at Halsted and Waveland when it “made contact with” four pedestrians, sending all of them to hospitals with “multiple injuries” and also resulting in a trip to the hospital for the driver.

Bicycles were involved in 14 of the CTA bus crashes last year and six in 2015, including one in which a CTA bus at Sheridan and Montrose “rear-ended a standing bicyclist.” In another instance, a cyclist “fell from the sidewalk and into the back of the moving bus” in the 3200 block of West Division, according to the CTA.

CTA records don’t provide much detail about the severity or types of injuries. Nor do they mention whether the reported injuries turned out to be overstated, perhaps in hope of getting a financial settlement.

“There have been instances where individuals have claimed injury when they were, in fact, not hurt or not hurt to the extent that they are claiming or as a result of an accident,” CTA spokesman Steve Mayberry says. “Beyond that, determinations as to the nature of any injuries would be made by medical professionals on a case-by-case basis and ultimately the courts.”

Though bus drivers are often among those injured, sometimes they go to a hospital only out of precaution, the Amalgamated Transit Union 241’s Carlos J. Acevedo says.

Most of the accidents were routine — for instance, a rear-end collision or a vehicle clipping a stopped bus while trying to illegally turn in front of it.

In a few instances, though, buses were involved in crashes with a school bus, a snowplow, an ambulance, a squad car.

In March 2016, a pregnant CTA bus driver was sent “into labor” and taken to a hospital after her bus was hit by another vehicle while riders were getting on at Chicago and Laramie, records show. She gave birth to a healthy boy, according to a CTA spokesman.

All five fatalities in the past two years occurred in 2015, including one in which a “pedestrian running on the side of the bus lost his balance and fell to the ground, making contact with the rear wheels of the bus” at North and Luna, records show.

The CTA says “it’s sometimes difficult to determine” who was at fault. “There is no doubt, however, that many collisions involve other vehicles striking CTA buses, oftentimes when buses are stopped at designated bus stops. For example, over the course of the two years at issue, CTA buses were standing about 178 times.”

Acevedo, whose union represents the CTA’s 4,000-plus full- and part-time bus drivers, says, “Everybody’s in a rush type of mentality in this city. It takes motorists and people walking with headphones — all of us — committed to make it safe.”

Through records and interviews, the Sun-Times found that, in the two-year period examined:

• Most of the CTA bus accidents happened on the South Side.

• More than 40 of them resulted in the hospitalization of five or more people.

• Just over 40 bus drivers were fired “in whole or in part” because of a collision during that two-year period.

The driver of the bus that killed Coath remains with the CTA, though is no longer driving a route, officials say. They won’t answer questions about him but say, “CTA has admitted fault in the matter.”

Following that accident, CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. “implemented multiple changes,” including increasing the number of days of training for drivers, as well as “line-ride inspections in which managers ride along on in-service routes to ensure proper adherence to procedures/policies,” according to a spokesman.

One concern is that many veteran drivers have the seniority to pick sleepier routes, leaving busy Loop routes, with bigger buses, often staffed with less-experienced drivers, as was the case in the Coath accident.

Acevedo says his union has pushed for financial “incentives” to encourage veteran drivers to take the wheel of the longer, accordion-style “articulated” buses and to take the more-difficult routes. Those are among the safety-related issues being discussed in current contract negotiations.

Acevedo says the union also wants to ease up on broad “split shifts” that he says can cause driver fatigue and “unrealistic” timetables that drivers “stress out” to complete.

Carter says of crashes: “My goal is zero.”

Still, with more than 500 crashes in two years, CTA officials say the agency “has a very strong safety record.

The aftermath of a collision last July 6 involving a sport-utility vehicle and a CTA bus on Pulaski Road in North Lawndale. | Network Video Productions

“There are more than 6 million bus trips each year, traveling 50 million miles. The 510 collisions over 2015 and 2016 happened over the course of about 100 million miles of bus service, representing roughly one collision per [200,000] miles traveled. That’s the equivalent of one collision in 71 cross-country trips across the United States.”

CTA officials say the agency is “in line with our peers nationally,” pointing to the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, the transit agency for the Philadelphia area. Through the first 11 months of 2016, SEPTA reported 235 collisions, compared to the CTA’s 251. SEPTA had about 39 million miles of “bus revenue service” for the year, compared to the CTA’s approximately 52 million miles.

The main transit agency in the Los Angeles area logged more miles than the CTA but had far fewer bus collisions, records show — about 100 over the same period.

READ MORE:

• WATCHDOGS: CTA buses rack up red-light, speed tickets; you pay, March 5, 2017
• At 34 mph, doors suddenly opened on car of packed Metra train, March 5, 2017

When former Chicago Public Schools chief Paul Vallas was recruited to revive the schools in hurricane-battered New Orleans, he asked for help from back home, newly obtained records show.

In a series of letters to Louisiana officials who oversaw the New Orleans district, Vallas vouched for Synesi Associates, an education consulting firm that recently had been started in Chicago by a former high school teacher named Gary Solomon.

“This out-of-state provider has a record of demonstrated effectiveness,” Vallas wrote in 2007, citing the “unique experience” of the firm’s staff.

Synesi landed two no-bid contracts worth nearly $893,000 in New Orleans during Vallas’ time running the Recovery School District from 2007 to 2011, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Nearly a decade later, Vallas was named temporary chief administrative officer of Chicago State University on Friday.

And Solomon is set to report to federal prison July 11 to begin an 84-month sentence. Solomon was convicted of bribing Barbara Byrd-Bennett, one of Vallas’ successors heading CPS, who arranged for Synesi and another of his companies to land $23 million in business with the Chicago school system.

Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and former Democratic Illinois Senate President Emil Jones had called for Vallas to be given a leadership role at the South Side university.

The new role is yet another reclamation job for the man who came to prominence in the 1990s as Mayor Richard M. Daley’s first schools chief when Springfield gave City Hall control over Chicago’s financially troubled schools. After leaving CPS and mounting a losing campaign for Illinois governor, Vallas headed the Philadelphia schools before going to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Two years ago, as the CPS bribery scandal unfolded, Vallas tried to distance himself from Solomon, downplaying the education consultant’s role during his tenure in New Orleans.

Synesi had said it participated in “the successful implementation” of Vallas’ goals in New Orleans and led efforts that resulted in a foundation giving a $10 million grant to the schools there.

Amid the investigation that resulted in the corruption convictions of Byrd-Bennett, Solomon and Solomon’s business partner Thomas Vranas, Vallas said this and other assertions by Synesi were vast exaggerations. “He played no role in policy development,” Vallas said then.

Now, Vallas says Synesi’s contracts were “vetted and approved by the elected Louisiana board of education.”

What the records show, though, is that Vallas urged the board to approve the deal, saying no one else was qualified and there was no need to put the job out for competitive bidding.

Synesi’s first New Orleans contract took effect four days after Solomon formed the company in Chicago in 2007.

The Louisiana board later extended the initial deal twice, then gave Synesi a second contract, all at Vallas’ urging.

In a 2007 letter to Louisiana state officials, Vallas wrote that Solomon’s company “will provide guidance and counsel to the superintendent and the deputy superintendents in the development of an organization structure for the . . . central office.”

In another letter, Vallas wrote in 2008 that Synesi should get the second contract to “ensure implementation of the high school reforms” and again advise Vallas and his top aides.

Five years later, the Illinois State Board of Education rejected Synesi’s efforts to be partners in 2013 with four CPS high schools seeking multimillion-dollar federal “transformation” grants. But the Illinois State Board of Education, which administered the grants, found Synesi wasn’t qualified for the work.

Paul Vallas pointed out that “New Orleans honored me with the key to the city” — and sent this photo of the key.

Vallas calls his involvement with Solomon in New Orleans a “non-story.” He also says, “New Orleans honored me with the key to the city, while those involved in CPS are about to be locked up” — and emailed a photo of the key.

Urging that the then-newly formed Synesi be hired in 2007, Vallas told officials the New Orleans school system didn’t have anyone who could do the work, according to documents from the New Orleans district. And in his “justification for an external contractor” letter, he urged that Solomon’s company be hired without seeking competitive bids.

The contract was to be for five months and pay $172,800 for “counsel and academic administrative assistance,” according to Vallas’ letter.

Before that deal expired, Vallas arranged a contract extension through July 2008, records show, for an additional $624,000.

Synesi got its second no-bid contract in New Orleans in 2008 — for $96,000. The funding for that came from the Walton Family Foundation, founded by the late Walmart mogul Sam Walton.

Solomon’s lawyer says Synesi did “exemplary” work.

Synesi and other Solomon companies went on to work for schools across the country until the CPS inspector general and federal investigators uncovered the bribery scheme involving Byrd-Bennett.

READ MORE:

Former rivals Rauner, Vallas unite for Chicago State overhaul, Jan. 18, 2017

Gildardo Sierra resigned from the Chicago Police Department in 2015 after his involvement in two fatal shootings led to a federal investigation and lawsuits that cost the city $7.5 million.

Six months later, Sierra was again a cop, this time for the Chicago Heights Park District’s police department, run at the time by his brother-in-law.

Other park districts have dropped their police departments — perhaps most infamously, another south suburb, Dixmoor, disbanded its park police in the late 1990s after its chief and another officer pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit extortion in connection with selling police badges.

Chicago Heights is one of just 19 Illinois park districts that still operate their own park police departments — with sworn officers assigned to patrol ball diamonds and green space. These districts spend a total of more than $5 million a year on their police departments, records show.

Even as other park districts have gotten out of law enforcement, the Chicago Heights district launched its own department just five years ago.

“People get shot and killed in these parks, they get robbed, cars get stolen and set on fire,” says Christian Daigre, Chicago Heights’ acting parks police chief. “This is not Mayberry.”

Still, records show the Chicago Heights park police didn’t arrest anyone last July or August — busy months for park users. Daigre says that shows his officers’ presence was an effective deterrent.

They didn’t write any tickets, either. The park board has yet to give its police department that authority.

Daigre became acting chief after Chief Jose Maldonado was placed on unpaid leave following his March 2016 arrest on charges including DUI, aggravated speeding and carrying a concealed firearm while under the influence of alcohol, according to the Illinois State Police. He remains suspended while the case is pending.

Maldonado had hired Sierra, whose troubles had been the subject of widespread news coverage.

Ruling in the 2011 death of Flint Farmer — an unarmed man Sierra shot three times in the back — Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority found the shooting unjustified, though Sierra wasn’t charged with any crime.

Sierra and his partner also were involved in a shooting earlier in 2011 that claimed the life of Darius Pinex and left another man wounded. IPRA found Sierra fired multiple shots but didn’t strike either man.

City Hall settled lawsuits filed in those shootings for a total of about $7.5 million, court records show.

“How would we know if there was any shootings in the past?” Frank Perez, the Chicago Heights park district’s executive director says when asked why Sierra was hired.

Still, Sierra didn’t last long. The park district fired him last May, after suspending Maldonado. According to Perez, Sierra was still a probationary employee and “didn’t fit in with the department.”

Messages left for Sierra and Maldonado weren’t returned.

In the past five years, four park districts statewide have dumped their police departments. One was the Memorial Park District, which included Bellwood and parts of neighboring west suburbs. At one point, Memorial had dozens of officers for a smattering of recreational facilities.

Memorial recently settled a lawsuit for up to $1.7 million that claimed the park cops went on ticket-writing blitzes, often away from park property. About half of that was to refund people ticketed going back as far as 1984, with most of the rest for attorney’s fees.

