The Watchdogs – Chicago Sun-Times

As Chicago endured a devastating surge in gun violence last summer, scores of people with long rap sheets stood atop the Chicago Police Department’s secret watch list, newly obtained records show.

One of the men had been arrested 12 times for violent crimes, all before turning 20. He’d also been charged with illegal gun possession. Two others each had been arrested eight times for violent crimes and caught three times with guns. Another man had been busted three times for illegal guns, racked up four arrests for violent offenses and been shot twice.

“We have 1,400 individuals that drive this gun violence in this city,” police Supt. Eddie Johnson said in August, assuring the public his department was keeping tabs on the people on its closely guarded “Strategic Subject List.” “We’ve gotten very good at predicting who will be the perpetrators or victims of gun violence.”

Yet the list is far broader and more extensive than Johnson and other police officials have suggested. It includes more than 398,000 entries — encompassing everyone who has been arrested and fingerprinted in Chicago since 2013.

Nearly half of the people at the top of the list have never been arrested for illegal gun possession. About 13 percent have never been charged with any violent crime. And 20 of the 153 people deemed most at risk to be involved in violent crime, as victim or shooter, have never been arrested either for guns or violence.

That’s according to a version of the list that the police department released to the Chicago Sun-Times after a lengthy legal dispute.

The police concluded the people who hadn’t been arrested for guns or violence were at great risk to commit a violent crime or become the victim of one — and, as a result, should be watched closely — because they:

• Had been shot or assaulted.

• Had been identified by the police as a gang member.

• Or recently were arrested for any crime, even a nonviolent offense.

The police say the list helps them determine which people they need to target for warnings or offers of help.

A police spokesman says the list has evolved over time, and the department is focused on those with the highest “risk-assessment” scores used to create the list. The highest possible score — given to those deemed most at risk — is 500.

“Like a credit score, the SSL is simply a tool that calculates risk,” spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says. “Individuals only really come on our radar with scores of 250 and above.”

The police say the risk scores were based on eight factors, including arrests for gun crimes, violent crimes or drugs, the number of times the person had been assaulted or shot, age at the time of the last arrest, gang membership and a formula that rated whether the person was becoming more actively involved in crime.

But the database doesn’t indicate — and the police won’t say — how much weight is given to each factor in computing the scores, which are produced using an algorithm developed at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Karen Sheley of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

Karen Sheley, director of police practices for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, calls the newly released data “a huge step forward to understand more about the list, but there should be transparency around the algorithm itself” — and how it’s used.

“If the government is going to outsource decision-making to a computer, the public should be able to examine how the decisions are made and whether it’s fair and effective.”

When the police began developing the list several years ago, they said it was inspired by the research of Yale University sociology professor Andrew Papachristos, who has found that violence in Chicago and elsewhere tends to run in social networks.

Andrew Papachristos. | Yale University

“Let’s say you’ve never been shot or been arrested,” Papachristos says. “But if your friends have been shot, you are at a greater risk of being shot.”

But Papachristos, a Chicago native, now distances himself from the way the police are using the Strategic Subject List in Chicago, noting that his work focuses on identifying potential victims, not on predicting the chances someone will shoot another person.

He also questions why the department hasn’t been “transparent” about discussing the algorithm that produces the rankings.

Papachristos says he’s not sure whether the police department uses the kinds of social-networking calculations on which his work is based. “I have no idea if that’s what they’re doing with their model,” he says.

Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th). | Sun-Times files

Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th), a former Chicago cop who’s on leave from the department, says he was surprised to learn some at the top of the list aren’t violent offenders with gun arrests.

“I would certainly say that’s the way it’s been related to me,” says the alderman, who represents much of Austin, the West Side neighborhood where many of those with the highest scores were most recently arrested. “I know the superintendent has said it’s been effective at identifying that small group involved in a lot of the violence. But I don’t know whether it’s been effective or not, since shootings are still up.”

The Sun-Times first requested a copy of the full list last August under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. The police department denied that request and even objected to providing the list with names and other identifying information removed. It said criminals still could use the list to “thwart” the police, even though it was based on public information, such as arrest histories.

In February, Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office issued a finding that the police department was violating the law by withholding the records.

When the department finally released the database, it provided a list from eight months earlier.

The police say they regularly update the list and recently changed the way scores are computed. Gun and drug arrests are now given less weight than they were in the August database, says Jonathan Lewin, the department’s chief of technical services.

And gang membership is no longer considered because it wasn’t very good at predicting involvement in shootings as either gunman or victim, though the police say they aren’t sure why.

Police officials previously have said geography is a consideration in the risk assessment. Lewin now says it’s not — though the database includes the census tract and community of each person’s most recent arrest.

Lewin and other officials also say they don’t rely on the scores alone when deciding which people to keep track of. Hundreds of people are flagged for interventions based on outstanding arrest warrants and “human intelligence” in addition to their scores — so those with the highest scores aren’t always the primary targets, Lewin says.

Guglielmi says the scores are mostly used by police and outreach workers to warn those at risk they could be headed for catastrophe and to offer help finding jobs and counseling.

“It’s not a list of individuals you go and arrest,” he says. “We can’t arrest someone just because you have a 500 score.”

WHO’S ON POLICE WATCH LIST

The Chicago Police Department’s “Strategic Subject List” database ranks people for how likely they’re deemed to be at risk to become involved in gun violence or be a victim. It shows:

• Risk scores ranged from 10 to 500, with most above 250. Just 153 people were given the highest possible score of 500. Another 3,568 were given scores of 400 to 499 — also considered at high risk to shoot someone or become a victim.

• Of those with the maximum score, nearly half — 48 percent — had never been arrested for unlawful use of a weapon, the charge typically leveled for crimes involving an illegally owned gun. Another 30 percent had been arrested once. That means just 22 percent of the top scores went to the sorts of repeat gun offenders that police Supt. Eddie Johnson and Mayor Rahm Emanuel have frequently cited as being behind the city’s rise in violence and shooting deaths.

• Still, 87 percent of those with the top score had been arrested for some kind of violent offense, though the records don’t show the specific charges.

• Of those with the highest score, 63 percent had been shot before, and 72 percent had been victim of an assault or battery.

• On average, those with the highest score had been victims of one shooting and two assaults or batteries. They’d also been arrested three times for violent crimes, once for a gun offense and four times for drugs — all before they turned 20.

• The police say they do not include race or gender in the risk assessment. But the database includes that information and shows the vast majority of people with the highest score — 85 percent — were African-American men.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD CHICAGO POLICE STRATEGIC SUBJECT LIST

• Who gets killed in Chicago — a Watchdogs special report, Aug. 7, 2016

• THE WATCHDOGS: Arrests down 28 percent in Chicago this year, Dec. 25, 2016

J.B. Pritzker, billionaire would-be governor, bought the historic mansion next door to his even bigger home on Chicago’s Gold Coast, let it fall into disrepair — and then argued it was “uninhabitable” to win what so far have been nearly $230,000 in property-tax breaks, records show.

Pritzker, his wife and their two children live in a palatial, three-story home in the Gold Coast with more than 12,500 square feet of living space and a two-story coach house. They bought that for $14.5 million in May 2006 and spent an additional amount fixing it up — between $11 million and $25 million more, records show.

Then, when the smaller mansion — designed in 1894 by the fabled architectural firm of Holabird & Root — went on sale, they bought that, too, paying $3.7 million.

Retired banker Burton Gordon and his wife had lived in the 6,387-square-foot home for more than 40 years before selling it to the venture capitalist who’s now seeking the Democratic nomination for governor.

Pritzker refurbished the outside of the Federal-style home, where the Gordons raised their family. But the inside has fallen into disrepair. The toilets have been disconnected, and the home has “no functioning bathrooms or kitchen,” according to documents Pritzker’s lawyers filed with the office of Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios.

Arguing that the smaller mansion is “vacant and uninhabitable,” those lawyers convinced Berrios to slash its assessed value last year from $6.25 million to just under $1.1 million.

That’s allowed Pritzker to get the nearly $230,000 in property-tax breaks and refunds, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis found.

J.B. Pritzker’s $3.7 million “vacant and uninhabitable” mansion in the Gold Coast. | Rich Hein / Sun-Times

The drastically reduced assessment caused the mansion’s property taxes to plunge 83 percent, leaving Pritzker with a bill for $19,719 last year, the analysis found. That was instead of the $117,087 he otherwise would have had to pay in property taxes, which fund the Chicago Public Schools, the city and other local governments.

The assessor’s ruling also meant that Pritzker was due partial refunds on the taxes that he paid between 2012 and 2014. He got three refund checks last year totaling $132,747 — money that reduced the amount of property taxes that schools and other local governments expected to receive.

Separately, Berrios cut the assessment on the bigger mansion where the Pritzker family lives — from $14.1 million to about $12.1 million, resulting in a 16 percent lower property-tax bill last year — $221,287 rather than $264,221.

The assessor based his decision on an appraisal done by a company hired by the billionaire, who refused to let the appraisers inside the home out of concerns for the security of his family.

And Berrios agreed to keep the lowered assessments on both homes in place again this year. That means Pritzker will save additional taxes this summer, when county officials finish tabulating the current tax bills to determine how much every homeowner and business will pay to fund local governments.

Gallery

Pritzker, who recently put $7 million of his own money into his campaign fund, wouldn’t talk about the two mansions.

Instead, his campaign spokeswoman Galia Slayen responded with a written statement regarding the tax cut on his residence, saying that resulted from a “routine appeal,” available to any homeowner. But she didn’t answer why Cook County should grant Pritzker tax breaks on a mansion he has left “vacant and uninhabitable.”

Pritzker is one of four Cook County homeowners in the running to be the Democratic challenger to face Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner in the November 2018 general election.

Pritzker’s Democratic opponents from Cook County — state Sen. Daniel Biss of Evanston, businessman Christopher Kennedy of Kenilworth and Chicago Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th) — haven’t appealed the assessments Berrios gave their homes, so they haven’t gotten any tax cuts.

Rauner, a venture capitalist like Pritzker, hasn’t filed any appeals with Berrios over his Winnetka mansion. But Berrios did get an appeal from the condominium association for a downtown Chicago high-rise where Rauner owns a unit. But Berrios didn’t change his assessment on Rauner’s condo, so the governor didn’t get a tax break.

Berrios, who is also chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party that’s working to unseat Rauner next year, didn’t know Pritzker owned the Gold Coast mansions when his staff cut the assessments and, as a result, Pritzker’s taxes, according to his spokesman Tom Shaer.

Pritzker’s name isn’t mentioned in the documents the assessor’s office released for the mansions. Both are owned by a limited liability company managed by Thomas Muenster, whose sister is Pritzker’s wife. But the Pritzker campaign acknowledges that the LLC is owned by a trust for Pritzker. Muenster and the law firm Schmidt Salzman & Moran filed the appeals with Berrios.

Berrios agreed to cut the assessment on Pritzker’s 113-year-old home based on sales of nearby homes as well as the appraisal from Renzi & Associates, whose appraisers weren’t allowed inside. Renzi’s 2015 appraisal found the mansion is worth $11 million — about $3.5 million less than the company paid for it nine years earlier.

Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios. | Sun-Times files

“We relied on the provided information to judge the quality of the interior improvements, number and types of rooms, finishes and any special property features,” Renzi noted in the appraisal given to Berrios. “It is an extraordinary assumption that the provided information was accurate and complete enough to validly assess the interior quality and features. The use of this extraordinary assumption could affect the assignment results if it proves to be contrary to the truth.”

Security concerns were the reason the Pritzkers wouldn’t allow the appraisers inside their home, according to his campaign, which says this isn’t unusual and notes that the appraiser was given photographs of the interior, including the basement spa and third-floor playroom. And the photos were included in the appraisal submitted to Berrios.

Both mansions were part of a massive renovation project, whose costs escalated from $11 million to $25 million, according to a lawsuit filed by a contractor who was awarded nearly $1 million in 2013. The Pritzkers had complained the work was shoddy and overpriced. It’s unclear how much work was done at the empty mansion.

In seeking a lower assessment for the vacant mansion, the LLC submitted the appraisal with photos of the disconnected toilets lined up along a wall, as well as an affidavit from Christine Lovely, an employee of Pritzker’s wife, who asserted the mansion was unfit for occupancy.

According to Shaer, plumbing problems, water damage and deferred maintenance led Berrios to lower his assessed value. One of Berrios’ appraisers inspected the home last fall and wrote that it has been “uninhabitable’’ since January 2012 — the finding that led to the lower current and future property-tax bills and partial refunds on taxes already paid.

Berrios originally set the mansion’s value at $6.3 million in 2015. But Pritzker’s lawyers convinced him the home was worth just $2.5 million and that the assessment should be cut to $968,000 because it’s vacant. Berrios lowered his assessment to slightly less than $1.1 million last year and this year.

Shaer says Berrios is continuing the county’s longstanding policy of lowering assessments on vacant homes deemed uninhabitable because that “encourages rehab” by providing homeowners and contractors with tax breaks.

Pritzker’s campaign says he plans to rehab the vacant mansion someday.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has paid some airline employees hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide flight itineraries of suspected drug traffickers, leading to the seizure of millions of dollars and prompting concerns about the constitutionality of the cash grabs.

In Chicago, the once-secret program led the DEA to seize $5,000 from a United Airlines passenger’s luggage during a layover at O’Hare Airport last year, according to a lawsuit the man filed.

Breland Barcel Lee, a convicted drug dealer, turned up on the government’s radar when a confidential source flagged his one-way ticket as suspicious and alerted a DEA task force officer at O’Hare, court records show. Officers then searched his Olympia roller bag and found the cash. Lee says he was carrying the cash because he was planning to move to California.

“It’s Big Brother,” says attorney Brendan Shiller, who represents Breland Barcel Lee.

“It’s Big Brother,” says Lee’s attorney, Brendan Shiller. “Innocent people are being swept up, and their property is being taken.”

According to a lawsuit Lee filed against United Airlines and members of a DEA task force, the agency seized $5.5 million in suspected drug money from 118 travelers at Chicago airports in a single year, 2015. The money is split among the DEA and the police agencies that work on its interdiction task force.

The DEA, responding to Chicago Sun-Times questions, acknowledges it “routinely receives information from a wide variety of sources, which includes transportation service employees.

“Because drug traffickers routinely use parcel services, airlines, trains, buses and other means to move their drugs and drug currency throughout the United States, DEA routinely works with personnel from these agencies to interdict these substances.”

Last year, the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office issued a report raising concerns about the DEA using confidential sources in the airline industry. It looked at the files of 19 DEA “limited-use” sources in the industry.

The federal drug-fighting agency paid those 19 people a total of $1.6 million for information they provided in 381 cases between 2011 and 2015, according to the Justice Department watchdog — an average of more than $84,000 apiece, with one airline source getting a whopping $617,000 over that period. The DEA’s Chicago office was among six of the agency’s offices that were audited.

The information that the paid sources gave the DEA resulted in reported cash seizures of more than $14 million from passengers, according to the inspector general, who questioned whether those lucrative relationships might violate travelers’ constitutional rights.

Limited-use sources are supposed to act without direction from the DEA. But the inspector general found that, rather than getting unsolicited tips from them about individual travelers, some DEA agents ask their sources to provide entire passenger manifests on an almost-daily basis. Some sources were being cited 20 times a day.

That “calls into question whether a source is truly providing information independently or is acting as DEA’s agent, the latter of which could have implications relating to compliance with the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures,” the inspector general wrote.

Lee sued United Airlines and members of the DEA Interdiction Group 24, which seized the cash on April 13, 2016. He says his privacy rights were violated when an unknown United Airlines employee handed over personal information about Lee to the DEA, even though he wasn’t a suspected terrorist or threat to national security.

Breland Barcel Lee, 31, with his son. | Provided photo

Lee, 31, previously had been convicted of drug and weapon charges — with one drug arrest in North Carolina just two months before his money was seized at O’Hare.

The DEA was alerted to him because he bought a one-way ticket from Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina to Los Angeles the day before his flight.

DEA task force officers looked at Lee’s social media accounts and found pictures of him posing with large amounts of cash “consistent with narcotic proceeds,” according to the application for a federal warrant to search his bag. They also did a background check that turned up his convictions.

Officers delayed Lee to question him about the contents of his bag. They said he initially denied having any cash, then opened his bag and showed them a leopard-patterned pouch that he says contained his money. The officers said Lee told him he planned to use the money to move to California and that he denied having more than $5,000 in the bag.

The officers said he wouldn’t voluntarily let them search the bag, so they told him they were taking it to have a drug dog sniff it, gave him a receipt and seized it.

A narcotics dog alerted to the presence of drugs in his black roller bag, a task force officer said. They obtained a search warrant and found $5,000 inside.

Though agents seized his money, Lee wasn’t charged with any crime. He was allowed to continue on his trip — which is common practice in cases in which the government seizes suspected drug proceeds.

Lee didn’t challenge the seizure through the government’s civil forfeiture process. Instead, he filed suit last July against United Airlines and DEA task force members.

“They should have more evidence to stop somebody,” Lee says. “They are hurting more innocent people than people who are doing illegal things.”

Breland Barcel Lee, 31, sued United Airlines and DEA task force members over suspected drug money seized from his luggage in 2016 at O’Hare Airport. | North Carolina arrest photo

Lee says he’s a carpenter and part owner of a tobacco shop in North Carolina. He says he was planning to leave the shop to a partner and move to California to “start a new life.”

He says he still wants to move to California, but the seizure set his plans back.

The DEA’s application for the search warrant for Lee’s luggage says the agency received Lee’s travel itinerary from a paid, confidential source who previously had provided reliable information. The application doesn’t say whether the source worked for United Airlines, but Lee’s attorney says there’s strong evidence pointing to that, including the inspector general’s report.

Lee won a partial victory in December, when the village of Glen Ellyn settled on behalf of a police officer who worked on the DEA task force and participated in the search of Lee’s luggage. Lee got $6,000 in the settlement — reimbursement for the $5,000 in seized cash, plus $1,000 to pay his legal fees.

Lee didn’t sue the DEA itself.

United Airlines is the only remaining defendant in the case. On Monday, a judge threw out the federal claims against United but ruled the case could continue on claims based on state law, including infliction of emotional stress and false imprisonment.

In response to questions from the Sun-Times, United Airlines issued a one-line, written statement saying, “United complies with written requests from law enforcement for information and believes this case has no merit.”

In court papers, the airline’s lawyers say the allegations that “United was somehow acting as an agent of the DEA” are baseless.

The airline, which recently was the subject of a huge public backlash with the release of a video showing a passenger dragged off a United flight at O’Hare, didn’t respond to questions about whether its employees are secretly providing information to the DEA.

The inspector general’s report didn’t cite any airlines by name.

According to that report, the DEA needs better oversight of payments to its sources working in the transportation industry, including airlines — and of how the agency uses those sources.

The Justice Department’s inspector general released a report in September questioning practices involving airline sources tipping off DEA task force members about suspected drug dealers.

The inspector general was troubled that DEA agents didn’t always disclose the use of airline sources in their investigative reports.

Shiller says that lack of transparency is at the heart of Lee’s case. “We’ve been kept in the dark,” he says.

Attorneys for passengers have been told almost nothing about how DEA agents target their clients’ luggage, Shiller says.

He says he reviewed other DEA applications for warrants to search luggage at O’Hare. In one case, a DEA task force officer disclosed that he conducted routine reviews of flight manifests of planes leaving O’Hare. But the officer didn’t say how he got that information, including whether he relied on a confidential source.

The warrant for Lee’s luggage mentioned the use of a confidential source in small print in a footnote.

Testifying last month before the House Judiciary Committee, Acting DEA Administrator Chuck Rosenberg was asked about the inspector general’s concerns about his agency using airline employees as informants. Rosenberg said they’re being more closely monitored now.

“So confidential sources, confidential informants are very important to our work,” Rosenberg testified. “But we have to make sure we’re careful.

“We’re now doing 90-day reviews of every single one of our confidential sources. We’ve put in place an awards review board so we can make sure that confidential sources are paid and treated the same way.”

MORE FROM THE WATCHDOGS:

• Taxpayers paid for weekend resort getaway for Cook County recorder of deeds, staff

• A look inside the watch list Chicago police fought to keep secret, May 14, 2017

• For billionaire gov hopeful J.B. Pritzker, mansion’s disrepair has saved $230K in taxes, May 14, 2017

To perk up morale after voters, roused by calls of waste and redundancy, decided in November to do away with her office in 2020, Karen Yarbrough, Cook County’s elected recorder of deeds, deemed a field trip was in order.

So, at taxpayers’ expense, Yarbrough and 10 top staffers had a weekend retreat last month at a resort in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, with spouses and children.

Yarbrough and company spent two nights at the Grand Geneva Resort & Spa for an “Executive Staff Leadership Retreat” that cost the county $12,303.09, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Yarbrough stayed in a “premier suite” — costing $627.13 for the weekend. Those suites include a fireplace, according to the Grand Geneva.

Her underlings’ digs were less expensive. Altogether, the 12 rooms that the $105,000-a-year elected official booked cost a total of $6,659.49, records show.

It cost $300 — $150 a day — for a conference room.

And Yarbrough brought in an outside speaker, paid $2,500, to talk about the weekend’s theme: “Finding Joy In Leading Despite Difficult Circumstances and Difficult People.”

Several staff members with kids stayed in the resort’s Timber Ridge Lodge — accommodations that came with passes to the Moose Mountain Falls indoor waterpark.

The food-and-beverage tab for the 12 attending the retreat totaled $2,843.60, none of that for alcoholic beverages.

Cook County Recorder of Deeds Karen Yarbrough. | Cook County Recorder photo

Meals for kids and spouses totaled $2,688.28, but Yarbrough says she paid that herself — and expects to be paid back. “I love them, but they got to give me my money,” she says.