“Guys love to have a badge and a wallet to flash so they can drive like idiots,” says Mari Herrell, executive director of the Memorial Park District. “They cannot get on a real police department.”

The remaining park police departments range from Rockford’s, with a budget of over $1 million, 5,000 acres to patrol and a dozen full-time cops, to the Hawthorne district in Cicero, with a $32,000 budget and three part-timers to watch over 22 acres of parks and two banquet halls.

In Lake County, officers working for the Round Lake Area Park District haven’t made a single arrest or written a ticket in two years, records show — but the department has an arsenal that includes three military-surplus M-16 semi-automatic rifles.

A sign at the Morton Grove Park District identifies the location of the park police department. | Casey Toner / BGA

Last July and August, park police officers in Calumet City, Cicero and Morton Grove didn’t make any arrests or write even one ticket, records show.

“Just because they’re not issuing tickets doesn’t mean they’re not out in the parks enforcing the rules,” says Jeffrey Wait, executive director of the Morton Grove Park District.

The Crystal Lake park district police department has gotten three M-16s under a federal program that donates surplus military gear to police. Parks police Chief Dan Dziewior, previously a Crystal Lake cop for 28 years, calls them “standard things in every police department nowadays. It’s very pinpoint, and you hit exactly what you’re aiming at.”

Casey Toner is a Better Government Association investigator.

READ MORE:

$2.4M settlement in police shooting case tied to legal misconduct, Dec. 9, 2016

Other questionable police shootings claimed lives, cost city millions, Dec. 13, 2015

Attorney says feds investigating shootings by Chicago police, Sept. 3, 2014

Shortly after taking office, President Barack Obama made it clear to Zimbabwe that he would keep America’s economic sanctions against the nation’s leaders in place until they reformed their government’s repressive policies.

Around the same time, a cadre of Obama political supporters from Chicago began exploring an array of potentially lucrative ventures in the African nation, everything from manufacturing medical supplies to mining diamonds.

Despite the U.S. sanctions, Americans can legally do business in Zimbabwe as long as their deals don’t involve specific people, including President Robert Mugabe, and companies targeted by the sanctions in place since 2003.

But it’s a tricky road to navigate. So the Obama supporters turned to Mel Reynolds — a former congressman and twice-convicted felon — to seek business opportunities for them starting in 2009. That ended by 2014, when he was arrested in Zimbabwe for possessing pornography, which is a crime in that country. The case was later dropped.

Reynolds is now fighting misdemeanor charges in Chicago accusing him of failing to file federal income-tax returns in the United States reflecting money he received from two Chicago businessmen looking to strike it big in Zimbabwe, Elzie Higginbottom and Willie Wilson. Reynolds says the payments were reimbursements for business expenses, not income. He has battled in court to get Higginbottom’s tax returns, which he says will prove him right.

Elzie Higginbottom. | Sun-Times file photo

Higginbottom, a major political contributor to Obama and other Democrats, and Reynolds founded a company in Chicago called Sub-Sahara Inc. as the former congressman was meeting with government and business leaders in Zimbabwe, prospecting for deals.

“I would be the leg man, and he would be the money man,” Reynolds says of the hoped-for deals. “He would get 60 percent, and I would get 40 percent.”

Sub-Sahara’s African arm worked with Wilson, who later ran for mayor of Chicago and for president of the United States, as he teamed up with Medline Industries, Inc., a Chicago-area medical supply company, hoping to set up a manufacturing or distribution plant in Zimbabwe. Medline’s owners have been major political contributors to Obama, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other Democrats.

Higginbottom, who made a fortune managing government-subsidized apartments in Chicago, also pursued his own deals, including housing construction and diamond mining.

But all of those eventually fell apart. And Higginbottom and Wilson ended up testifying before the federal grand jury that indicted Reynolds in 2015 for failing to file tax returns for four years, according to records and interviews. Both businessmen might be called to testify if Reynolds stands trial, possibly later this year.

Their dealings in Zimbabwe are now central to the U.S. government’s case against Reynolds, which is likely to give a behind-the-scenes look at the connections between some high-profile Chicagoans and Mugabe, one of Africa’s longest-serving rulers who Obama once described as a dictator.

From left, Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, Chicago businessman Elzie Higginbottom and former U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds in New York City in September 2011. | Supplied photo

Mugabe met with Higginbottom and Reynolds at a hotel in New York when he was attending meetings at the United Nations in September 2011. Higginbottom and the Rev. Jesse Jackson met with Mugabe at his offices in Zimbabwe in May 2013.

Higginbottom won’t talk about the meetings.

“I don’t owe you an explanation as to why I meet with one person or another,” he says. “The U.S. government didn’t have any issues with what happened.”

Regarding Reynolds, Higginbottom says: “He was trying to uncover business opportunities for American businessmen. I paid him as a consultant to see if he could find business opportunities for us over there.”

Higginbottom declines to say how much he paid Reynolds: “You’ll find out when we go to trial.”

Wilson won’t talk about his Zimbabwe dreams, either, except to say, “We tried to make some things happen . . . It didn’t turn out right at all. . . . It’s a bad nightmare.”

Reynolds was an up-and-coming member of Congress, representing parts of Chicago’s South Side and south suburbs, until his 1995 sexual assault conviction for having sex with an underage campaign volunteer. While in prison, he was charged with federal bank fraud and campaign-finance violations and convicted, but President Bill Clinton commuted his sentence.

Higginbottom owns and manages thousands of apartments subsidized by the Chicago Housing Authority and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. He collected more than $44 million in rent subsidies from HUD in 2015, records show.

Higginbottom also became a prolific campaign contributor and fund-raiser for former Mayor Richard M. Daley and other Democrats.

It’s unclear how Higginbottom connected with Reynolds, but he says the relationship ended in 2013, the year before Reynolds was arrested in Zimbabwe.

“Everybody’s entitled to a second chance,” Higginbottom says. “I have a lot of second-chance people working for me.”

Willie Wilson, center, announcing in March he’s contributing $150,000 to a new relief fund to help people delinquent on their property taxes. | Santiago Covarrubias / Sun-Times

Wilson — a businessman who ran for Chicago mayor in 2015 and then president last year — made much of his money investing in McDonald’s franchises and also created a nationally syndicated gospel  TV show.

Twenty years ago, Wilson started Omar Inc., a company that distributes surgical gloves and other products. He teamed with Medline — a family-owned business run by brothers Charlie and Andy Mills and Jim Abrams, who’s married to their sister, Wendy Mills Abrams — and a group of investors in Zimbabwe, according to a Medline news release in April 2010 when Zimbabwe’s deputy prime minister, Arthur Mutambara, visited its headquarters in Mundelein.

Medline’s owners are friends of Emanuel, who was Obama’s chief of staff when the company was looking into doing business in Zimbabwe. The family has given more than $200,000 to Emanuel’s campaigns over the years, records show. Medline’s owners and employees gave more than $100,000 to Obama campaigns.

Medline owned the former site of Michael Reese Hospital at 29th and Ellis, which Daley agreed to have the city buy for $91 million as part of his failed plan to win the 2016 Summer Olympics. Chicago taxpayers have paid Medline more than $50 million but still owe $73 million in principal and millions more in interest. Emanuel has twice renegotiated the loan with Medline, lowering the interest rate, while City Hall looks for someone to buy the 37-acre site.

Wilson’s deal with Medline ended in 2010 when he sued Reynolds in Cook County, saying he’d been “maligned, defamed and damaged” by an email Reynolds sent to 11 Zimbabwe officials and businessmen in which he wrote that he and Higginbottom were no longer working with Wilson because Wilson’s company had limited products and was significantly smaller than Medline.

In the June 23, 2010, email, Reynolds told the Zimbabweans he and Higginbottom had formed a partnership with Medline.

“Mr. Higginbottom . . . has direct access to more than a billion dollars of investment dollars,” Reynolds wrote, laying out their plans for a distribution and manufacturing plant that never came to fruition.

In his lawsuit, which he dropped two years later, Wilson said he invested more than $100,000 before the deal fell apart.

Medline and Higginbottom declined to comment on their deal.

Former Ambassador Charles Ray.

Higginbottom made a few trips to Zimbabwe with his family and business partners, according to Charles Ray, who served under Obama as U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe between 2009 and 2012. Ray also accompanied Zimbabwe officials to meet with Higginbottom in Chicago.

“They were looking at a broad range of opportunities to include the minerals market, diamonds, even gold,” Ray says.

Higginbottom won’t discuss the ventures he was looking at in Zimbabwe with partners including John Girzadas, who’s vice president of Burling Builders and president of B. Coleman Aviation — both owned by Higginbottom. Girzadas says there were discussions about diamond mining but, “There’s never been any serious pursuit of that.”

Higginbottom says he never had any interest in diamonds despite reports in African newspapers, including a June 2013 report in the Guardian & Mail in neighboring South Africa that quoted him saying: “We are no longer pursuing any diamond interests. The Zimbabwe state diamond entities engaged in the diamond trade are sanctioned and thus we have eliminated this area from our potential ventures. We are and will remain in full compliance with U.S. policy and laws.”

Though Jackson and Higginbottom met with Mugabe in Zimbabwe in the spring of 2013, Jackson says he didn’t “know much about” Higginbottom’s interests there.

Jackson, who says he’s known Mugabe for 30 years, says the U.S. should have better relations with  Zimbabwe, with its abundance of natural resources.

“It seems the sanctions aren’t working. The result of the sanctions is the people grew to resent us,” Jackson says, likening U.S. policy in Zimbabwe to what was applied to Cuba under Fidel Castro. “My impression . . . is we’re waiting for Mugabe to leave. It’s like waiting for Castro to leave.”

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe speaking during his annual Heroes Day address to the nation in, 2002.  | AP

Mugabe is a 93-year-old former teacher who embraced Marxism and came to power with other revolutionaries in 1980. Until then, the majority-black nation was known as Rhodesia, and whites ruled.

Mugabe, who’d spent years in prison because of his activism, was elected prime minister in 1980 and became president seven years later.

In March 2003, amid violence, food shortages and allegations of election-rigging in Zimbabwe, President George W. Bush imposed economic sanctions targeting Mugabe and 76 other officials.

Obama extended the sanctions in 2009 and again in January, days before leaving office. Today, the sanctions target Mugabe and 84 others, plus 56 entities, including farms, mining companies and a steel company.

“I’m heartbroken when I see what’s happened in Zimbabwe,” Obama said at a forum in August 2010. “I think Mugabe is an example of a leader who came in as a liberation fighter and — I’m just going to be very blunt — I do not see him serving his people well. And the abuses — the human rights abuses, the violence that’s been perpetrated against opposition leaders — I think is terrible.”

READ MORE:

THE WATCHDOGS: Chicagoans take triple hit on old Wrigley factory, March 26, 2017

THE WATCHDOGS: Ex-county housing chairman cashing in, Jan. 22, 2017

Judge: Mel Reynolds gets to see Elzie Higginbottom’s tax records, Sept. 9, 2016

Ex-Congressman Mel Reynolds, facing tax charges, gets locked up, April 21, 2016

Mel Reynolds tax case entangles two high-profile businessmen, July 30, 2015

Federal tax charges latest chapter in the Mel Reynolds saga, June 27, 2015

A top aide to Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool who previously said he would resign effective March 31 rather than face firing for providing a sham South Side address and failing to move to the city will be kept on at CPS for another three months, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler said Monday that allowing Matthew Walter, 37, to stay on the job amounts to “having two sets of standards — one for senior leadership and one for everyone else.”