Asked whether the getaway was a good use of taxpayers’ money, Yarbrough says, “Oh, absolutely.”

She calls it a “small, strategic investment” to improving the efficiency of her office, whose duties — keeping track of property ownership and liens — are to be absorbed by the county clerk’s office.

Why go to an out-of-town resort rather than find a conference room in Cook County?

“I decided that we would be away,” says Yarbrough, whose agency has a budget of about $12 million and employs about 134 people. “I wanted to have some extended time to talk to staff and to get their inputs without telephone calls and, you know, all of those things. I wanted them to be focused.”

Besides, she says, “There’s been a lot of low morale because of the consolidation of the office.”

The taxpayer-funded getaway came to light when a Sun-Times reporter happened to walk past the conference room where the retreat was being held.

The conference room at a Lake Geneva resort where the retreat was held. | Mitch Dudek / Sun-Times

The itinerary called the Grand Geneva one of a handful of “AAA four-diamond resorts in Wisconsin.” Amenities include a golf course, spa and horseback riding.

“That’s not a luxury resort,” says Yarbrough, who was elected unopposed to a second term in November and is vice chair of the Democratic Party of Illinois headed by House Speaker Michael Madigan. “It’s a nice resort. I mean, there’s not a lot out there … It was like being in class for a couple of days.”

Why did she take a suite? “My staff person made my reservations, so I didn’t know what room I had until I got there,” she says.

Yarbrough says having spouses and kids there is “going to be the same price” for rooms, though the resort’s charges depend in part on the number of beds per room.

Erwin Acox Jr.’s “team-building session” included showing a video titled “Success Through Stillness” featuring hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons. | LinkedIn

The itinerary included “coping with stress” yoga led by a spa staffer and a “team-building session” led by Erwin Acox Jr., Yarbrough’s human resources chief, focusing on meditation.

The outside speaker, Dan Perkins, was described as “an independent consultant specializing in the field of supplier diversity” who’s creating an online museum from his collection of old photos of boxer Joe Louis. He’s also an adviser to civic and business groups in Maywood, Yarbrough’s hometown.

“He probably could have charged more,” Yarbrough says of Perkins’ $2,500 fee. “I think he did an excellent job to help us focus on some things.”

Perkins’ topics included “How to Keep Joy Alive” and “Confronting Joy Killers.”

Yarbrough calls the sessions “very useful” and the weekend “a good investment.”

“It’s been a troubled office, certainly, before I got here,” she says. “Many of the employees . . . got clouted here . . . Consequently, I have to sort all those things out. My executive staff, in my view, they’ve got a lot on their plates. They’re dealing with a lot of people who don’t have the skill set to do any number of things.”

Among those at the retreat was Tim Curry, Yarbrough’s chief of security, formerly police chief in Maywood when Yarbrough’s husband, Henderson Yarbrough, was mayor.

Asked about the retreat, Patrick Blanchard, the Cook County inspector general, says he’s “aware of these issues, and an investigation is underway.”

MORE FROM THE WATCHDOGS:

• For some airline workers, tipping off the DEA pays off big

• A look inside the watch list Chicago police fought to keep secret, May 14, 2017

• For billionaire gov hopeful J.B. Pritzker, mansion’s disrepair has saved $230K in taxes, May 14, 2017

Chicago’s top cop on Friday defended the department’s use of a secret watch list to track people deemed likely to get caught up in violence, saying many of them have “gotten out of that lifestyle.”

But police Supt. Eddie Johnson backed away from previous department statements that the list is used for “enforcement.”

“It’s not a list of target people,” Johnson said after a recruit graduation ceremony. “We don’t use the list for any enforcement actions.”

“It’s just a list that lets us know who would be more prone to gun violence — either by being a victim or a perpetrator. The individuals identified with the algorithm — we simply use it to go provide them and offer other pathways to get out of that lifestyle.”

Johnson said the list is working because some people on it have accepted offers of social services after being approached by police and outreach workers.

“We’ve had quite a few individuals that have taken us up on it, and they’ve gotten out of that lifestyle,” he said.

In the past, the department said the list was used for “enforcement” but didn’t say how.

Last year, Johnson repeatedly said the list contained 1,400 people who were driving the violence in the city and that the department was “targeting” them.

Also last year, the department released a statement saying the list was used to “target these individuals in enforcement activity or offer them an opportunity to lead a life outside of violence.”

After Johnson’s comments Friday, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the list doesn’t give officers a reason to arrest anyone. “There needs to be a violation of the law,” he said.

Instead, the list is used as a tool to figure out where cops should be deployed in certain neighborhoods, Guglielmi said.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported last week that the database includes nearly 400,000 people — a far more extensive list than what the police previously described.

Half of the 153 people with the highest “risk” score had never been arrested for illegal gun possession, and 20 had never been arrested for gun possession or a violent crime.

Hundreds of people near the top of the list had no arrests for violent offenses, guns or drugs. But many of those people were victims of violence themselves.

The department provided the Sun-Times with a copy of the list after a legal battle. It shows the factors used to generate the risk scores, such as the number of times each person was shot and their arrests for violent crimes, gun possession and drug offenses.

But the department has refused to disclose the way those factors were weighted to calculate the risk scores or the names of those on the list.

Red-light cameras brought in nearly $67 million last year for 86 Chicago suburbs and the companies that operate the devices, an investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times and ABC7 Chicago’s I-Team has found.

Fines collected from drivers accused of running red lights in the suburbs now far surpass the amount of money reaped by the city of Chicago’s extensive and unpopular network, the Sun-Times and ABC7 found.

Between the start of 2014 and the end of last year, cameras in the suburbs brought in a total of nearly $170 million, according to records obtained from suburban governments throughout the area.

And the Sun-Times/ABC7 analysis of those documents shows suburban red-light revenues are rising sharply every year, as more and more local governments install cameras at intersections. The total collected from cameras in the suburbs increased almost 50 percent between 2014 and 2016.

Of the 10 suburbs whose cameras rang up the highest revenue totals during the past three years, nine have contracts with SafeSpeed LLC, a Chicago company that’s a growing force in the red-light enforcement industry. From its downtown offices, SafeSpeed has built a roster of more than 20 suburban clients. Though the competing RedSpeed has deals in far more suburbs than any company, SafeSpeed operates what are by far the most lucrative cameras, the Sun-Times and ABC7 found.

In an unprecedented study of cameras across the Chicago area, reporters sent Freedom of Information Act requests to government officials in about 100 towns that have received permits for cameras from the Illinois Department of Transportation. A few communities never installed cameras, while some officials said they once had them but removed them.

But nearly 90 suburbs now have red-light cameras churning out more than 770,000 tickets a year.

No communities have benefitted financially from the cameras more than Berwyn, Melrose Park and Hillside, records show. Those suburbs collected more than $8 million each from red-light camera violators in the three years ending Dec. 31.

Berwyn and Melrose Park have contracts with both SafeSpeed and RedSpeed. But in both suburbs, SafeSpeed’s cameras account for the vast majority of the fines collected.

Other SafeSpeed clients whose cameras are bringing in large amounts include North Riverside, Lakemoor, Hillside, Country Club Hills and Skokie. These communities reported getting more than $2 million each from red-light camera tickets last year, records show.

Matteson collected more than $4 million in the first 13 months since SafeSpeed began operating five cameras at two intersections in February 2016, village records show.

Chris Lai, SafeSpeed’s chief operating officer, declined to disclose how much the company makes. The privately held company is owned by him and three other investors.

A set of red-light cameras at the intersection of Mannheim and Roosevelt Roads in Hillside. | Tim Boyle/For Sun-Times Media

Under its deals with Chicago suburbs, the company gets nearly 40 percent of the money from tickets issued by its cameras. Records show suburbs that use SafeSpeed took in a total of more than $70 million from its red-light cameras over the past three years.

Lai says the company has been successful in luring suburbs away from its competitors because SafeSpeed is “better” and “more effective” at catching violators. In some cases, as in Skokie, the company gave municipalities the chance to try out its cameras, and officials saw they were issuing 25 percent to 30 percent more tickets than their previous red-light camera vendors, according to Lai.

Because SafeSpeed is local, its crews can quickly replace any cameras that aren’t functioning properly, maximizing revenues, he says.

SafeSpeed CEO and co-founder Nikki Zollar is a former head of the Chicago election board and was director of the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation under former Gov. Jim Edgar. She also was a trustee of Chicago State University until stepping down last month.

Zollar formed SafeSpeed with Lai and two others, Omar Maani and Khaled Maani, in 2007, after she was involved in a crash in which another driver ran a red light and T-boned her car, injuring her mother-in-law, Lai says.

Chris Lai, chief operating officer of SafeSpeed | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

He says SafeSpeed has distinguished itself with its “dedication to making sure we capture every violation.”

“We’ve very proud of what we do,” Lai says.

But some drivers who showed up to contest tickets issued by the company’s cameras say they did come to a complete stop — and, in many cases, the video evidence backs them up.

At a hearing this month in Melrose Park, Rick Koch, a 20-year-old from Villa Park, showed up with his grandmother, whose car he was driving when a camera photographed him making a right turn at North and 25th avenues. That corner generates huge revenues for Melrose Park and SafeSpeed.

“Originally, I was going to pay it, get it out of my way,” Koch says.

Instead, he took time off work to fight the ticket and found the video proved he stopped before turning. Koch slumped his shoulders in relief when the adjudicator for the village dismissed the case, saying he may have been unjustly cited because he stopped the car well short of the white line in the right-turn lane.

There were other cases with similar findings in evidence at a recent hearing in Berwyn. Bryant Anderson’s car was recorded making a right from Cermak Avenue onto northbound Harlem Avenue just after 2:45 p.m. Feb. 11. A little over a month later, Anderson got a citation from Berwyn, which said SafeSpeed’s camera caught him breaking the law.

Rather than pay the $100 fine by mail, he challenged the ticket, showing up for a 3 p.m. hearing at the Berwyn police department on April 18. The video showed his car clearly stopped before turning onto Harlem.

“I shouldn’t have had to come here to contest this ticket because, once your wheels come to a complete stop, you are stopped,” Anderson said after the hearing.

That same afternoon in Berwyn, Sejal Shah of Oak Brook also got his ticket tossed after being accused of running a red with his Tesla at the same intersection. Again, the video vindicated Shah, a 44-year-old doctor who had to leave work at MacNeal Hospital early to attend the hearing at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday.

“It should have been dismissed to begin with because I did make the stop before moving forward,” Shah says.

In Berwyn, as in other suburbs, officials say a police officer reviews the video sent by the red-light camera vendor before tickets are sent out.

Sejal Shah of Oak Brook successfully appealed a red-light ticket he got in Berwyn. | ABC7

Berwyn’s attorney, Anthony Bertuca, is the adjudicator in the town’s red-light camera court. He starts every session by calmly lecturing all of the defendants, then reviews the evidence on a screen that the defendants also are invited to look at.