Schuler had recommended to Claypool in December that Walter be fired immediately from his $140,000-a-year post and put on a “do not hire” list after finding that he lives in Evergreen Park, and not in the city of Chicago as he claimed — a violation of the school system’s residency rule.

But Claypool initially allowed Walter, a top budget aide, to remain on the job for three months longer, citing CPS’ budget problems and the need to retain his expertise, even though his replacement already is on the job.

Now, Walter will stay on through June, according to Schuler.

He said that’s with the approval of Frank Clark, the Chicago Board of Education president. And he called it a double standard “that severely undermines the residency rule and sends a bad message from the top about how seriously anyone should take it.

“In early 2017, Board President Frank Clark informed me that, because of the looming budget crisis and because of Matthew Walter’s role in addressing that crisis as the budget director, the administration would like him to stay longer, possibly until the end of the fiscal year (June 30, 2017), in order to transition his work to a replacement,” Schuler said. “I told President Clark that a further six months of employment was simply out of the question. President Clark said he agreed, saying that he would follow up with the administration about a significantly shorter period. In a follow-up conversation, President Clark told me that Walter would be leaving in March. With proper consideration to the district’s finances and the promised termination of Walter’s employment, I reluctantly agreed to a March termination date.

“In March, the administration raised the issue again, asking me to give all possible consideration to the District’s finances and Walter’s role at CPS. And last week President Clark informed me that he has decided to let Walter stay through the end of the fiscal year.

“Giving all due consideration to the current financial situation, the OIG cannot condone any further extension of Walter’s employment. There has already been a most irregular three-month extension on those very grounds. Any further extension is simply unfair to the other 36,000-plus CPS employees who must follow the rule or face immediate termination.”

CPS spokeswoman Emily Bittner said Claypool decided to keep Walter on the job through June 30 “given the significant challenges facing the district’s budget and the school budgeting process.”

Neither Clark nor Walter responded to messages seeking comment Monday.

CPS already has Walter’s replacement, Brian Hamer — a former City Hall and state of Illinois revenue director — on the job at a salary of nearly $30,000 more a year that Walter is being paid, the Sun-Times previously reported.

Walter, who rose through the ranks after starting at CPS in 2009, is Claypool’s second high-ranking CPS figure to resign in 2017 over residency problems. Claypool’s handpicked facilities director, Jason Kierna, who followed the schools chief to CPS from the CTA, stepped down after he was found to live in LaGrange Park.

Matthew Walter, center, at a Chicago Board of Education meeting in February. | Max Herman / Sun-Times

READ MORE:

Another top Forrest Claypool aide is out over CPS’ residency rule, March 12, 2017

A top Claypool aide at CPS resigns amid residency questions, Jan. 29, 2017

On his social media sites, Thaddeus “T.J.” Jimenez called himself Batman and Bruce Wane — misspelling the name of the comic hero’s alter ego, millionaire Bruce Wayne.

But unlike Bruce Wayne, Jimenez used his fortune for evil.

In 2012, he won an astonishing $25 million in a wrongful-conviction lawsuit against the city of Chicago. Half went to his lawyers. And he showered millions of what was left on his street gang, the Simon City Royals.

What really caught the attention of the police, though, was that he started expanding his gang beyond its stronghold in Albany Park and other neighborhoods on the Northwest Side, where the members were mostly white and Hispanic. He paid black gang members who lived miles away on the West Side to switch sides and join his gang, according to law enforcement sources.

Jimenez’s aim wasn’t to elbow his way into the lucrative drug trade on the West Side, they say, but to act like a kingpin and wage war on rival gangs for the fun of it.

The pace of violence picked up not long after Jimenez created his West Side franchise in 2014, according to a Chicago Sun-Times investigation that’s found that at least 19 people were shot, four of them killed, in the months-long battle that broke out as a result of Jimenez creating the No Love Money Gang — what his crew of West Siders called themselves.

“That’s when things started going haywire,” says Derrick House, an outreach worker for the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago on the West Side. “You have all of these people dead. If he wouldn’t have come down here, it probably would have been different.”

One cop says, “T.J. blew up the West Side.”

CLICK HERE to see interactive map of shootings linked to gang’s spread:

Robert Tracy, who was chief crime strategist for the Chicago Police Department at the time, agrees.

“He did have a heavy role in escalating the violence in that area,” says Tracy, now police chief in Wilmington, Delaware. “It was incredible. In Chicago, they were supposed to have a reputation for being loyal to their gangs. Obviously, money changed their minds.”

Robert Tracy. | Sun-Times files

The chaos that Jimenez, now 38, brought to the West Side lasted nearly until he got locked up in the summer of 2015, according to police and community activists.

“As we started picking people off, though, he did quiet down a lot,” Tracy says.

Jimenez’s early childhood was spent on the Northwest Side — the Royals’ base for decades. After he got out of prison in 2009, he took over the gang, which, over the next few years, terrorized the Northwest Side, shooting and threatening people, authorities say.

Last month, Jimenez was sentenced to more than nine years in federal prison for possessing a handgun the police said he used to shoot a man in the legs in August 2015 in Irving Park.

Thaddeus “T.J.” Jimenez is caught on a cellphone video shooting Earl Casteel in the legs on Aug. 17, 2015 in Irving Park on the Northwest Side. Jimenez was arrested minutes later after crashing his Mercedes-Benz while fleeing from police. He’s been sentenced to nine years in prison on a federal gun conviction and still faces trial in Cook County criminal court for the shooting. | Court exhibit

A fellow gang member, riding with Jimenez, recorded the shooting on his cellphone. It’s a jarring video, showing the pair listening to “Ave Maria” blasting out of the speakers of Jimenez’s $90,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible and threatening bystanders on their way to the shooting. A police scanner in the car crackles in the background.

After being convicted of illegal gun possession in U.S. District Court, Jimenez was moved from a federal lockup to the Cook County Jail to face state charges for the shooting itself.

Awaiting trial, he recently was sent from there to the Kendall County Jail because “his presence in the jail causes tension,” says Cara Smith, policy director for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

Jimenez has spent much of his life behind bars, which he called “my house” and “my world” in a letter he wrote in jail in 2015.

His uncles were Simon City Royals, and he views the gang as his “family.” In the 1960s and ’70s, the Royals were known for their white supremacist ideology. In the 1980s, the gang formed an alliance with the Gangster Disciples, one of Chicago’s biggest black gangs, to protect Simon City Royals members in prison.

Thaddeus “T.J.” Jimenez. | Cook County Sheriff’s Office

But the Royals haven’t changed their racist ways, court records show. In early 2014, a black couple walking from their car to their home with their 2-year-old child and their groceries were accosted by members of Jimenez’s crew on the Northwest Side. According to a police report, they flashed a gun, called the couple monkeys and said, “Get the f— out of our hood, we will f—— kill you!” One of them, Luis Candelaria, was convicted of a hate crime and sent to prison.

Despite such racist activity, Jimenez, whose mother is Polish-American and dead father was Hispanic, decided to extend the Royals’ reach by recruiting young black men. Most of them hailed from the 700 block of North Trumbull and surrounding blocks on the West Side. Some even tattooed Royals logos on their faces and necks to prove their allegiance to Jimenez, who handed them thousands of dollars in cash, let them drive his stable of luxury cars and threw lavish parties for them.

The expansion touched off an outbreak of violence in West Humboldt Park that lasted from mid-2014 through much of 2015 and illustrated what one cop calls “the delicate ecosystem of gangs in the area.” Gang factions in the neighborhood generally coexisted, selling drugs on the blocks they controlled. But Jimenez’s No Love Money Gang shattered the relative calm there, authorities say.

Thaddeus “T.J.” Jimenez in police lineup photo at 13.

Jimenez and his lawyer, Steven Greenberg, declined requests for comment.

In a sentencing memo in Jimenez’s federal gun case, Greenberg said his client’s problems date to when he was just 13 and was charged in the fatal 1993 shooting of 19-year-old Eric Morro on the Northwest Side. He was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison.

“He was terrorized on a daily basis, at times assaulted by both prisoners and guards,” Greenberg said in court papers.

A witness in the case later recanted and implicated another man, Juan Carlos Torres. Jimenez’s conviction was overturned, and he was freed in 2009 after serving 16 years in prison. Torres was later tried and acquitted when the judge said he didn’t trust any of the witnesses.

After he got out, Jimenez had a son and a daughter with his girlfriend. He doted on his family, according to his mother, Victoria Jimenez.

In 2012, a jury awarded him $25 million — one of the biggest judgments in a wrongful-conviction lawsuit against the city.

In happier times, Thaddeus “T.J.” Jimenez with and his mother Victoria after being awarded a certificate of innocence in June 2009. | Sun-Times files

Despite all of that, Jimenez started getting into trouble. He went to prison at the end of 2012 for a drug-possession conviction. When he was released, he acted differently, his mother says.

“Now, he wanted to be the Al Capone of Chicago,” she says. “Family didn’t matter to him anymore.”

Victoria Jimenez says she was stung by comments his girlfriend made in March after his sentencing in his federal gun case. The girlfriend told reporters his family didn’t care about him and was just concerned with getting his money. “That’s not true,” his mother says.

Victoria Jimenez says she visited her son while he was first in prison and attended hearings in his other cases. She wasn’t able to go to his federal sentencing last month because she was in the hospital with pneumonia, she says, but says, “I am still here for him,” even though she says he won’t put her on his jail visitation list.

She says she was heartbroken by the video of her son shooting a man in the legs for no apparent reason in 2015.

“He’s got to pay for what he did,” she says. “You don’t go around playing God.”

In court papers, Greenberg said his client fashioned himself an untouchable king.

“His settlement was squandered on status-enhancing material goods and on reviving the Simon City Royals, the all-but-defunct gang of his childhood, where Thaddeus provided financial assistance to others on the street who joined him,” Greenberg wrote.

“He reimagined it on a clinically grandiose scale — a kind of Camelot of loyal comrades-in-arms — with himself as its head, not a broken, shaken man unable to function in the real world, but in this more familiar realm, a leader, a king, in control, powerful, invulnerable.”

Dantrell Williams. | Cook County booking photo

Jimenez’s idea to expand his gang kingdom to the West Side grew out of a friendship forged in the Cook County Jail after he was charged with drug possession in 2012, according to a law enforcement source.

The source says a drug dealer he met in jail was part of the Traveling Vice Lords from the 700 block of North Trumbull, and that led Jimenez to Dantrell Williams, another Traveling Vice Lord from that area. Williams, now 21, got an “R” tattooed on his neck and became one of the original leaders of Jimenez’s No Love Money Gang, the source says.

But Jimenez wasn’t interested in selling heroin on the West Side like the Traveling Vice Lords or their rivals, the Conservative Vice Lords, according to authorities — only in taking on rival gangs.

The police knew of the gang war, says Tracy. “We were tracking him,” he says of Jimenez. “But this guy had counter-surveillance. He knew we were watching him.”

The first time Jimenez was documented hanging out with his West Side crew was on May 22, 2014, in the 4100 block of West Chicago. A police report shows Jimenez was stopped by officers for a traffic violation in his green Humvee, riding with No Love Money Gang members. Jimenez also allowed those in the gang to drive the Hummer, nicknamed the “Tank,” according to sources who say reports of shots fired were often linked to a vehicle matching its description.

CLICK HERE for timeline of shootings linked to gang’s spread:

Police think the No Love Money Gang first targeted the Conservative Vice Lords on July 3, 2014. Witnesses saw a green Hummer right before a shooting in the 600 block of North Ridgeway, sources say. Martin Satterfield, a former Marshall High School basketball player, was left partially paralyzed. The 24-year-old now uses a wheelchair.

Tyris Ferguson, 23, was killed and three others, also believed to be members of the No Love Money Gang, were wounded when the Pontiac Grand Prix they were riding in was sprayed with bullets from a military-style rifle in the 700 block of North St. Louis Avenue, on Nov. 19, 2014. | ABC7

No one has been charged in that crime. Satterfield, whose family says he wasn’t a gang member, wouldn’t cooperate with investigators, according to a police report.

Before Satterfield was shot, the neighborhood was relatively quiet, police records show. Afterward, a back-and-forth gun battle raged in the approximately 16-block area. By the end of October 2014, the Traveling Vice Lords were fed up with those members who defected to the No Love Money Gang, according to one knowledgeable source who says the TVLs thought Jimenez’s upstart crew was hurting their narcotics business by drawing cops to the neighborhood with violence.

In response, sources say, the TVLs killed Owen “Oskeeno” Spears, a No Love Money Gang member, on Oct. 27, 2014, in the 700 block of North Trumbull, though no one’s been charged. Spears, a 22-year-old rapper, was shot to warn the No Love Money Gang to get out of the neighborhood, sources say.

Owen “Oskeeno” Spears.

“Rest in peace Oskeeno,” Jimenez wrote in the 2015 jailhouse letter. “You’re in my heart forever.”

Some core members of the No Love Money Gang got the hint and left. Others stayed. Many of them went to jail, including three of Jimenez’s top lieutenants.

Williams was arrested Jan. 31, 2015, for having an illegal 9mm handgun while riding in an SUV pulled over for a traffic violation.

“Everybody trying to kill me because I’m a Royal,” officers said Williams told them. “I gotta protect myself.”

The same gun was used to shoot a Four Corner Hustlers member in the leg earlier that month on the West Side, authorities say.

On March 22, 2015, while free on bail, Williams was driving a Chrysler 300 on the West Side with No Love Money Gang members when he got pulled over, after a chase, for running a stop sign. Officers said a loaded AK-47-style rifle was in the car. Again, Cook County prosecutors charged Williams with illegal gun possession, and he was freed on $100,000 bail.

On Aug. 13, 2015, Williams was shot in the forearm but wouldn’t cooperate with the police.

Weeks later, federal authorities charged Williams with illegal possession of the 9mm handgun and the rifle. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in federal prison. In a sentencing memo, federal prosecutors noted that Cook County judges had released Williams on bail for gun possession — twice.

“Despite having been arrested in possession of an even more deadly weapon than his already pending charge, defendant was once again released on bond,” prosecutors wrote.

They said Williams’ rap sheet included more than a dozen arrests for drug possession and threatening people with guns, that he was given repeated chances “to get his life back on track but has instead chosen again and again to ally himself with violent street gangs — first, the Traveling Vice Lords and, most recently, the Simon City Royals, led by Thaddeus Jimenez.”

Tyrell Thomas (right) identified by authorities as a member of T.J. Jimenez’s gang, was caught on a security video on April 12, 2015, outside a convenience store near Chicago and Homan avenues with a submachine gun. It was a gun “fit for a Hollywood action film,” federal prosecutors later wrote. | Court exhibit

On April 12, 2015, another Royals member, Tyrell Thomas, walked into a convenience store near Chicago and Homan avenues with a submachine gun tethered to his neck by a shoestring. It was a gun “fit for a Hollywood action film,” federal prosecutors later wrote.

Thomas’ two accomplices also were members of the Royals, after flipping from the Traveling Vice Lords, according to police, who say the trio stole about $370 from rival gang members. A security camera showed them entering and exiting the store.

Thomas, now 30, pleaded guilty to possession of a MasterPiece Arms .45-caliber submachine gun. He’s serving a 108-month federal prison term. No one else was charged.

Divonte Hall. | Facebook

Divonte Hall, identified as another member of the Royals, got locked up for a triple shooting in 2016. On March 7, 2016, he and an accomplice shot two men and a woman near 13th and Lawndale, police said. Witnesses said one of the gunmen yelled, “I told you I ain’t playing.” Hall, now 20, is in Cook County Jail awaiting trial for aggravated battery with a firearm.

After Jimenez and his closest No Love Money Gang/Simon City Royals members got locked up, the violence began to ebb in the West Side neighborhood, police records show.

House, the outreach worker, says far fewer people have been shot near Homan and Chicago since Jimenez was busted in August 2015.

“Since he’s gone, it’s quieted down,” says House, a former CeaseFire outreach worker on the West Side. “I know. I am still through the area every day.”

In his jailhouse letter, Jimenez railed at fellow gang members he thought turned their backs on him.

House says it’s the other way around.

“He used them up and threw them out,” he says.

When the police pulled over the white Buick Regal he was riding in, Roderick Franklin told them he “was just getting a ride to have Easter breakfast.”

The officers didn’t dispute that. They arrested him anyway.

The cops — members of a “saturation” team working to suppress violence in West Humboldt Park — said they pulled over the car in April 2014 because its taillights weren’t working.

But when the police checked the names of everyone in the car, they learned that Franklin, a 45-year-old who struggled with a heroin habit, was on parole for drug possession. And they said one of the other passengers was a “self-admitted” member of the Four Corner Hustlers street gang.

To the officers, that meant Franklin had committed a crime just by sitting in the car: “unlawful contact” with a gang member while on parole. In Illinois, that’s an offense punishable by up to a year behind bars, even if no other crimes or gang activity occurred.

Under pressure to reduce gun violence, the Chicago Police Department has increasingly used the parole-violation law as a tool to get convicted felons off the street – though in many cases they’ve been accused of nothing other than being around neighbors or long-time acquaintances, the Chicago Sun-Times found.

Just a few years ago, the police in Chicago almost never locked anyone up for violating probation or parole. Now, they do it several times a day, on average.

From 2001 through 2012, the police made a total of 96 arrests for parole violations, city data show.

The number then rose to 338 in a single year, 2013. Then, it surged to 1,978 in 2015.

Arrests for all types of crimes plummeted last year after the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video led to more scrutiny of the police. But Chicago cops still remain on pace this year to arrest more than 900 people for parole violations.

“It’s a way to get them off the street” and also to make it easier for the police to keep tabs on gangs, says one veteran cop who spoke only on the condition that his name not be used.

He also offers a reason for the sudden rise in parole arrests, pointing out that it began after the city decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana in 2012: “We can’t get them for weed anymore.”

The police have interpreted gang “contact” broadly. In some neighborhoods that have a large population of parolees, police have arrested people nearly everywhere — walking down the street, standing in a yard, talking with neighbors, sitting on a porch and riding in a car — for no criminal conduct other than having contact with a gang member, records show.

Some police reports don’t even name the gang member involved in the illegal contact. Others don’t say what their gang affiliations were, even though those associations were the reason given for the arrests.

And the definition of gang membership is also fluid. The police say people they pick up routinely admit their gang associations. In other cases, officers determine that though street investigations, then log the information into a department database.

Defense lawyers and others say the police often label people as being in a gang based solely on where they live.

The police defend their use of the gang-contact law, saying it helps them get dangerous repeat offenders off the streets.

“State law prohibits parolees from having contact with other convicted felons or documented gang members, and the community wants to ensure parolees are in compliance with the terms of their release and not engaging in criminal activities,” police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says.

Others argue that the law is vague and applied unfairly.

“It’s like a trap,” says state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, a North Side Democrat who has proposed changes to the law.

State Rep. Kelly Cassidy has introduced a bill that would change the gang-contact law to prohibit parolees from “street gang-related activity” rather than just any contact with a gang member. | Jacob Wittich / Sun-Times

Cassidy says the law restricts the movements of people trying to find work and turn their lives around after leaving prison. She says she’s heard of people concerned even about accepting a ride to work with a member of their own family for fear that could result in their arrest.

Cassidy also says the law does little to hinder gangs. “It doesn’t make us any safer because it doesn’t take anyone off the street who was doing a crime,” she says.

No one was admitted to state prison last year for the offense, according to Nicole Wilson, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Corrections. Though police say they usually contact the parole officers of those they arrest, Wilson says IDOC officials rarely hear about allegations of unlawful gang contact.

“It has been IDOC’s policy to attempt to work with individuals in the community first, utilizing re-incarceration as a last resort,” Wilson says.

The Sun-Times also found:

• That arrests were concentrated on the South Side and on the West Side in neighborhoods with large populations of parolees, frequent gun violence and regular police stops. Tops was the 16th Ward, centered in Englewood on the South Side. That was followed by the 37th Ward (West), 15th (South), 28th (West), 20th (South) and 17th (South).

• From 2011 through November 2016, there were nearly 3,000 convictions in Cook County for street gang contact while on bail, probation, or parole, according to court records obtained by the Sun-Times.

• The number of convictions soared from 17 in 2011 to 1,033 in 2015.

• Seventy-eight percent of those convicted were African-American. Their average age was 25, though more than two dozen were older than 50 — including a 65-year-old man on parole for drug possession.

• Those convicted spent an average of three days in jail, though 23 men spent a month or more locked up.

All of those arrested for having illegal gang contact are convicted felons, and some of them were accused of engaging in what the police said was obvious gang activity. In April 2014, for instance, officers arrested a convicted burglar after they said they saw him leave a party in West Englewood thrown by a faction of the Gangster Disciples. He spent two days in jail.

Other cases are less clearcut. In 2015 and 2016, for example, the police zeroed in on a group of men they said grew up together in Austin and were members of the Four Corner Hustlers. The men said they were unfairly punished for where they lived.

Their arrests began in January 2015. That’s when police pulled over a Pontiac Grand Prix at Central and Hirsch for a “minor traffic violation,” though their report didn’t say what the violation was.

The passenger, 21-year-old DeMarrio Wyatt, was on parole for residential burglary, and the cops said the driver, who wasn’t named, was listed as a Four Corner Hustlers member in their gang database. Wyatt was arrested for unlawful gang contact. After sitting in jail for two days, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to the time he’d already served.

That April, Sergio Johnson, a friend of Wyatt, was stopped after officers said he was backing into a parking space too fast. On parole at the time for illegal gun possession, Johnson was arrested for having someone from the Four Corner Hustlers with him in the car.

Eight days later, the same cops arrested both Johnson and Wyatt, saying they appeared to be picking up bags off the ground, though no drugs were found.

In July 2015, the police stopped Johnson again. Their report doesn’t give a reason except that there had been violence in the area. They told Johnson he was under arrest for contact with gang members.

“I live here,” Johnson told the cops. “I cannot avoid these dudes.”

He went to jail for two days.

By mid-2016, Johnson had been arrested six times in a year and a half for unlawful gang contacts. Wyatt had been arrested eight times.

Within months last year, the men were charged in separate gun-possession cases. Wyatt’s was dismissed. Johnson’s is still open.

Attorney Keith Thiel: Gang contact law is “a reason to pull people over.”

Keith Thiel, the lawyer who defended Wyatt in his gun case, says he’s noticed the increase in arrests for gang contacts. Thiel suspects it’s a way for police to claim they have probable cause to stop and search people.

“It’s kind of like tinted windows — it’s a reason to pull people over,” Thiel says. “The problem I have is: How do you know they’re still in a gang? It also strikes me as potentially unconstitutional, like a violation of freedom of assembly. It’s just another weapon in the [police] arsenal, though I’m not sure how many more they need.”

Before he was paroled last fall, Edward Williams says he was warned by corrections officials to avoid even casual interactions with gang members or others on parole — which would include thousands of people who live near him on the West Side.