He advises everyone to make a long stop on red if they want to make sure to avoid having to come to court again or pay another fine.

“If you counted ‘one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi,’ you wouldn’t be here,” Bertuca tells those at the hearing. “That’s not the law. But, if you did that, you wouldn’t be here today.”

Mark Wallace, a radio-show host who’s executive director of Citizens to Abolish Red Light Cameras, notes that the law only requires a stop at a red light — not that drivers must stop for an extended time, as Bertuca advises. Wallace says he thinks many people pay to avoid the hassle of fighting the tickets, even when they aren’t at fault.

The Sun-Times and ABC7 found that fewer than 5 percent of those cited based on the cameras fight the tickets.

RED-LIGHT REVENUES: Click here to see how much money each suburb makes off red-light cameras

“If you look at those suburbs, as opposed to the city of Chicago, the suburbs actually have a right-turn lane at the light,” Wallace says. “Because the intersections, in many respects, are badly designed, the person has to pull out a little further to be able to make a judgment about whether or not it’s safe to turn. But by the time they’ve done that, they’ve surpassed what the villages call the ‘traffic line.’ ”

About 95 percent of suburbanites getting tickets are accused of making illegal right turns against a red light, Wallace estimates. Bertuca, the Berwyn attorney, agrees that about 95 percent of the cases he sees in traffic court involve drivers turning right.

Lai, the SafeSpeed co-owner, says mistakes by his company, such as those cited in the dismissed cases in Berwyn and Melrose Park, are “very rare.”

“The number who are ticketed who came to a complete stop is actually very, very small,” Lai says.

Although a federal study in 2010 found that right turns were factors in just 1.2 percent of crashes, red-light camera operators and municipal officials say the cameras are about safety first, not money.

“There’s no doubt that these red-light cameras do raise revenue,” Bertuca says. “But the main thing [officials] are concerns about is safety.”

Berwyn city attorney Anthony Bertuca. | ABC7

Jen Donahoo — who successfully contested a ticket she got from a SafeSpeed camera in Melrose Park — doesn’t buy that argument.

“I definitely think it’s for them to get money,” says Donahoo, 33, who works in digital marketing. “They’re hoping people won’t contest and will just pay the ticket.”

Contributing: Jason Knowles, Ann Pistone and Madeline J. Scott of ABC7 Chicago. To read the ABC7 report, click here.

While visiting Universal Studios with his wife and kids, Dewayne Smalarz, a veteran Chicago cop, walked out of a souvenir shop with a “SpongeBob SquarePants” book bag and other items without paying, records show.

Another Chicago police officer, Alicia Roman, was charged with shooting up her estranged husband’s bungalow while off-duty as he dove for cover.

After hanging out at a popular southwest suburban bar for hours while off work, police records show, rookie Chicago cop Steven Brandenburger drove off in an idling sport-utility vehicle that didn’t belong to him to a late-night burrito stand.

All were fired. But that didn’t keep them from continuing their law enforcement careers elsewhere. Today, Smalarz is a cop in Summit. Roman is an officer with Loyola University’s campus safety department. Brandenburger is a police officer in Homewood. They are among 15 sworn officers a Chicago Sun-Times investigation found left the Chicago department under a cloud but ended up finding other police jobs, mostly in the suburbs.

In most cases, their new employers knew they were hiring cops who’d either resigned from the Chicago Police Department or been fired over allegations they’d broken the law or violated a departmental regulation, including the residency rule requiring Chicago government employees to live in the city.

In one case, the Cook County Forest Preserve District’s police apparently didn’t know when they hired Jerome Ficaro in 2013 that he had tested positive for cocaine while on-duty as a Chicago cop in 2002, according to records and interviews. Ficaro, now 44, was facing firing when he resigned in 2004 — something John Roberts, the forest preserves police chief, says he didn’t know.

Ficaro was a forest preserves cop from 2013 to 2015, then came back earlier this year, making about $49,000.

The Cook County Sheriff’s Merit Board does pre-employment background checks, and Roberts says of Ficaro’s troubles: “I don’t think they would have missed that.”

Days after telling that to a Sun-Times reporter, Roberts’ agency reported Ficaro had been fired but wouldn’t say why.

Jerome Ficaro when he worked as a cop in Matteson. | Matteson Police Department

Ficaro worked briefly as a Matteson cop, from 2015 until earlier this year. The police chief in the south suburb also says he didn’t know Ficaro previously worked in Chicago or that he’d left after a positive drug test.

“If he lied . . . he should not be a police officer,” Matteson Chief Michael Jones says.

Ficaro’s prior employment somehow wasn’t turned up even though he underwent a background check there that included a polygraph.

In an email prior to his termination this month from the forest preserve district, Ficaro says, “The incident with CPD was an unfortunate situation for me with extreme consequences to my life. I was young, stupid and careless.”

The Chicago Police Department helps other police agencies “with any and all information that they may request” during background investigations, a spokesman says. But one suburban chief says getting meaningful information on ex-Chicago cops can be “frustrating.” And he says pre-employment vetting is “only as good as the information.”

A state law that took effect in 2016 should make it easier for departments to find whether cops had problems at past jobs. Officers with a “willful violation” of a policy who’ve been fired as a result or resigned while under investigation for certain crimes now must be reported to the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board, the state agency that regulates police. There are 27 officers currently in that database, according to the training board’s Cora Beem, who says, “It’s a great tool, but agencies have to avail themselves of it.”

Most of the former Chicago cops who left under a cloud for other law enforcement jobs haven’t had serious problems with their new departments, the Sun-Times found.

But Ficaro was issued a written reprimand while still on probationary status with the forest preserves for not reporting a New Year’s Eve incident in which someone brought booze to his police station, and it was “consumed by officers,” records show.

Dewayne Smalarz | Facebook

Smalarz was accused of leaving his squad-car window down during a storm, soaking the car and a $2,500 laptop inside it, records show.

While a Chicago cop, Smalarz faced 19 formal complaints.

Smalarz, now 50, and his family were at Universal Studios on April 20, 2006, when a “loss-prevention agent” spotted him “pushing a stroller” and putting “store items on top of the stroller” including the “SpongeBob” book bag and two “Fear Factor” shirts, records show.

After Orlando police arrested him for theft, Smalarz avoided prosecution by entering a pretrial diversion program, in which he did community service and took an impulse-control class, records show.

Questioned by Chicago internal affairs investigators, he portrayed the incident as a misunderstanding. Regardless, at the urging of then-police Supt. Jody Weis, the Chicago Police Board fired Smalarz in 2009.

Months later, he was hired as a part-time cop in Summit while suing the city of Chicago, unsuccessfully, to get his job back.

Now full-time with Summit and paid over $68,000 a year, Smalarz didn’t return calls seeking comment.

Nor did Roman, 36. The daughter of a Chicago cop, Roman was a probationary officer in the city when she got into an argument March 1, 2006, with her estranged husband and fired “several shots” into the walls of his bungalow in Scottsdale on the city’s Southwest Side, according to police records. He filed a complaint more than a month later, saying that, after opening fire, Roman told him, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to hurt you, I just wanted to scare you, don’t tell anyone because . . . I’ll get fired.”

Roman later denied shooting her gun, but five bullets were recovered from the walls, and investigators determined they came from her pistol, records show.

She lost her job and was arrested for aggravated assault and criminal damage to property, but no court records could be found to show the disposition of the case.

Two years later, Roman joined Loyola University’s police department.

“She was hired before I got here,” Loyola Police Chief Tom Murray says. “She’s a good employee. That’s all I can tell you.”

Brandenburger, 34, was fired as a Chicago cop in 2007 after an incident that started at a bar and ended outside a burrito joint. Today, he makes nearly $88,000 as an officer in Homewood, where his bosses consider him “an exemplary employee.”

A rookie Chicago officer a decade ago, Brandenburger was outside the sprawling Merrionette Park bar 115 Bourbon Street when he hopped into an idling Ford Explorer that belonged to a band playing there and took off, records show.

Police spotted the SUV and Brandenburger, who was off-duty, soon after by a nearby burrito place and put him in handcuffs and questioned him, according to Chicago police records.

Brandenburger initially said “he did not take the stolen vehicle and denied driving the stolen vehicle,” the records show.

Steven Brandenburger, left, with his father, Clyde Brandenburger, also a former Chicago cop, in 2007. | Sun-Times files

Later, he told Chicago internal affairs investigators he had not said that and indeed had taken the SUV but with permission.

“Steven Brandenburger is a CPD member whose parents are former CPD members and he could not locate or provide further information about his potential alibi,” according to Chicago police records.

While Brandenburger was detained, he asked that his father “be present.” He showed up and spoke with the SUV’s owner, who decided not to press charges and “let the father handle it,” according to Merrionette Park records.

Brandenburger wouldn’t comment.

Homewood officials were aware of his problems when they hired him full-time in 2010, according to Denise McGrath, the suburb’s deputy police chief. Among his references for the Homewood job were two police officials in Chicago: a captain and a police lieutenant, Glenn Evans, who was later charged with sticking a gun in a suspect’s mouth, though acquitted.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says that, in general, the department can’t “prevent an individual from providing a personal reference on behalf of a colleague.”

Police departments each have their own hiring rules. Under Illinois law, they can’t employ someone who’s been convicted of a felony or certain misdemeanors, including theft.

Among the other cases the Sun-Times found:

• David Staszak was a Chicago cop in June 2006 when — not even six weeks after joining the department and still on probation — he was charged with DUI after his car hit a utility pole in Joliet and flipped while he was off-duty.

But Staszak didn’t tell his bosses, who finally, several months later, figured things out and fired him, records show.

He got hired as a part-time officer in Palos Park.

“He was very forthcoming with us,” says Joe Miller, the police chief there. “He obviously made an egregious mistake,” but “he worked out well for us. . . . We never had an issue or problem.”

In the past, Miller says, any mark could keep someone from being a cop. But now he says there’s a greater willingness to “look at the totality of what happened,” so “an incredibly stupid decision” made while younger doesn’t automatically rule out people with otherwise-good backgrounds.

David Staszak, now an Orland Park police officer. | Orland Park police department

Staszak, 35, went on to be a K-9 officer in Orland Park, where he now makes more than $90,000 a year. Chief Tim McCarthy says he’s a good cop, and, “in most cases, people deserve a second chance.”

Staszak says, “They decided to hire me and give me a shot . . . I was told, ‘This is your chance; don’t screw it up.’ ”

• Sandy Garrett had been at the Chicago Police Academy for only a few weeks in 2004 when she began a consensual sexual relationship with an instructor, Officer Bert Major, police investigators found. She told officials he sexually assaulted her, but she was fired, in part, because investigators concluded she lied about her relationship with Major and that there had been “fraternization,” according to police records.

“I don’t think it was fair,” says Garrett, now 44 and, since 2006, a Dolton police officer making more than $60,000 a year.

Major, a 26-year veteran cop who’s been the subject of 45 disciplinary cases, got a 20-day suspension, records show. Now assigned to the mass-transit unit and making more than $90,000 a year, he declined to comment.

Robert O’Neill. | Cook County Sheriff’s Office

• Sgt. Robert O’Neill took a leave of absence from the Chicago Police Department to run the fugitive warrant unit for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart in 2012, months after City Hall paid $700,000 to settle a lawsuit accusing Chicago cops of being part of a scheme to extort money and steal drugs from drug dealers. O’Neill was among the defendants because he supervised accused officers.

O’Neill, 47, who’d been the subject of 55 disciplinary complaints, got a five-day suspension for allowing his officers to conduct unsupervised searches in which they failed to inventory all seized items.

“To my knowledge, we were not aware of disciplinary issues with him at the time he was hired,” says Cara Smith, Dart’s policy chief. “We believed his background and experience would be helpful as we tried to completely reform our warrants division.”

O’Neill, paid more than $106,000 last year, has made nine campaign contributions to Dart totaling nearly $4,000 since 2010, including $900 the year he went on Dart’s payroll, records show.

A top aide to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says “we were not aware of disciplinary issues” involving the sheriff’s former neighbor Robert O’Neill “at the time he was hired.” | Sun-Times files

He was once a neighbor of Dart in Mount Greenwood. He and his wife moved to a $932,000 home in Orland Park while on leave from his Chicago job, records show. After the Sun-Times first asked about O’Neill, then-Interim Supt. John Escalante refused to extend his leave of absence last fall, and O’Neill “retired.”

O’Neill didn’t return calls.

Duane Perry. | Metra

• Some ex-Chicago cops now at other departments were forced to leave because they were found living outside Chicago’s city limits.

Duane Perry, 44, resigned in 2013 before being fired for living in the suburbs. He was hired in 2015 as a cop with Metra — the transit agency says it was aware of the residency issue — and was paid more than $72,000 last year.

In a reversal of the typical pattern of other departments hiring Chicago cops who left their jobs under a cloud, the Sun-Times found the Chicago police hired an officer who was fired by a suburban department — a cop Chicago officials have since tried to fire.

John Loconsole, 60, was a Skokie cop for nine years before being fired in 1989 for infractions including allegations he harassed an ex-girlfriend who was a dispatcher, court records show. Loconsole sued, and a judge ordered Skokie to rehire him. It appealed, lost and offered him his job back — but in the interim he was hired in Chicago in 1994 and turned Skokie down.

Chicago officials knew about Loconsole’s troubles, according to city records, which say “there was nothing within our background standards that would disqualify” him from being hired.

Loconsole says a department official “read through everything” related to his firing in Skokie and concluded “it’s all bull—-.”

But Loconsole has had a rocky tenure in Chicago, where his salary has risen to more than $90,000. He’s been the subject of more than 35 misconduct investigations and half a dozen disciplinary actions, city records show.

Then-Supt. Garry McCarthy tried to fire Loconsole twice in 2011 — once over an accusation of filing a false report and once for making threatening comments. Escalante recommended firing Loconsole last year for operating a snowplow business while on medical leave for a back injury.

The Chicago Police Board — an appointed panel that adjudicates serious misconduct cases against Chicago cops — instead suspended Loconsole 30 days over the false report, dismissed the threat case and gave him an 18-month suspension without pay last September for running the snowplow business on medical leave.

Getty Images file photo

Loconsole says he’s a good cop, and “It’s not a fair world.”

Soon after his suspension ends, he says, “I plan to retire.”

Contributing: Jacqueline Campbell

MORE FROM THE WATCHDOGS:

• Red-light cameras reap suburbs millions: a Sun-Times / ABC7 special report, May 23, 2017

• Taxpayers paid for weekend resort getaway for recorder of deeds, staff, May 21, 2017

• For some airline workers, tipping off the DEA pays off big, May 21, 2017

• A look inside the watch list Chicago police fought to keep secret, May 14, 2017

• For billionaire gov hopeful J.B. Pritzker, mansion’s disrepair has saved $230K in taxes, May 14, 2017

On a hot summer night in 2015, Chicago Police Sgt. Donald Markham’s wife found him dead in their bed with a bullet wound to his head hours after they’d argued at a bar and later at their home, according to police reports.

But before a Cook County medical examiner’s investigator could view the scene — standard procedure — police removed the body of the 51-year-old narcotics cop from the home in the upscale Old Norwood Park neighborhood on the city’s Far Northwest Side, records show.

That’s among several details that have emerged as the FBI and the city of Chicago’s inspector general have launched investigations into how the Chicago Police Department handled the case, which the police determined was a suicide. Investigators want to know whether someone killed Markham and the police mishandled the investigation or were involved in a cover-up, according to sources and records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Now, the case has taken a shocking turn. Markham’s widow, Dina Whitson Markham, 47, also a veteran Chicago cop, was found dead Sunday in the bathtub of the house where her husband died nearly two years earlier. Authorities say she appears to have taken her own life, having taken pills, though toxicology test results haven’t been completed, and the police investigation is ongoing.

Days earlier, Dina Markham had told the Sun-Times she didn’t know her husband’s death was under renewed investigation.

The FBI and inspector general’s investigations into how the police handled Donald Markham’s death have been ongoing for several months, according to records and sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. It’s unclear what sparked the investigations. Neither agency would comment.

Investigators have sought records about his death from the medical examiner’s office, according to a Feb. 21 subpoena obtained by the newspaper.

The assistant medical examiner who conducted the autopsy on Donald Markham “is aware the case is being investigated but has no details about the nature of the investigation,” a Cook County spokeswoman said.

Suspicious deaths reported to the police, including possible suicides, are supposed to be “immediately” reported to the medical examiner, under county ordinance. “Upon receipt of a report,” the medical examiner “shall go to the location of the body and take charge of same, and shall begin his/her investigation with an examination of the scene.”

With suspected suicides or homicides, the bodies are not supposed to be “handled, disturbed . . . or removed from the place of death by any person except with the permission of the medical examiner” except under limited instances.

Records from the city Office of Emergency Management and Communications show the medical examiner’s office was notified within an hour, by 3:56 a.m. But the medical examiner’s office says it wasn’t notified until about an hour and a half later, at 5:27 a.m.

Besides allowing Donald Markham’s body to be removed, along with pillows and sheets, before a medical examiner’s investigator could examine the scene, sources say investigators’ other concerns include the failure to test Dina Markham for gunshot residue to determine whether she fired a weapon during the early-morning hours of Sept. 2, 2015, when her husband died.

The Chicago Police Department gives “primary detectives” discretion to request a gunshot residue test — which, though not foolproof, can indicate whether someone fired a weapon or didn’t.

Donald Markham’s .380-caliber, semi-automatic Glock handgun was in his right hand, the police reports say. The Illinois State Police crime lab found that “Donald Markham discharged a firearm, contacted a [gunshot residue]-related item, or had both hands in the environment of a discharged firearm.” Toxicology reports found his blood-alcohol level was well above the .08 percent standard for drunk driving.

There’s no indication in police records that officers canvassed the Markhams’ neighbors to see if anyone heard the gunshot. There’s also no indication police interviewed patrons and workers at an Edison Park bar where the police say the Markhams argued earlier that night.

Statements from the Markhams’ children — three who were home at the time, according to police — about the night their father died were blacked out in the police reports the Sun-Times obtained.

Donald Markham, who lost the 2007 election for 41st Ward alderman, did not leave a suicide note and hadn’t previously tried to kill himself or threatened to do so, according to the medical examiner’s report.

Former police Lt. Denis P. Walsh. | Sun-Times files

The investigation of his death was supervised by Area North Lt. Denis P. Walsh. Three months later, in December 2015, then-Interim Supt. John Escalante took steps to fire Walsh over his role in the botched investigation into the killing of David Koschman, who died after he was punched by a nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Walsh, who had admitted keeping missing Koschman files at his home, had been accused of “making a false report,” “inattention to duty” and “incompetency or inefficiency” in the Koschman case. Walsh resigned in February 2016, ending the effort to fire him.

Walsh declined to comment.

The Markhams had been quarreling the night he died, according to police reports prepared by Detective Brian Spain and approved by Walsh. Donald Markham was upset that his wife had kept him out late drinking at the Firewater Saloon in Edison Park when he had to report for duty in the morning, a Wednesday, the reports say.

They left the bar and continued arguing at home, according to the records. The police reports say Dina Markham was locked out of the house, so she knocked on a window that one of their sons opened, letting her in. She went to the master bedroom looking for her keys, the reports say.

“The master bedroom was illuminated with ambient lighting and she observed Donald laying on the bed, on his side with his back towards her,” a police report says. “Dina continued looking for her key unsuccessfully. Dina felt the outside of Donald’s pockets, again looking for her keys and felt moisture on her hands. Dina realized the moisture was blood and called 911 for assistance.

“Upon further observations of Donald, it appeared that he had shot himself in the head.”

There is no indication in the police reports that Dina Markham or the kids heard the gunshot. That type of weapon is known to be relatively loud when fired under normal circumstances.

It’s unclear whether Donald Markham had his wife’s keys. But he did have her cell phone, according to police reports that say it was inside a pocket of her husband’s cargo shorts and was later retrieved from the Cook County morgue by Spain, who returned it to the widow.

At the time of her husband’s death, Dina Markham was assigned to the Internal Affairs Division. After the FBI began investigating, she was transferred to Area North, working for Cmdr. Kevin Duffin.

As the Area North commander, Duffin oversaw Walsh and the detectives who worked on Donald Markham’s case.

Duffin accessed those case files last June, about nine months after the case was closed and did so again in November and February, when he printed out the documents, records show. Ten days after Duffin accessed the records in February, Spain filed three “general progress reports” on Donald Markham’s death — 15 months after the case was closed.

Earlier this year, Dina Markham was reassigned to another unit, a police spokesman said.

Duffin would not speak with reporters. Spain said he’d have to check with a supervisor, then didn’t return calls.

While Duffin’s detectives investigated Donald Markham’s death, they aren’t investigating Dina Markham’s death. Her case has been assigned to detectives from Area South because Dina Markham once worked in Area North, according to police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi — “a precautionary measure to avoid any possible conflicts of interest.”

On May 22, Sun-Times reporters went to Dina Markham’s house and asked whether she was aware the FBI and inspector general were looking into her husband’s death. She said she wasn’t aware.

“I’d like to talk to you, but I’m not sure it’s in my best interest,” she said. “Give me a day to process this.”

The reporters returned on May 24, and she said she still needed to talk with “some people.”

“I have to protect myself,” she said. “I have to protect my children. That’s what this is all about.”

The following day, Friday, Dina Markham sent an email saying, “In respect for the way you approached me, a friend of a friend will be in contact with you. I am unsure who that will be at this time, but he assured me he will follow through. My family and I have been through very difficult times, and it has been awful especially for my children. Should you proceed in writing a news story, I would appreciate a ‘heads-up’ to prepare them.”

Dina and Donald Markham. | Facebook

Donald and Dina Markham got married in 1995. It was his second marriage. Their five children are between 13 and 27 years old.