“They said I couldn’t be around any friends if they’re on probation or parole,” says Williams, 35, convicted last year of fleeing a police officer in Will County. “They said we could be talking about a job or anything, even getting back on track, and the police can arrest you for that.”

Now that he’s home, Williams says he’s focused on trying to find a job and that he tries to stick close to his family. But even that could be a problem.

State Rep. Justin Slaughter, D-Chicago: “I think the term ‘gang’ or ‘street gang’ still just triggers a negative, punitive line of thinking.”

“I have a cousin on parole,” he says. “Am I not supposed to talk to my cousin? Like at a family gathering or something?”

Cassidy’s proposal to change the gang-contact law would prohibit parolees from “street gang-related activity” rather than just any contact with a gang member.

Another bill, introduced by state Rep. Justin Slaughter, D-Chicago, would provide exceptions for “pro-social” activities such as church services, volunteering or family events. Slaughter’s bill appears to have a greater chance of advancing in Springfield, with Cassidy and 14 other Democrats signing on as cosponsors.

But Slaughter, who represents a South Side district, says it will be a challenge to convince other lawmakers: “I think the term ‘gang’ or ‘street gang’ still just triggers a negative, punitive line of thinking.”

“Society wants it both ways,” says Frederick Seaton, who works with shooting victims and their families for the Institute for Nonviolence, a West Side organization. “Society wants us to be tough on crime — and respect people’s civil rights. So that’s a sticky one.”

Frederick Seaton: “Society wants us to be tough on crime — and respect people’s civil rights.” | John Sturdy / Chicago Reader

RELATED STORY: THE WATCHDOGS: Boom in parolees hits Chicago’s West Side, June 26, 2016

MORE FROM THE WATCHDOGS: Valerie Jarrett would have been only latest in  series of high-paid graduation speakers at financially struggling Northeastern Illinois University

The $30,000 fee Northeastern Illinois University was going to pay former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett was just the latest in a series of big fees the financially troubled state school has paid to snag prominent graduation speakers, records show.

Despite its money troubles — a Wall Street credit agency just dropped Northeastern deeper into “junk-bond” status — the state university has handed out five-figure fees to each of the speakers at its May commencement events the past four years.

That’s in sharp contrast to what’s done at other state schools, also facing tight-money times, including the three University of Illinois campuses, Northern Illinois University, Illinois State University and Eastern Illinois University. Administrators at those universities and others say they don’t pay graduation speakers beyond travel costs.

Jarrett — who was a top aide to former President Barack Obama — agreed earlier this month not to accept a speaking fee for the May 8 commencement after the Chicago Sun-Times reported she was being paid $30,000.

Jarrett said she was unaware of the extent of the financial problems facing the university, which serves about 10,000 students on five campuses, including the main campus on North St. Louis Avenue south of Bryn Mawr.

Northeastern has cut three days from the school year and ordered all 1,100 of its employees to take an unpaid week off during spring break to cut costs amid financial problems worsened by the state government’s continuing budget impasse. The employees also won’t be paid for the three canceled class days.

When Jarrett said she would abandon her speaker’s fee, she already had been paid in full, university records show — and Northeastern administrators agreed to let her keep $1,500 of the $30,000 after they learned Jarrett still expected the school to pick up the tab for her travel.

The public university has paid a total of nearly $46,000 to speakers for its May commencements since 2013, the records show, including:

• $15,000 to Democratic political operative Donna Brazile in 2013. Brazile ran Al Gore’s losing campaign for president in 2000 and twice was interim leader of the Democratic National Committee.

• $10,750 in May 2014 to Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, a professor at the University of Texas in Austin who is an MSNBC and Telemundo contributor.

• $10,000 in 2015 to Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress Rita Moreno, who appeared in the movie musicals “West Side Story” and “The King and I.”

• $10,100 last year to Evan Wolfson, a New York civil right lawyer who founded Freedom to Marry, which pushed successfully to legalize gay marriage.

From left, Donna Brazile, Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, Rita Moreno and Evan Wolfson. | Getty Images, supplied photos

Northeastern Illinois officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In the past, Illinois legislators have tried to bar public universities from paying commencement speakers, but those efforts haven’t gone anywhere. Some lawmakers say they plan to try again following the reports of how much Jarrett was to be paid.

State Rep. Mark Batinick, R-Plainfield, says he thinks the law should allow state schools to cover travel expenses only and provide no payment for speeches.

“It should be an honor,” Batinick says, to speak at a university commencement.

In response to public records requests covering the past five years, the University of Illinois system — which includes campuses in Chicago, Urbana and Springfield — and other Illinois state universities say they don’t pay commencement speakers beyond travel costs, though Southern Illinois University Carbondale has done so twice in that period.

Eastern Illinois University spent a total of $2,273.92 to cover lodging, airfare, rental car and fuel for graduation speakers from 2013 through 2016.

Former Denver Broncos coach — and Eastern Illinois alum — Mike Shanahan. | File photo

The biggest name among them was Mike Shanahan, an Eastern Illinois graduate who coached the Denver Broncos to two Super Bowl victories. He addressed the Class of 2015. It cost the university $155.40 — the price to put Shanahan up for a night at the Unique Suites Hotel in downstate Charleston, records show.

Governors State University in University Park has spent close to $3,500 to cover travel expenses of graduation speakers over the past four years and plans to continue the policy for its two speakers this year. Its top recent payment, in 2015, was more than $1,300 to bring poet Nikki Giovanni to its south suburban campus from Virginia.

Illinois State University’s College of Fine Arts has spent about $3,300 since 2013 to welcome back alumni who speak at its graduation events.

Southern Illinois University Edwardsville also covers only travel costs — amounting to a total of $1,244.08 in state funds for this year’s and last year’s graduation speakers.

Western Illinois University doesn’t have to worry about such things. “Our president delivers the commencement address,” says Darcie Shinberger, spokeswoman for the campus in Macomb.

Frank Abagnale.

Southern Illinois University Carbondale now covers only travel costs. But it did pay $30,000 plus expenses to Frank Abagnale — the con man-turned-security consultant portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie “Catch Me If You Can” — to speak in 2013 and $40,000 plus expenses to actress Ali Wentworth in 2014.

Chicago State University said they needed more time to respond.

The City Colleges of Chicago covered nearly $6,000 in travel costs for rapper Common to be keynote speaker at a commencement ceremony in 2015, including first-class plane tickets from Los Angeles for Common and an assistant, two nights in a $589-a-night room at The Langham hotel downtown, meals from room service and airport limousines.

At Northeastern, the deal to bring in Jarrett next month grew out of discussions with Jim Oliver of Gotham Artists, a New York talent agency and speakers bureau, records show. Oliver previously had offered possible speakers to the university. On Jan. 24, Christie Miller, director of the school’s Office of Cultural Events and Community and Professional Education, asked for suggestions for a commencement speaker.

“We need someone with star power but also appropriate for a very diverse student body,” Miller wrote to Oliver, who declined to comment. “We had a LGBT activist last year so we don’t want that this year. But a diverse speaker to highlight leadership, motivation, etc. would be ideal.”

Oliver sent a list of speakers with biographies. Miller then asked for “further info on fee and availability for Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett and Erin Brockovich.”

She said Northeastern wanted a speaker for the May 8 commencement as well as for a May 6 lecture. But Oliver told her Jones, Jarrett and Brockovich couldn’t do anything more than the commencement because “all three are pretty busy here in early May.”

Jones, a CNN commentator, would have cost $55,000, according to Oliver. Brockovich, the environmental activist portrayed by Julia Roberts in the movie that bears her name, would have charged $24,000.

Initially, Jarrett’s asking price to speak at the state school was $45,000, plus first-class travel, accommodations and local ground transportation, though Oliver added, “Might have some flexibility on fee, we can discuss.”

Miller replied: “I think Valerie Jarrett might be first choice right now. What kind of flexibility do you think there is on the fee?”

On Feb. 8, the university made Jarrett an offer: $10,000 plus first-class expenses. But Miller made clear the university was willing to pay more.

“Our president asked me to make this offer,” she wrote to Oliver. “I realize there may be a counteroffer if she is interested.”

Eight days later, the university signed a deal with Jarrett for $30,000 that said: “Fee is inclusive of all expenses.”

The school sent Jarrett’s agency a “non-refundable deposit” of $15,000 on March 13 and a second payment covering the balance owed on April 7.

Trustees for the university apparently didn’t know of the deal or its terms until their April 6 meeting. According to a recording of the meeting, one member of the board said it was “disturbing” to pay Jarrett so richly at a time the university is facing deep financial problems.

Another trustee asked whether Jarrett might donate the fee to a student scholarship in her honor but was told, “The contract has been negotiated and signed.”

The board also approved an honorary degree for Jarrett, with three members voting against the measure.

On April 10, hours after the Sun-Times requested records related to the contract, the university revealed that Jarrett’s contract was for $30,000. But school officials said they found an unnamed donor to cover that.

The following day, a spokeswoman for Jarrett said she told the university “she will not be accepting a speaking fee.”

On April 13, Oliver wrote to Northeastern officials again. “She would still of course need her travel covered from D.C.,” Oliver said. “Those expenses are coming out to $1,500.”

Miller replied two minutes later: “Yes, that is fine. Thanks!”

Oliver told Miller that Gotham Artists had mailed the school a check for $28,500 — the fee she’d been paid minus travel costs, which weren’t itemized.

Asked about the travel expense Jarrett’s spokeswoman Amy Brundage said the amount was “standard.”

“The travel fee is simply a standard allotment in the contract, but we of course don’t expect the travel to cost that amount,” Brundage said.

Before going to work at the White House in 2009, Jarrett was a $300,000-a-year executive of The Habitat Company, a Chicago real estate development company. In January, in the last federal financial disclosure form she submitted as an Obama aide, Jarrett reported total assets of between $2.22 million and $7.86 million.

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Thanks to an apparent loophole in the contract Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s staff signed with the police sergeants union, a sergeant facing a year’s suspension over the handling of the David Koschman case can bypass the Chicago Police Board and have an arbitrator decide his punishment, a judge has ruled.

Cook County Circuit Judge Anna Helen Demacopoulos ruled Monday that the contract allows sergeants to have an arbitrator, rather than the police board, rule on any suspension of more than 11 days. The police board, whose members are appointed by the mayor, can not only uphold or dismiss disciplinary action recommended by the police superintendent, but it also can issue a harsher punishment.

On Tuesday, an attorney for Sgt. Samuel J. Cirone — one of six Chicago cops who faced firing or suspensions in the botched Koschman investigation — moved to dismiss the police board case.

“We don’t believe the board has jurisdiction over this case in light of the court’s ruling yesterday,” attorney Dan Herbert told police board hearing officer Jacqueline Walker on the 13th anniversary of Koschman being punched by former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew Richard J. “R.J.” Vanecko.

City Hall attorneys argued that the judge’s ruling doesn’t prevent the police board from deciding Cirone’s appeal of the one-year suspension that former interim Supt. John Escalante recommended in January 2016 over a fabricated police report that had once cleared Daley’s nephew in Koschman’s death.

Walker agreed to give the city’s lawyers more time so they can ask Demacopoulos to put her ruling on hold while the city appeals.

If that happens, an attorney for the city, Felicia Manno, said she would proceed with the case before the police board.

Demacopoulos’ ruling is based on the 2012 contract the Emanuel administration signed with the sergeants union, allowing them to appeal suspensions to either the police board or an arbitrator.

Chicago’s rank-and-file police officers and detectives, represented by the Fraternal Order of Police, can appeal suspensions only to the police board, according to the judge’s 13-page ruling.