Donald Markham, who had talked of retiring and had just sent a daughter to college shortly before his death, was a charming, fun-loving and hard-working guy, according to friends and family. He worked as a carpenter before becoming a cop and still worked carpentry side jobs.

Dina Markham was the daughter of a retired Chicago firefighter who owned a few neighborhood bars and also owned a video gambling business, according to public records. She had a small stake in the company, which supplies video poker machines to two suburban bars.

On Wednesday evening — after this story was published online — a Markham family attorney released a statement saying “our primary focus at this time is on Don and Dina’s five children” and asking that “everyone” respect the family’s need for privacy.

“While this article includes some information that may be accurate, there are many things presented that are inaccurate or incomplete,” the statement said. “Further, the family strongly refutes any suggestion, implication or allegation that Dina was responsible for Don’s death.

“With respect to any investigation that may have been pending, Dina had not been in contact with anyone conducting such investigation and only had heard rumors and third-hand accounts. We were trying to get information on this at the time of Dina’s death. Dina was prepared to address any question with the strength and resolve she is known for. As reflected in the email she sent to you, her sole focus was as it always has been — on the well being of her kids.”

The couple lived on a block with numerous other government workers, including a Cook County judge. The Markhams were known for throwing parties at their home, with its sprawling yard and in-ground pool.

tnovak@suntimes.com

rherguth@suntimes.com

The man stepped up to the bank counter in Calumet City and handed teller Cynthia Salazar an envelope with a message written on it: “Give me $10,000.”

Then, he made the same demand out loud but with the added threat to comply, or, “I’ll kill everyone you know.”

After she handed over the money she had, he left. Salazar was so shaken it was months before she returned to work at the TCF bank branch in the south suburb.

But she cooperated with the police and the FBI, telling them what she could remember in hopes of helping them catch the robber.

Later, Salazar asked the Calumet City police department for a little help herself.

A 26-year-old mother of two, Salazar moved here from Mexico when she was 8. She’s been allowed to stay in the United States until now under the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. But Salazar is not a legal permanent U.S. resident.

She hoped to change that by applying for a permanent visa under a program for undocumented immigrants who are crime victims — what’s called a “U visa.” But she can’t do that unless a law enforcement agency certifies that she has cooperated with their investigation.

And, even after a year, the Calumet City police have refused to fill out the paperwork certifying that Salazar cooperated with them, though the department’s own reports show she did.

Assistant Police Chief Thomas Di Fiori told Salazar’s immigration lawyer his department won’t help a crime victim apply for a U visa unless the victim’s assistance results in an arrest and prosecution.

“Unfortunately, anyone can say they were willing” to help, Di Fiori wrote in an email in May denying Salazar’s request. “I am sorry, but if we did that, we’d have to sign them all.”

Salazar’s experience with the police in the south suburb isn’t unusual, according to records and interviews with immigration rights advocates. They say similar requests are routinely denied even though the law allows the police to help undocumented immigrants in such cases.

In the 12 months that ended Aug. 31, more than 3,100 applications were filed for U visas in Illinois — the third-most in the United States, behind only California and Texas, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Government figures show 755 of those visas were granted to applicants from Illinois, and 81 were denied by federal authorities. That doesn’t include those, like Salazar, who can’t apply because local law enforcement agencies won’t provide the paperwork needed for their visa applications.

The idea behind the U visa program was to get undocumented immigrants to be more willing to come forward to help put criminals behind bars. Many immigrants without legal status avoid talking to authorities because they’re afraid they’ll be deported.

“Law enforcement is getting assistance from community members who might not otherwise come forward,” says Trisha Teofilo Olave, a lawyer who focuses on U visa cases for the National Immigrant Justice Center in downtown Chicago.

But immigrant rights activists say officials in the Chicago area, particularly in suburban communities, are often reluctant to help the crime victims who have assisted them.

Sometimes, they say, the police won’t even respond to people seeking certification of their cooperation in an investigation.

A proposal in Springfield would have let authorities deny certification requests only if they were unable to determine a visa-seeker was victimized — regardless of whether the crime was solved. But that part of a larger measure ended up being dropped.

There was no doubt Salazar was a robbery victim on June 17, 2016. A bank security camera captured an image of the robber who threatened her: a tall, well-built man wearing a floppy, black hat and large sunglasses that covered much of his face.

The bank was busy, and the other three tellers apparently didn’t notice what was going on. One customer who witnessed the robbery didn’t say anything until later.

Salazar says she spoke to the robber quietly. “I just told him, ‘Don’t do this — I have two daughters,’ ” she says.

She didn’t have ready access to $10,000. “I just pulled out $1,000 in 50s,” she says. “I guess he thought it was a lot, so he took it.”

Before leaving, the robber told Salazar to go into a break room and stay there for five minutes. As soon as she got there, she called 911.

In their report, the Calumet City police wrote that Salazar provided a description of the robber and told them what happened. FBI agents arrived to take over the investigation.

Salazar has continued to cooperate, meeting again with an FBI agent in January. An FBI spokesman says no one has been arrested, and the case remains open.

Rosalba Pina, Cynthia Salazar’s immigration lawyer, argued unsuccessfully that the police can certify that Salazar aided their investigation even without an arrest or conviction. | Maria Cardona / Sun-Times files

In January, Salazar’s lawyer, Rosalba Pina, emailed the Calumet City police department, asking them to certify she cooperated. Di Fiori, the assistant chief, said no.

“This is an FBI matter, as it is a bank robbery,” he wrote Pina. “Our case is closed. We have not identified any suspects to prosecute, therefore your client is not needed by us to aid in the prosecution of an offender.”

Nothing in the federal U visa law says a conviction or even an arrest is required for police to certify the cooperation of an undocumented immigrant — a point Pina made in a follow-up email.

Di Fiori responded: “We do not sign off on a U visa simply because they were a victim and reported a crime. We only sign off if they actually aid in prosecution, etc.”

In an interview, Di Fiori says the Calumet City Police Department doesn’t have a written policy on U visa certification requests.

“What if some people were to make up the fact that they were a victim of a crime so they can get the U visa?” says Tom Di Fiori, assistant Calumet City police chief, adding, “I’m not saying that happened here.” | Calumet City police

“We’re not obligated to sign off on anything — it’s our discretion,” he says. “If it’s an old case, or if someone’s not actively involved in the prosecution of the case, we don’t sign off on them. It’s that simple.”

Di Fiori won’t comment specifically on the requests from Salazar.

But he points to a potential problem with U visa requests: “What if some people were to make up the fact that they were a victim of a crime so they can get the U visa? I’m not saying that happened here.”

Salazar says the rejection “makes no sense to me.” She and her lawyer say they think Calumet City authorities don’t want to assist Latino immigrants as much as they could.

Salazar was able to get her job at the bank because she applied for and received a temporary reprieve under DACA, the program begun by President Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has indicated that DACA participants won’t face deportation.

But a U visa can give an immigrant permanent residency status and an eventual path to citizenship — which DACA cannot.

Spurned by Calumet City, Salazar is hoping to receive certification instead from the FBI, whose spokesman in Chicago declined to comment on her case.

The Calumet City police also denied a request this year for certification for Salazar’s husband, Alejandro Recio, who was attacked by three men who put a cable around his neck and stole his cell phone in March 2003, according to police reports. The police said his case was too old, though the law doesn’t say someone has to file within a certain period to obtain a certification letter from police.

Pina, Salazar’s lawyer, says that if police don’t help undocumented immigrants who try to aid them, “It chills the investigation of criminal offenses because the victims think, ‘What is the use?’ ”

In other Chicago suburbs, the police have cited a range of reasons for denying certification to victims who provide testimony.

A Wheeling police commander “did not feel comfortable allowing U visa petitions for cases where the offender was never charged” and wouldn’t sign the form for Maria del Socorro Ocampo Andraca, records show. | Tim Boyle / Sun-Times

Maria del Socorro Ocampo Andraca, 27, a DACA participant who’s a retail merchandising manager, says she hoped to apply for a U visa, citing the testimony she gave against a man who fondled her when she was in fifth grade.

The man — a distant cousin who lived with her family — went back to Mexico after she and her family contacted school and child-welfare authorities about the incident in 2001.

After the incident, her attacker “talked nice to her and told her not to scream or say anything,” according to a Wheeling police report.

Ocampo says her parents, who are immigrants from Mexico, hesitated to seek police help initially.

“They didn’t know what to do,” she says. “They were in shock. ‘Do we want to get the cops involved?’ ”

Their fear, Ocampo says, was “due to their status” at that time as undocumented immigrants.

Still, they told school officials, who contacted state child-welfare authorities. With a Wheeling detective watching behind a two-way window, she acted out the assault using a doll, as a social worker had instructed her.

Thirteen years later, after learning of the U visa program, Ocampo sought certification of her involvement in the investigation from Wheeling police. They said no. Records show a Wheeling police commander “did not feel comfortable allowing U visa petitions for cases where the offender was never charged” and declined to sign the form for Ocampo.

She says it is still “very hard” to think of what happened to her as a 10-year-old girl, and her pain is compounded by the police department’s reluctance to aid her.

Wheeling police officials reject far more requests for U visa certifications than they grant, according to records obtained by the Sun-Times. In the past four years, they have denied 49 cases, the documents show, and signed 15 U visa certification requests. Since the beginning of 2016, Wheeling Police Chief James J. Dunne personally denied 23 requests and approved seven.

The records do not reflect the reasons for most of the denials, though in some cases police noted that they would not sign off on certification forms “due to no offender found” or they had “agreed to sign only if arrest of offender occurs in the future.”

“It is subjective, to some degree,” Wheeling Police Chief James J. Dunne says of deciding whether to aid an undocumented immigrant seeking a U visa certification. | LinkedIn

Dunne says Ocampo’s request “checked 80 percent of the boxes.” He says she and her family cooperated as fully as his agency wanted. But he says he denied her appeal last year of her initial rejection because it wasn’t filed in a timely enough fashion, though his department doesn’t set a specific deadline. Nor does it have a written policy for how to handle U visa certifications, according to the chief.

“To me, something within five years is timely,” Dunne says. “It is subjective, to some degree.”

Asked why Wheeling rejects most U visa certification requests, Dunne says many of them involve older cases. He also says his department automatically rejects any request from “victims of assaults who were engaged in gang activity,” as well as victims of domestic violence who “still have relationships” with their assailants.

Immigrant rights advocates say other law-enforcement agencies, including the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County state’s attorney, have been more open to helping victims and witnesses who want to get U visas.

An undocumented immigrant from Guatemala got a U visa certification from the police in Lyons after he was molested in 2015 at the gym where he works. The man testified against Juan J. Ibarra, a former Chicago Public Schools employee. Ibarra was convicted last August of sexual abuse against two other victims and battery against the Guatemalan man.

The Guatemalan victim, who asked not to be identified, says he found it difficult to talk with police, but they did not ask him about his status.

His lawyers at the National Immigrant Justice Center say it could be years before he gets a response from federal authorities and is granted a U visa.

But the Guatemalan man has no regrets about getting involved. He says he’s certain his attacker would have victimized more people had he not come forward.

“It’s one less criminal,” the man says. “Having a better country starts with one person stepping forward and builds from there.”

MORE IN ‘THE THIRD BORDER’ SERIES:
• ‘Dreamers’ could face choice: Stay, or go with deported parents, April 2, 2017
• Could Trump seek undocumented immigrants’ driver’s licenses here? March 5, 2017
• Doctors gave fake medical opinions to help win citizenship, Feb. 26, 2017
• Deportation takes toll on family left behind in Chicago, Feb. 19, 2017
• In Immigration Court, few criminals, far more minor offenders, Feb. 12, 2017

The first time she witnessed a naked woman gyrating on the roof of a parking garage across from the federal jail in downtown Chicago, Briana Fitzgibbons couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“I come from a town of 300 people in the middle of the fields in Minnesota, so it was weird, really weird,” says Fitzgibbons, a graduate student in Chicago at the time.

As Fitzgibbons watched from her high-rise apartment nearby and the woman on the top floor of the parking garage danced on that sultry September night, lights flickered off and on behind the narrow windows of the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

That’s how detainees held at the 27-story jail operated by the federal Bureau of Prisons across the street from the parking garage show their appreciation for the strippers who perform for them, people familiar with the performances told the Chicago Sun-Times.

They say the displays put on for those in the jail have gone on for years.

And they don’t always involve stripping, according to Fitzgibbons. Some days, the performances were strictly G-rated, she says. Once, a large group of what appeared to be family members — including children — gathered on the roof of the garage on Van Buren Street just west of Dearborn Street.

“They were there for hours, waving and taking pictures and everything,” Fitzgibbons says.

Another day, she says she was amazed to see two nude women on the roof who appeared to be performing sex acts for the inmates.

“My cousin from Minnesota was visiting me in October,” Fitzgibbons says. “She was very shocked, kind of like me. Most other people wouldn’t do this kind of thing for their boyfriend.”

Attorneys who represent clients held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center say they’ve seen the tawdry shows from their law offices in the nearby Monadnock Building. They’ve been going on for decades, one federal source says.

The Metropolitan Correctional Center, left, faces a self-park garage, right across Van Buren Street, with the Willis Tower looming in the background. | Rich Hein / Sun-Times

The detainees arrange the shows to prove they’re the top dogs in the jail, another source says. Often, the women will flash money — as well as skin — to show how rich and powerful their boyfriends are, he says.

It doesn’t appear that anyone has been arrested in connection with the jailhouse strip club.

A security guard, seen posted recently on the roof of the parking garage across from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago. | Rich Hein / Sun-Times

Prison authorities say they can’t do anything about what’s going on at the parking garage.

Asked about the performances, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Prisons, which runs the jail, says: “We are aware of the situation and have notified the owner of the property, but because it is private property, the Bureau of Prisons has no authority to remove people from the property.”

An executive for the company that runs the garage says he doesn’t know anything about the nude displays. A security guard was stationed atop the garage this past week, though.

Thaddeus “T.J.” Jimenez, a well-known Chicago gang leader who was held at the federal jail downtown, says some of the garage-top shows were for him.

In a brief interview, Jimenez says he didn’t pay for the dances. A woman stripping on the roof for him was simply “showing her love,” according to Jimenez, who says she sometimes would stand on the roof of the garage holding a sign that said “Free T.J.”

Jimenez won $25 million from the city of Chicago in 2012 in a wrongful-conviction lawsuit, then showered millions of his winnings on expanding his gang, the Sun-Times has reported.

Thaddeus “T.J.” Jimenez is caught on a cellphone video on Aug. 17, 2015, on the Northwest Side. Shortly after, the video caught Jimenez shooting a man in the legs. He’s been sentenced to nine years in prison on a federal gun conviction in the case and still faces trial in Cook County criminal court for the shooting. | Court exhibit

He was sentenced in March to more than nine years in federal prison for possession of a gun he used to shoot a man in the legs in August 2015 on the city’s Northwest Side. He faces separate charges in Cook County criminal court for the shooting itself and is no longer being held at the MCC. Instead, because Cook County officials decided his stature as a gang leader might cause problems at the Cook County Jail, he is being held at the Kendall County Jail while awaiting trial.

Jimenez’s lawyer declined to comment. So did a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office.

This is where Briana Fitzgibbons saw nude dancing and sex acts take place — on the top floor of a self-park garage across from the Metropolitan Correctional Center. | Rich Hein / Sun-Times

Almost five years ago, authorities had to deal with another embarrassing situation involving the federal jail in downtown Chicago. In 2012, the jail got national attention after two convicted bank robbers fashioned a rope from bedsheets, escaped through a hole they carved out of the window slot of their 17th-floor cell and rappelled to freedom.

Within weeks, both men were recaptured in the Chicago area.

FBI spokesman Garrett Croon displays one of the ropes that Joseph “Jose” Banks and Kenneth Conley used in the escape from the Metropolitan Correctional Center. | James Foster / Sun-Times files

Months after Chicago police Sgt. Donald Markham was found shot to death in the master bedroom of his Northwest Side home in what police concluded was a suicide, the FBI got a tip that the narcotics unit supervisor might have been murdered.

In the course of its investigation, the FBI — suspecting that someone killed Markham in the early-morning hours of Sept. 2, 2015 — contacted the Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs. Look into Markham’s case, the FBI urged.

But police brass were concerned, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times, that the dead cop’s widow, Officer Dina Markham, who discovered the body, had worked in internal affairs, an assignment she’d held for years, until June 2016, when she was transferred to the Area North detectives division at Belmont and Western.

But Markham’s new assignment created another problem, according to sources, because she now was working in the detective division that concluded that her husband killed himself — the finding the FBI has called into question.

Newly obtained records show she was working at Area North in February when internal affairs stepped aside, handing off the case to the city of Chicago’s inspector general’s office, which began its own investigation of how the police handled her husband’s case.

The inspector general’s office continues to look into how detectives concluded Markham killed himself, according to police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, confirming an earlier Sun-Times report. But Guglielmi wouldn’t answer questions about the case, citing that investigation.

Among the questions investigators are trying to answer: why detectives didn’t test Dina Markham for gunshot residue to determine whether she fired a gun. According to police reports, she’d had an argument with her husband earlier that night, starting at a country bar in Edison Park and continuing in their car and at home.

Dina Markham’s nine-month stint in the Area North detective division ended March 3 with her reassignment to the police department’s Bureau of Organizational Development while the FBI and the inspector general moved ahead with their investigations into her husband’s death and how the case was handled by the detective division headed by Cmdr. Kevin Duffin, records show.

The Chicago Police Department won’t say who decided to transfer Dina Markham from the Bureau of Internal Affairs to the detective unit that handled her husband’s case.

The FBI and the inspector general’s office have been investigating Donald Markham’s death at least for several months.

Dina Markham told Sun-Times reporters last month that she had been unaware authorities were looking into her husband’s death. Six days later, on May 28, she was found dead in a bathtub at her home in Old Norwood Park, the same house where her husband died.

Her death is under investigation by the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County medical examiner’s office, whose staff is awaiting toxicology reports to determine how she died. The police have said they believe she took pills and described the death as a possible suicide.

After her body was found, FBI agents showed up at the house, sources said, and so did Duffin, the Area North commander who had been Markham’s boss. Though Duffin’s detectives handled the initial investigation of Donald Markham’s death, they aren’t investigating his wife’s death, according to the police department. That case has been assigned to Area South detectives to avoid any possible conflict of interest.

Police Supt. Eddie Johnson and Cmdr. Kevin Duffin discuss the Kyrian Knox case on Tuesday at the Garfield Park lagoon.

Cmdr. Kevin Duffin, right, with Supt. Eddie Johnson at a news conference last November. | Santiago Covarrubias / Sun-Times

Duffin has declined Sun-Times requests for an interview.

Records obtained from the police department show the commander accessed Donald Markham’s case files three times over the past year. The first time was June 6, 2016, six days before Dina Markham was assigned to Duffin’s unit. The second was Nov. 8, and third time was Feb. 10, three weeks before she was transferred out of Duffin’s unit.

Donald Markham was a sergeant in the department’s narcotics bureau. His supervisor, Lt. Michael Ryle, was called to the scene after Markham was found dead because he was Markham’s boss, though he wasn’t involved in the investigation.

He was one of 19 cops who showed up at the Markham home, according to police reports.

Ryle has spoken with the FBI, sources said. He told a reporter to direct any questions to the FBI or the police.

Neither the FBI nor the city inspector general’s office would comment.

Also, Cook County Inspector General Patrick Blanchard says his staff has now begun a “review” of the medical examiner’s handling of Donald Markham’s death, which a county pathologist ruled was a suicide.

Markham’s body was removed by police from the home before a medical examiner’s investigator could view the shooting scene.

According to city records, the police notified the medical examiner’s office within an hour after Dina Markham called 911. But the medical examiner’s office has said the police didn’t alert them until about two and a half hours after her 911 call — when the body was already on the way to the morgue.

READ MORE: Chicago cop couple’s mysterious deaths under investigation, May 31, 2017

tnovak@suntimes.com

rherguth@suntimes.com

His parents were waiting for him to come home when he got out of a Lake View rehab facility on Oct. 8, 2015. But that’s not where Michael Raines headed.

Instead, Raines, 33, a Cook County correctional officer who’d been commended for heroism while off-duty, headed to the West Side.

He was looking for heroin.

He’d soon be dead of an overdose of fentanyl-laced heroin. He died as he rode a CTA bus in Little Village two hours after walking out of St. Joseph Hospital at Diversey and Sheridan.

Between 2014 and early this year, the highly addictive opioid that street heroin is often spiked with because it’s cheaper and more addictive has been a factor in 571 deaths in Chicago, according to Cook County medical examiner’s office records.

Raines’ was one of them.

He’d started spinning downhill 11 months earlier, his family told the police. It was a result of the incident that got him lauded as a hero — the shooting of a man named Fernando Lopez while Raines was off-duty.

After that, Raines’ parents told detectives, he was wracked by post-traumatic stress. The parents told them it drove Raines — whose father, uncles and cousin all worked in law enforcement — to alcohol and heroin.

Michael Raines was leaving Richard’s Bar when he heard gunfire. | Sam Charles / Sun-Times

Efforts by the Chicago Sun-Times to reach Raines’ parents weren’t successful.

According to police records, on Nov. 30, 2014, Raines and his girlfriend left Richard’s Bar just north of downtown, near the intersection of Milwaukee, Grand and Halsted, around 3 a.m.

Walking out onto Milwaukee Avenue to their car, parked nearby on Union Street, they heard gunshots, records show. Raines told his girlfriend to stay put, and he ran toward the shooting, his Ruger LCP .380 semiautomatic pistol in his back left pants pocket.

A few minutes before, two men the police say were part of a street gang — Fernando “Fern” Lopez and Mario “Booty” Orta, both 27 — had left the Funky Buddha Lounge, just around the corner from Richard’s on Grand Avenue, with friends, according to police records.