The Emanuel administration disagreed with the judge’s conclusion that sergeants have the right to bypass the police board in appeals of suspensions.

RELATED: Full Sun-Times Koschman case archive

“The city of Chicago continues to believe that the Chicago Police Board has jurisdiction in this case and not an arbitrator,” law department spokesman Bill McCaffrey said. “There is no loophole. The contract specifically reads that ‘separation of a sergeant from service and suspensions in excess of 30 days are cognizable only before the police board’ and not by grievance procedures.

“We respectfully disagree with the judge’s decision in this case, and we plan to file an appeal.”

In January, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a report on the Chicago Police Department that criticized the police board as being part of a historically ineffective system of police discipline.

David Koschman | Sun-Times file photo

Koschman, 21, of Mount Prospect, and some friends had been drinking on Division Street early on April 25, 2004, when they bumped into a group including Daley’s nephew. After an argument, Vanecko punched Koschman in the face. Koschman fell, cracking his head on the sidewalk, and died 11 days later.

Vanecko ran away. He eventually stood in a police lineup, but no one could identify him, so he wasn’t charged for years.

A Chicago Sun-Times investigation prompted the police to reopen the case in 2011, but they closed it then without filing charges and included a fabricated witness statement in their final report, which was approved by Cirone.

But the Sun-Times’ investigation led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, Dan K. Webb, and Vanecko ended up pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter on Jan. 31, 2014, and serving two months in jail.

Webb said he also considered filing charges against Cirone and five other cops but decided he didn’t have enough evidence to convict them.

Emanuel and then-police Supt. Garry McCarthy directed City Hall Inspector General Joseph Ferguson to determine whether the cops should be punished.

John Escalante, who spent four months as the Chicago Police Department’s interim superintendent. | Sun-Times files

In December 2015, Ferguson recommended the police department fire three of them — detectives James Gilger, Nick Spanos and Lt. Denis P. Walsh. Ferguson recommended that three others — Cirone, Chief of Detective Constantine “Dean” Andrews and Commander Joseph Salemme — face “discipline up to and including discharge.”

Escalante, briefly serving as interim superintendent after Emanuel fired McCarthy following the release of the Laquan McDonald police-shooting video, agreed to fire Walsh and Gilger — both retired to avoid punishment. He recommended one-year suspensions for the others. Andrews and Salemme retired. Spanos served his suspension, largely by cashing in about 10 months of vacation days and compensatory time off.

Cirone, whose father also was a Chicago cop, filed an appeal with the police board and with arbitrator George Roumell Jr., who decided he had the authority to hear the case.

When one of then-Mayor Richard M. Daley’s daughters lost her ID in Mexico, a member of Daley’s Chicago Police Department security detail was sent to get a copy of her passport from a City Hall safe so she could return to the United States.

When another of Daley’s police bodyguards was accused of asking First Lady Maggie Daley for help getting his kids into a school, he was banned from driving her around town.

And when that same bodyguard learned he wouldn’t keep his job once Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office, he refused to drive Daley home on one of his last days as mayor.

What goes on inside the mayor’s security detail is usually closely guarded. But records unsealed by a federal appellate court offer a rare look inside that secretive world. The records are part of an unsuccessful lawsuit filed by 11 officers formerly on the team, who said politics and racial favoritism influenced the selection of Emanuel’s security detail when he succeeded Daley in 2011.

The officers — who were seeking financial damages and reinstatement to the coveted jobs — lost at trial last year and are now pursuing the case before the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The documents include portions of depositions of police officers assigned to guard either Daley or Emanuel.

The newly released trove makes clear that one of Daley’s closest aides, Patrick McLain, wielded great authority over the detail, despite not being a police officer. For instance, McLain joined a commander in giving this key instruction to members of the detail, according to an October 2014 deposition by Officer Patrick Doyle: “What I hear and say around the Daley family or in City Hall is confidential and not to be repeated.”

Efforts to reach McLain, now retired, were unsuccessful. Jacquelyn Heard, Daley’s longtime press secretary at City Hall who joined him at a Chicago law firm after he left office, didn’t return calls.

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Ed Fox, a lawyer for the officers who sued, says much of what’s in the court documents — made public as part of the appeal — didn’t come out at trial because they weren’t relevant to the officers’ claims.

McLain lives across the street from Daley’s former Bridgeport home. He would interview officers before they were assigned to protect and chauffeur Daley, his wife and their kids, the records show. The officers said they also had to give rides to McLain, who sources say acted as Daley’s personal valet for years.

“We never protected him,” Cmdr. Brian Thompson said in an Aug. 26, 2014, deposition. “We provided rides for him. … That was one of the duties.

“Pat McLain was, is, was who I listened to. He was my supervisor, technically.”

Thompson, once a commander in Daley’s detail, became the head of Emanuel’s security team and was a defendant in the suit, along with the city, Emanuel, former Supts. Terry Hillard and Garry McCarthy, Emanuel aide Michael Faulman and high-ranking cops James Jackson, Beatrice Cuello and Eugene Williams.

Daley’s detail was made up of 21 officers divided into two teams. According to the officers’ depositions, McLain was a sounding board for them when they were unhappy with the detail’s commanders, including James Keating and James Carlo, both retired now. The records show McLain often would be chauffeured by one of two officers: Veronica Rodriguez or Carol Weingart.

Former Supt. Garry McCarthy. | Sun-Times files

They also show McLain picked the cops who were assigned to Daley’s post-mayoral detail, which remained with the former mayor until September 2011. That’s when “the determination was made that former Mayor Daley was really not in need of a security detail,” according to testimony from McCarthy.

“It was OK once in a while to provide him security if he was going to a high-profile event or if he was going to be out in public, which is the steps that we took moving forward,” McCarthy testified.

Being assigned to protect or drive the mayor was such a sensitive position that Sam Roti, a onetime commander of Daley’s detail, said no one with connections to an alderman should have the job. In a March 2, 2015, deposition, Roti said, “If they’re gonna run back to an alderman or a committeemen who happens to be very powerful, then, you just — there’s no room for that.”

Mayor Richard M. Daley arrives with Sam Roti, head of Daley’s security detail, for an appearance at the West Englewood Library Branch in May  2010. | Sun-Times files

According to testimony from Hillard, who served on details for former Mayors Jane Byrne and Harold Washington, “In order to get on the mayoral bodyguard detail, you got to know somebody, or somebody got to know you.”

Daley didn’t have a privacy partition in his car, so he would turn up the radio or have a driver pull over so he could hop out to have a private phone conversation, according to one former member of his detail.

Some officers described the former mayor as a backseat driver who’d tell his chauffeurs which streets to take. But they said he paid attention to the state of the city. Doyle said he once was told to return to vacant, burned-out buildings to get their addresses after Daley noticed them from the car.

An officer looking for an easy workday might want to drive the mayor’s kids around, Officer John Pigott said in a Jan. 27, 2015, deposition.

“So the mayor’s schedule, you were going nonstop, you know, usually from early in the morning to late at night,” Pigott said. “With the kids, you would get there at 7, usually not be called for a ride until probably 10 o’clock, and then you wouldn’t see them until 5 o’clock.

“I wanted to drive the mayor,” Pigott said. “That was my assignment. But if I had to drive the kids, I gladly drove the kids.”

Daley and his family apparently placed a great deal of trust in his detail.

“I was trusted by them to do certain tasks,” Officer Daniel Houlihan said in an Oct. 14, 2014, deposition. “Going to their residence alone. I can give you an instance where [Daley’s youngest daughter] Elizabeth was in Mexico and lost her ID and stuff. I had to go get a copy of her passport out of the safe at City Hall so she can get back into the country.”

Still, officers testified Daley didn’t let on to them before his September 2010 announcement that he’d decided not to run for a seventh term.

According to the depositions, Pigott got so upset when he found out he wasn’t being kept on to protect Emanuel that he went home early on May 13, 2011 — one of Daley’s last days as mayor — rather than drive Daley home that night, and Thompson had to do that.

Thompson said he didn’t write up Pigott for that. “It was the end of the road,” Thompson said in a Feb. 7, 2014, deposition. “Why bring any embarrassment to Mayor Daley or to the administration the last hour of his existence as the mayor?”

That was one of several disciplinary issues revealed in the previously unsealed records. In another, Thompson accused Houlihan of once coming to work drunk. Thompson said he told Houlihan to sleep it off and didn’t report him.

Doyle was accused one time of removing his weapon in the City Hall press office and “cleaning it in front of civilians, “ which he denied.

Thompson accused Pigott of gossiping about the Daley family — “trips that they may take, seriousness of Mrs. Daley’s cancer, issues that the family would have with the grandkids,” he testified.

Maggie Daley didn’t want Michael Padalino around her grandchildren because he smelled like smoke, Thompson said. And Pigott wasn’t allowed to drive her after asking her for help getting his kids into a “certain school,” Thompson said.

Hillard had been brought back as interim police superintendent while Emanuel was mayor-elect. In a deposition last June, Emanuel testified he gave Hillard two instructions regarding his security detail: “Make it smaller, and make it as diverse as the city of Chicago.”

Terry Hillard. | AP

Hillard testified he worried the threat level with Emanuel “is going to be off the charts.”

“We had not had a new mayor in the city for almost 22 years,” Hillard testified. “And we had a new mayor-elect coming in to the city of Chicago who was Jewish, who had been the chief of staff of the first African-American president of the United States.”

Hillard also said he hoped to put a detail together “without having to deal with politics.” Yet five former Emanuel campaign volunteers wound up on Emanuel’s detail, the records show.

Daley detail members Roti, Carlo and Eusebio Razo had been campaign volunteers for Daley when he first was elected mayor, in 1989.

In determining how to protect Emanuel, Hillard said he looked for “runners and swimmers.”

Thompson testified about why: “Mayor Rahm Emanuel is a triathlete. He gets up every morning, and he bikes, swims and runs. Someone runs from the detail, picks him up and has escorted him during his workouts … When he runs, someone would run with him.”

Thompson agreed that, with Emanuel, “The threat level has been higher. We’ve had various incidents of a wider range of protesters. He’s younger. He’s a lot more active. He gets up earlier. The days are longer. The family makeup is identical, but they are more active, as well.”

READ MORE:

• Daley bodyguards worried about job security after Emanuel elected, June 16, 2016

• Jury finds no racial bias in picking Rahm’s security team, June 17, 2016

• Easy path to bodyguard jobs for cops who volunteered for Emanuel, June 18, 2016

• Judge finds no politics in Emanuel’s bodyguard picks, June 30, 2016

Over the past 20 years, the Chicago Bears have spent nearly $12.5 million to settle workers’ compensation claims filed by 141 players. And now they’re pushing to change Illinois law in hopes they’d have to pay less money to injured players.

From the horrific spinal injury that ended Johnny Knox’s football career to the multiple traumas suffered by linebacker Lance Briggs, Bears players have agreed to settle injury claims in that period for an average of $87,985.

The team still faces more than 144 additional claims from 55 other players, including Brian Urlacher, Matt Forte, Alshon Jeffery and Kevin White. That’s according to data from the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission, the state agency that oversees claims from injured workers.

The Bears are tops among Chicago teams in terms of the number of professional athletes filing workers’ compensation claims. The team has faced four times as many cases as the combined total filed against the Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs and White Sox.

The Bears have had 410 workers’ compensation cases filed against the team since 1997. The Bulls, on the other hand, had just two injury claims — and neither involved a player.

The Bears say the amount they pay for injury settlements — topped by the $400,000 payment to Knox — could be substantially reduced if the state of Illinois would make a change to its workers’ compensation law, which is among the most generous in the America.

With support from the Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs and Sox, the Bears have asked state legislators to amend the law regarding the age limit for “wage-differential payments” — money that workers can collect until age 67 if job-related injuries force them into lower-paying positions. Wage-differential payments are supposed to cover the difference between the previous and current jobs but, in Illinois, can’t exceed $55,000 a year. These payments are covered by the employer.

CLICK HERE to see every Illinois workers’ comp case involving pro athletes, 1997-2017

The five biggest Chicago sports teams want the wage-differential limited in most case to age 35 for pro athletes because their playing careers wouldn’t typically last much past that, certainly not to 67. The bill is pending in the Illinois Senate.

Despite the efforts to change the law, there isn’t a single pro athlete in Illinois who actually has gotten the wage-differential payment, state records show. That’s because they opt instead for a lump-sum payment to settle their claims.

Cliff Stein. | Chicago Bears

Still, Cliff Stein, the Bears’ general counsel, says lowering the age limit would probably reduce some settlements as well as the insurance premiums the Bears pay for workers’ compensation coverage, saving the team money.

“It’s a very high-risk business with a lot of claims,” Stein says. “As a result, your deductibles and premiums are very high.”

He says what the Bears are seeking is “somewhat of an even playing field” with football teams in other states that provide injured athletes with fewer benefits or none at all, such as Florida.

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Of course, the National Football League Players Association — which says it gives each NFL team about $2 million a year to cover insurance premiums for workers’ comp — and attorneys for the athletes don’t want the law changed. They know the Bears pay higher settlements to injured players to avoid having to make monthly payments until a player’s 67th birthday and want that to continue.

“The fact that it’s there means they have to pay more,” says attorney Richard Gordon, who has filed workers’ compensation claims on behalf of dozens of athletes, including Knox and Urlacher as well as visiting players hurt at Soldier Field, who can file claims in Illinois rather than their home state, where the benefits might be less generous.

Bears middle linebacker Brian Urlacher is checked after getting injured during the second half of a game Jan. 1, 2012, against the Minnesota Vikings in Minneapolis. | AP

“These are guys who work hard every day,” Gordon says. “They give their bodies up for their employment. They should be compensated for their injuries, just like a steel worker. These are players with lifelong injuries who are going to need hip replacements, spinal fusions. It’s easy to look at these guys as millionaire athletes who don’t deserve special treatment. But there are hundreds of athletes who make less than $100,000 a year.”

Over the past two decades, the Bears, Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs and Sox have been hit with a total of 511 workers’ compensation claims, with many athletes filing more than one claim. The teams have spent nearly $14 million to settle resolve 319 of the claims. Fourteen cases were dismissed. The others are pending.

Not all athletes file workers’ comp claims, seeking payment for work-related injuries. Quarterbacks Jay Cutler and Rex Grossman suffered injuries while playing for the Bears but never hadn’t filed any claims in Illinois. Workers have three years to file a claim in Illinois. So Cutler could still file claims for injuries from his final three seasons with the Bears.

Johnny Knox being taken off on a stretcher after his devastating injury during a Dec. 18, 2011, game against the Seattle Seahawks at Soldier Field. | Sun-Times files

Here’s a look at some on-the-job injury cases filed over the past two decades against the five teams seeking to change the state law:

• Knox, now 30, got the biggest settlement of any Chicago athlete when the team paid him $400,000 in 2014 over the spinal injury. Knox had fumbled a pass on Dec. 18, 2011, and was hit by a defensive back from the Seattle Seahawks, bending his back toward his heels. That ended his football career. He was 25 years old.

• Former Blackhawks forward Ben Smith agreed to a settlement of $74,776 to settle four workers’ comp cases he filed in 2014 relating to injuries suffered while playing for the team and its minor league affiliate, the Rockford Icehogs. Smith is now with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Overall, the Hawks paid $304,946 to settle 19 claims. Another 18 claims are pending, two involving forward Dennis Rasmussen.

• The Bulls haven’t had a single workers’ comp case filed by a player, not even the often-injured Derrick Rose or Joakim Noah. But two cases have been filed by Joseph Blum and Andrew Krueger, who injured their knees while working as tumbling entertainers at the team’s home games. The Bulls settled the two cases for a total of $24,331.

• Cubs pitcher Randy Wells accepted a $280,000 settlement from the team over injuries to his right elbow during spring training in 2011 and during the 2012 regular season, the year before he retired. His 2016 settlement includes a wage-differential payment for four and a half years.

The Cubs have paid $659,925 to settle 23 workers’ comp cases. Four other cases were pending involving three former players: Ryan Kalish, Thomas Neal and Ryan Sweeney.

• White Sox catcher Toby Hall got a $115,000 settlement over his injured right shoulder — the team’s largest settlement for a player.

Overall, the team spent $467,575 to settle 15 injury claims, including one involving the death of a videographer. The Sox have 10 pending cases, including four filed by pitcher Gavin Floyd, who was recently released by the Toronto Blue Jays.

Besides the five teams seeking to amend the wage-differential law, the Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission has presided over cases involving other athletes, including 45 hockey players from the Rockford Icehogs, 26 hockey players from the Chicago Wolves, seven soccer players from the Chicago Fire and seven basketball players from the Chicago Sky, including former star Elena Delle Donne.

The Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission has also handled cases filed by athletes from visiting teams, including David Scatchard, who reached a $700,000 settlement in 2014 with the St. Louis Blues hockey team for various injuries. His attorney declined to comment.

“There are players in other states filing in Illinois now,” says Stein, the Bears’ chief counsel. “It’s forum-shopping. It burdens the system here.”

Stein declined to speculate why the Bears have more workers’ comp cases than Chicago’s other teams.

The player’s association says it’s because football players rarely have guaranteed contracts from their teams, unlike baseball, basketball and hockey players.

Former Bears quarterback Jim Miller, who separated his shoulder during a playoff game against the Philadelphia Eagles in January 2002, struck a deal with the team seven years ago to settle seven cases for $225,000 rather than seek a lifetime of payments.

“In football, you body is your resume,” says Miller, now a Bears analyst on Comcast Sports. “Anytime you get an injury, you call your workers’ comp attorney.

“The thing that’s going to cause you to leave the NFL is you accumulated too many injuries or you have a career-ending injury. I was happy with what the settlement was and move on. You can’t litigate forever.”

Contributing: Jacqueline Campbell

At the orientation for what he thought would be his dream job, Richard Cooke says he and other rookie Cook County judges were told they should appreciate their ascension into “career paradise” — and never question the boss.

“This job as a judge, we were told, came with unbelievable perks: high salary, incredible respect, five weeks’ paid vacation, basically unlimited, compensated sick days, minimal supervision, great health insurance and an outstanding pension,” Cooke says.

Cooke mounted an aggressive effort to land the job as a Cook County judge last year, showering campaign contributions on political decision-makers to help him. Yet he quit the $194,001-a-year job on April 25 — just 142 days after being sworn in.

Offering an unusual peek inside the workings and internal politics of the judiciary, Cooke says there’s more to his leaving than the way his brief tenure has been portrayed by Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans’ spokesman, who says Cooke defied orders assigning him to traffic court. And he complains about the “sick culture” of the Cook County judiciary.

“I am not the egotistical judge who was too good to preside in traffic court,” he says.

After Cooke was assigned to preside over marriage ceremonies for a few months, Evans called him before the Cook County Circuit Court’s executive committee to explain his “noncompliance with his judicial assignment” to traffic court. The committee referred Cooke’s case to the state agency that has authority over judicial conduct.

Though he immediately resigned, Cooke says he had valid reasons for not accepting his assignment to traffic court. And he says Evans and other top judges punished him unfairly.

He says he quit rather than bunker in at the marriage court while his case moved through the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board.

“I could have sat in the basement of the county building for years collecting over $200,000 a year in annual salary and benefits, all at the taxpayers’ expense, for doing close to nothing all day,” he says. “But I am unable to do that. That is not who I am as a person.”

Cooke, 50, is a Loyola University-educated lawyer. He also owns carwashes and gas stations in Chicago that have city, county and state contracts. That would have posed a “clear conflict of interest” when those government bodies had cases before him in traffic court, he says.

Because of those contracts, he says it would have been “a violation of the highest order of the ethical rules governing judicial conduct if I heard traffic court cases” and also if he presided over criminal cases.

Generally in such cases, Illinois Supreme Court rules say, “As soon as the judge can do so without serious financial detriment, the judge should divest himself or herself of investments and other financial interests that might require frequent disqualification.”

Cooke says he tried unsuccessfully to get his partners to buy him out but doesn’t think he needed to divest himself of his business interests because that would have caused him serious financial harm.

He also says his brief stint in traffic court proved difficult because he’s dyslexic.

“Using acronyms or reading handwritten cursive or sloppy printing is very difficult for me,” he says. “I had tremendous difficulty reading the handwritten tickets and charges that were the basis of why the defendant were in court.”

To run for judge, Cooke had moved from River Forest to an apartment he owns above his law office near the Logan Square CTA train station. That qualified him to run last year in the county’s Sixth Judicial Subcircuit.

He poured $660,000 into his campaign in the form of a loan. He gave more than $67,000 of that to other politicians, including the Democratic Party leaders who oversaw his slating as a judge candidate, records show. The checks went to four Democratic ward organizations in the subcircuit, House Speaker Michael Madigan’s Democratic Party of Illinois and the 14th Ward Democratic organization headed by Ald. Edward Burke, who oversees judicial slating for the party.

State records show Cooke also paid $40,000 for campaign help to a company owned by state Rep. Luis Arroyo Sr., D-Chicago, and his wife.

Most of Cooke’s loan to his own campaign went unspent. He says the main reason he put so much into his campaign fund was to scare away potential rivals and that he did that on the advice of Democratic ward committeemen. Sure enough, he ended up running unopposed.

On Dec. 5, Cooke put on his black judicial robe and was sworn in for a six-year term with other new judges. His family was there for the ceremony. In his pocket, he carried Mass cards from the funerals of his grandmother and grandfather.

“Now, finally, my dream was being realized,” Cooke says.

But soon, he says, he saw that he and other judges were being “conditioned not to express opinions that differed from that of Chief Judge Evans.”

Chief Cook County Judge Timothy Evans. | Sun-Times files

At a weeklong training program for new judges, he says, “Senior judges spoke openly that being a judge in Cook County was a career paradise. We were told that every judicial assignment is a good assignment and never, under any circumstances, question Chief Judge Evans.”

Cooke says his veteran colleagues also offered another tip: Don’t use the judges’ elevator at the Daley Center courthouse if you want to skip out of work early because reporters have been known to wait in the ground-level lobby outside the elevator doors.

“With a wink, during lunch, I was told that we were expected to work until 4 p.m. each day,” he says. “But I was also told how to sneak out of the Daley Center early through the concourse level.”

After orientation came the training stint in traffic court.

Cooke says he offered to go instead to even the least desirable civil courtroom. He also says he told his bosses that, alternatively, he’d go to a criminal courtroom but only if Evans put in writing that this couldn’t constitute a conflict of interest.

Cooke says he tried to meet with Evans about his issues with being in traffic court but his requests were ignored for weeks, until two aides to the chief judge offered to have someone sit next to him in court and read the ticket information aloud for him. Cooke says that would have been “ridiculous” and “embarrassing.”

The chief judge then met with Cooke on Feb. 1. “He said he was going to assign me to a call where my dyslexia and ethical conflicts would not impact me or the administration of justice,” Cooke says.

Cooke was sent to marriage court — which he calls “judge jail” — and says his life insurance was cut off.

“It has dim lights, broken and dilapidated furniture, stained carpeting, dirty walls, sagging ceiling tiles and is infested with roaches,” he says. “The boredom was intolerable. I felt as if I was stealing taxpayer money by collecting a salary. I was sitting and doing very little actual work.”

In the past, others assigned to marriage court have included a judge who had sex in court chambers and another accused of lying on a mortgage application. 

Every night, Cooke says he hung his robe in a garment bag in the closet of the marriage court office. Some mornings, he says, he found the robe stuffed into a garbage can.

He emailed Evans on April 24 to demand he reassign him. Within hours, he was summoned to a meeting the following day of the court system’s executive committee.

Judge Tommy Brewer. | Sun-Times files

Cooke says Judge Tommy Brewer questioned him at that meeting about how, given his dyslexia, he had received good ratings from bar associations.

Brewer, recently promoted by Evans to presiding judge of the Markham branch courthouse, had been hit with liens by the IRS for more than $227,000 in unpaid personal income taxes, the Sun-Times reported in 2015.

“It was surreal to have one presiding judge, who is well-known to be dealing with multiple IRS liens for non-payment of taxes, leer at me and question my conduct,” Cooke says.

Brewer says there “was some discussion” about Cooke’s dyslexia but declined to say more, saying he had to check first with Evans.

Cooke says he told Evans and the others on the judges’ committee he’d quit if they referred his case to the Judicial Inquiry Board.

Evans’ spokesman says Cooke “is making statements that are nonsense” and “insults the collective intelligence and dedication of the nearly 400 men and women who serve in the judiciary.

“Chief Judge Evans promotes a culture of professionalism and works to accommodate judges with any concerns regarding their service,” says spokesman Pat Milhizer. “If Mr. Cooke believes that he was being mistreated and is right in his assertions, then why didn’t he allow the JIB to place him under oath and then make his case? Instead, he resigned.”

Cooke acknowledges that clout ensured he got elected. But he thinks he was dealt with harshly because some of his backers pushed behind the scenes last year to take away the chief judge’s role that Evans has held since 2001.

Richard Cooke holds his unused judge’s nameplate. | Max Herman / Sun-Times

Now, Cooke says he is reopening his law office — and won’t ever run for judge again.

He has no regrets about quitting but wishes he got the chance to be a judge in a real courtroom. He says his brass judge’s nameplate, given to him after he took the oath of office, never was slid into a slot at the front of a courtroom. He still has it. It’s in the bubble wrap it came in.

MORE FROM THE WATCHDOGS: Gun-shop burglaries helping fuel Chicago violence

To ring in the new year, Kevin Winford and Denis Joiner fired their stolen guns into the air. It was their bad luck that Chicago cops patrolling the South Side caught them in the act.

Their foolish celebration on Jan. 1, 2012, allowed investigators to tie their two guns to a burglary spree in which more than 450 guns had been taken from six stores in Illinois and two other states.

It was a warning sign of what’s become an increasingly popular way for gangs in Chicago to get the guns that fuel their deadly battles. And it’s a problem that’s only gotten worse. Last year, as Chicago’s murder toll hit a level not seen in two decades, the number of burglaries of gun stores in Illinois was nearly triple what it was the year before. Nationally, such crimes rose more by almost a third over the same period, according to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

“This is a common theme now,” says David Coulson, a spokesman for the ATF in Chicago.

Illinois ranked in the top 10 among all states for the number of guns burglarized from firearms dealers and for the number of such stores hit in 2016, ATF figures show.

About a month ago, ATF formed a special team in Chicago to target gun-store burglars, Coulson says.

According to law enforcement officials, gangs see gun stores as easy marks to supply themselves. And some see the guns as a way to make some easy money.

The weapons stolen by Winford and his crew were sold to others looking to arm themselves in the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, authorities say. One of those guns later was found at the scene of a murder on the South Side.

Winford, Joiner and six other South Side men have been convicted of crimes related to those six burglaries.

All but one has gone to prison.

And the gun-shop thefts continue. In the last month alone, gun dealers in Lombard, Hoffman Estates and Oak Forest were burglarized. Juveniles from the South Side of Chicago were arrested in the smash-and-grab in Lombard, though investigators think adults were involved, too. In Oak Forest, someone threw a cinder block through the window of Eagle Sports Range and made off with at least 40 guns. Federal prosecutors have charged three men with trying to sell some of those weapons.

As a result of such burglaries, the Illinois General Assembly is considering a bill that would create a board that to mandate the installation of surveillance cameras and other security measures at gun stores. The bill was approved by the Senate April 27 by a vote of 30-21 and is now pending in the House.

Federal law doesn’t require that firearms dealers take steps to guard against gun thefts, though the ATF offers them theft-proofing suggestions.

Some municipalities already have the power, through building codes, to require that gun-store operators take security measures.

In Chicago, whose citywide ban on gun stores was declared unconstitutional in 2014, no firearms dealers have opened shop yet. But any that do will have to meet the requirements of a city ordinance already in place that they meet certain safety guidelines.

Des Plaines used its building code to get a gun store that was burglarized in 2012 to improve its security before moving to a new location in the northwest suburb in 2013. Maxon Shooter’s Supplies and Indoor Range was among the gun shops that Winford and Joiner hit in January 2012, court records show. At the time, Martin Moylan, who was then mayor, got involved in the store’s plans to move from Rand Road to East Bradrock Drive.

“We were disappointed in the original security that Maxon had because it was so easy for the perpetrators to get in, smash the cases and take the guns, which were used in felonies in Chicago,” says Moylan, a Democrat who’s now a state representative representing Des Plaines.

He says the Des Plaines police and building department worked closely with Maxon.

The new Maxon Shooter’s Supplies. | Tim Boyle / Sun-Times

“They were very cooperative,” Moylan says. “We made sure our building code was strong to make sure they were secure. It was new construction, so we kind of had them over a barrel. Not every town has a special code for a firearm shop.”

Of the store’s new location, he says, “It’s almost theft-proof.”

State Rep. Martin Moylan, D-Des Plaines. | Illinois House

Indeed, on Aug. 23, 2016, burglars tried to break into Maxon and were thwarted by the added security. They drove a pickup truck into the building’s bay doors but couldn’t get inside.

Moylan supports legislation that would impose security requirements statewide on gun stores.

Dan Eldridge, who’s owned Maxon since 2015, takes issue with that.

“To create a one-size-fits-all security mandate for gun shops is probably not very effective,” Eldridge says. “The situation depends on where you are, the access to the facility, the density of the police coverage, etc. What is necessary in an urban environment will probably be grossly insufficient in a rural environment.”

Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, says gun stores across Illinois already are beefing up security in response to the rise in burglaries.

“The gangs are becoming bolder because not much happens to them,” Pearson says. “I think everyone is upgrading their security.”

But he says subjecting gun stores to state requirements for security is a bad idea: “Whenever you get the state involved, you add costs for everyone, with no results.”

Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association. | Sun-Times files

Statewide, 14 gun stores were burglarized last year, with a total of 280 guns stolen, according to ATF figures. That was up from five such burglaries in 2015 and three the year before that.

Only a few gun-store thefts in Illinois and surrounding states were armed holdups. There was just one such robbery in Illinois last year and none the previous two years.

One of the most brazen gun store robberies in the region took place Dec. 14, 2013, in Goshen, Indiana. Shaquan Moorer, 26, of Chicago, joined three Indiana men in an armed robbery of the MC Sports store, according to court records. Dressed in white painter uniforms and masks, they zip-tied terrified customers and employees and stole 47 guns that they stuffed into a duffel bag.

Shaquan Moorer. | Arrest photo

A Goshen detective testified in court that 13 of the guns were recovered in Chicago. Recent tests found that one of the guns found in Chicago was likely used in a shooting here as well as being used in other violent crimes in Indiana, a law enforcement source told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Moorer ended up being convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to 13 years in prison.

Far more often, gun thieves smash into stores in the dead of the night rather than confront store owners themselves likely to be armed. Sometimes, they use sledgehammers and bolt-cutters. Other times, they bash a hole in the store with a stolen car or truck.

No matter how the guns are taken, many of those stolen in Illinois and neighboring states have wound up on the streets of Chicago and other cities, where they’ve been used in violent crimes, authorities say.

Denis Joiner. | Arrest photo

Winford and Joiner were part of an Englewood crew that used Google to search for “soft targets,” sources say — gun stores near interstates, making a quick getaway easier. The crew sold its stolen guns in Chicago, records show.

Its gun-shop burglary spree began Sept. 2, 2011, and ended Jan. 15, 2012, with the Maxon burglary. The crew also was found to have burglarized gun dealers in Lockport and Roselle, as well as Waukesha, Wisconsin; Hammond, Indiana, and Salem in southern Illinois.

To prepare for the break-in in Salem at a store called Hunting Stuff, Winford bought bolt-cutters and four plastic, 12-gallon storage bins at a Lowe’s in Carbondale, according to court records.

The next day, on Dec. 24, 2011, he and three accomplices broke the glass in the front door, crawled inside and cut a padlock on the security gate with the bolt-cutters, then broke the glass in the display cases where the guns were kept and took 124 firearms valued at $61,000, the records show.

The Christmas Eve burglary took just two minutes. But afterward the crew messed up. They used the bins to haul the guns to their getaway car, a rented Dodge Neon. They put one full bin in the car and poured the rest of the guns into the trunk. Then, they left the empty bins in the parking lot. Those proved to be key evidence against them.

Kevin Winford. | Cook County sheriff’s arrest photo

On Jan. 1, 2012, Winford fired his stolen Sig Arms .40-caliber handgun into the air and Joiner fired a stolen 9mm Glock during their New Year’s Day celebration on the South Side. Officers arrested Winford there, but Joiner got away. Police recovered both guns.

Investigators found the guns had been stolen from The Gun Doctor in Roselle on Oct. 10, 2011. Through his mug shot, investigators identified Winford as the man who bought the bolt-cutters and storage bins in Carbondale. Fingerprints on bins dumped in the Salem parking lot matched Winford, now 23, and two accomplices — Joiner and Antoine White, both 24.

Antoine White. | Cook County sheriff’s arrest photo

ATF agents and Salem police interviewed Winford on Jan. 18, 2012, and he admitted breaking into the store, telling them he yelled “Oh, s—!” when he saw how many guns were there.

Investigators connected all six burglaries to the crew, whose members also included Earl Warner Jr., an 18-year-old Englewood man who was shot to death on Dec. 31, 2011. Authorities think Warner’s killer, Tony Head, was angry with him over how much Warner was charging for stolen guns, according to a source. Head is now serving 50 years for murder.

The Chicago Police Department has recovered at least 57 of the guns the crew took in the burglary of the Maxon store in Des Plaines in 2012. Some have been linked to violent crimes. One of them was found at the scene of the killing of Romell Collins, 26, shot in the head after getting out of a car April 5, 2012, in the 6400 block of South Francisco in Chicago Lawn on the Southwest Side, according to sources.

“These types of burglaries and thefts highlight the extent the criminal element will go to obtain firearms that unfortunately often end up being used for illicit purposes,” the ATF’s Coulson says. “We know that these weapons are passed amongst criminals. This is the unfortunate reality.”

READ MORE:

THE WATCHDOGS: Why Cook County judge quit after just 142 days

Reluctant aldermen relax rules governing shooting ranges, April 18, 2017

For new ATF chief in Chicago, fighting gangs is personal, April 9, 2017