Lopez had gotten to the bar around 1:30 a.m. and told detectives he had “three or four shots of Grey Goose vodka while at the club and had smoked marijuana earlier in the evening,” according to police records.

The site of the now-closed Funky Buddha Lounge. | Sam Charles / Sun-Times

After leaving the club, Lopez, Orta and another man got into a Buick LaCrosse just outside and began to head west on Grand. But after sideswiping two vehicles, including a BMW parked outside the bar, the driver tried to keep going, according to the police. A crowd outside the Funky Buddha — which closed in 2015 — surrounded the Buick, trying to keep it from driving off, according to police records.

Police said Lopez — who had 10 prior arrests, including one for mob action, though no convictions — was driving. His lawyer later disputed that account in court filings.

Detectives collected surveillance footage of the shooting, detailing what it showed in a police report:

“Upon being approached by the owner of the BMW and others, Lopez, Orta and the unknown male exited the Buick. The unknown male, who was armed with a handgun, fired said handgun into the air. Lopez then took the handgun from the unknown male and chased multiple individuals across the street.”

The police said Lopez fired several times. That’s when Raines came barreling around the corner and confronted him.

Drawing his Ruger and identifying himself as a police officer, Raines ordered Lopez to drop the gun, the detectives wrote. Instead, they said, Lopez turned toward him, and Raines shot him.

Mario “Booty” Orta. | Cook County sheriff’s booking mug

Wounded, Lopez dropped the weapon and ran to the sidewalk on the north side of Grand. Raines, out of ammunition, ran after and quickly caught him, the police said.

Orta — who had 31 prior arrests and two convictions, for mob action and for aggravated battery to a police officer — picked up Lopez’s gun as the 6-foot, 245-pound Raines tried to hold Lopez on the ground until cops arrived, the detectives wrote.

They said Raines pointed his now-empty gun at Orta, ordering him to drop his gun, and used Lopez as a human shield.

Michael Raines. | Facebook

The detectives said Orta shot at Raines several times as he and Lopez were on the sidewalk. Raines wasn’t hit, but Lopez ended up with 10 gunshot wounds. Raines’ gun held only six rounds, and he didn’t bring extra ammunition.

Raines later told investigators he held his gun to Lopez’s head “in hopes and in an attempt to discourage the secondary offender and others from killing him.”

He told them that, before the cops got there, several other men walked toward him and that he thought they wanted to help Lopez get away.

Raines’ girlfriend had followed him around the corner. Still on the ground, he shouted for her to run.

Raines said he continued to hold Lopez down until the police got there about five minutes later and that Orta and the other man ran off.

The police said Raines was sober at the time of the shooting.

Lopez, taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, survived.

Raines was taken to Rush University Medical Center with stress-related symptoms, then released.

He’d also aggravated an old back injury suffered years earlier in a car crash, according to a source who said that, during his recovery, Raines was prescribed painkillers. When he couldn’t get a prescription refilled quickly enough, he turned to heroin, the source said.

After the shooting, several people who were with Lopez inside the Funky Buddha drove to Stroger Hospital to see if he was there, according to police records. When nurses told them he wasn’t, they tried Northwestern Memorial, but Lopez’s family “kicked them out.”

Fernando “Fern” Lopez. | Cook County sheriff’s booking mug

One witness told detectives she’d been inside the club with Lopez and Orta, and Lopez had a gun and was showing it off, even dropping it on the floor in front of people around 2 a.m. According to her, Lopez said, “ ‘Anyone can get it,’ and explained she knew that meant shooting someone.”

The woman said Orta told her and another woman “to keep their mouths shut, or something will happen to them.”

At the hospital, detectives questioned Lopez. They said he waived his Miranda rights and told them he didn’t remember firing a gun.

“Lopez could not recall if any of his friends had handguns but stated it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary if they did,” according to police.

They wrote that Lopez told them he was shot from behind but didn’t know who shot him and that he had left the gang five years ago “because he grew out of the lifestyle.”

“The interviewing detectives confronted Lopez with the fact that video surveillance cameras captured the incident, however Lopez denied the detectives summary of events and wanted to see the video himself,” the detectives wrote.

They charged Lopez with aggravated assault to a peace officer, two counts of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon, aggravated discharge of a firearm, reckless discharge of a firearm and unlawful possession of a firearm by a gang member.

Orta — arrested the next day on the West Side, a few blocks from his home — was charged with attempted first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated discharge of a firearm, unlawful use of a weapon and unlawful possession of a weapon by a gang member.

Both have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial. Lopez is free after being released to a pretrial services monitoring program. Orta is being held without bail at the Cook County Jail.

Nathaniel Nunes. | Illinois Department of Corrections

A third man was later charged in the shooting. Nathaniel Nunes, then 22, was arrested on March 16, 2015, in Humboldt Park, about a mile from Raines’ home in Ukrainian Village, records show.

Nunes, also identified by the police as a member of the gang they said Lopez and Orta belonged to, was charged with reckless discharge of a firearm, unlawful use of a weapon and unlawful possession of a firearm by a gang member. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison.

An internal Cook County sheriff’s investigation cleared Raines, who had worked at the Cook County Jail for three years, of any wrongdoing.

The sheriff’s office interviewed the lead detective who investigated the shooting, and he commended Raines for heroism.

Raines was reprimanded, though, for using “a handgun that he had not qualified with through the Cook County Sheriff’s Training Institute.”

Despite that, the sheriff’s office heralded his quick response to the shooting:

“Raines’ actions drew the assailants’ attention to him and away from any civilians and prevented any further shots from being fired at the civilians.

“Raines took action at great danger to himself,” the sheriff’s Office of Professional Review wrote, “and even though he had not qualified with the weapon he used in the above incident, his actions prevented an armed offender from continuing to fire his weapon at citizens on the street and resulted in the arrest of said offender.”

After the shooting, Raines developed “emotional issues,” his parents told detectives after his death.

Whether he sought help is unclear. In 2008, the Cook County sheriff’s office created an Office of Peer Support “as an intervention program for officers dealing with both personal and professional crisis.” Records show Peer Support was notified after the shooting, but, citing privacy laws, officials would not say whether Raines had any contact with the office.

Once he started using drugs, he might have faced even more pressure. Alcohol use is ingrained into the culture of law enforcement, according to Steve Albrecht, a workplace safety consultant and former sergeant with the San Diego Police Department, but illicit drug use by officers is far more rare and more difficult to let anyone know about.

“The taboo is towards illegal drugs,” according to Abrecht. “If you got injured in a car accident or you get injured wrestling with some suspect and you become opiate-addicted, I think that’s tolerable in that culture. But illegal drugs — definitely not.”

Albrecht didn’t know Raines. Speaking generally, he said officers involved in shootings can feel “survivor guilt and also anger towards the person that put them in that situation.”

In early September 2015, Raines checked himself in to the rehab facility at St. Joseph.

That Oct. 8, at 11 a.m., he was discharged. At 12:24 p.m., he got on a southbound, No. 53 Pulaski Road bus at Chicago Avenue, according to CTA security footage reviewed by police.

From their report: “At 1225 hours, video shows the victim snorting a substance; he repeated this action four additional times between 1225 and 1228 hours. At 1229 hours, it appeared that the victim was going into distress and at 1230 hours, the victim slumped to his right then laid his head on the bag that he carried on the bus with him.”

When the bus driver got to 31st Street and the end of the route, she noticed Raines toward the back of the bus, slumped over in his seat, and told him he needed to get off, she told police. He didn’t move. She found him unresponsive and called 911.

Michael Raines. | Facebook

Raines was pronounced dead at 1:21 p.m., according to the medical examiner’s office.

The police found two small plastic bags in one of his pockets — one them empty and the other containing a gram of white heroin.

According to a toxicology report, fentanyl was found in Raines’ blood but not his urine. That’s the case when someone dies shortly after ingesting it, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office said. Raines tested negative for alcohol and cocaine.

In September 2016 — nearly a year after Raines died — Lopez filed suit in federal court against Raines’ estate and the sheriff’s office. He accused Raines of using excessive force and said there was a conspiracy to cover up what he’d done.

In his lawsuit, Lopez says he wasn’t driving the Buick. He says he did have a gun and that he fired it into the air to disperse the crowd that swarmed the SUV after it sideswiped the other vehicles. According to the lawsuit, when Raines shot him, Lopez “was not a threat to Michael Raines nor any other individual on the scene.”

The case hasn’t come to court yet.

From the Cook County Sheriff’s Memorial Foundation website.

READ MORE FROM THE WATCHDOGS:

• Another mystery in case of Chicago cop couple’s mysterious deaths, June 18, 2017

• Chicago’s jailhouse strip club — and feds say they can’t shut it down, June 11, 2017

• For immigrant crime victims, police block path to win special visas, June 4, 2017

• Chicago cops who left under a cloud land police jobs in the suburbs, May 28, 2017

The mayor of Hillside defended the west suburb’s lucrative red-light-camera program Monday after critics questioned what local leaders have done with millions of dollars brought in by the cameras the past few years.

Residents who spoke at a village board meeting in Hillside cited a recent joint investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times and ABC7 Chicago’s I Team — which found more than $8 million in camera fines were collected in the community of about 8,000 people between the start of 2014 and the end of last year.

Only Berwyn and Melrose Park have cameras that are bringing more money from fines than Hillside’s traffic-enforcement devices, according to the Sun-Times/ABC7 analysis of records from 86 Chicago area suburbs that have cameras.

Paul Kasley, a 30-year resident of Hillside, said he wants officials in his town to remove the cameras.

“I’m convinced that red-light cameras are present to generate revenue for the red-light camera company and free money for the villages,” Kasley said. “They just sit back and collect money, and they’re not concerned with how it affects the people of the town, the people coming through the town and the image of the town.”

Paul Kasley talks about red-light cameras at Hillside’s village board meeting Monday. | Tim Boyle / Sun-Times

Another Hillside resident, Roger Romanelli, suggested to town leaders, “Maybe we can do more to warn people,” and asked for an accounting of how the money has been spent.

Hillside Mayor Joseph Tamburino, first elected in 1981, said the suburb’s take from the cameras the past three years was about $5.1 million. The rest of the $8 million from Hillside’s cameras went to a private contractor, SafeSpeed LLC of Chicago.

Nine out of 10 suburbs whose cameras rang up the highest revenue totals have contracts with SafeSpeed, the Sun-Times and ABC7 found.

Tamburino said Hillside’s share of red-light fines has paid for street repairs, “stormwater pipe changes” and removal of trees destroyed by the emerald ash borer.

“I want you to understand we’ve got over $5 million worth of work we’ve been able to do at no expense to the residents,” the mayor said. “None whatsoever. No expense to the resident. No expense on your tax bill, OK?”

Hillside signed a deal with SafeSpeed in 2009. The cameras operated by the company there issued nearly 98,000 tickets in the past three years, records show.

Fines collected from the cameras totaled about $2.8 million in 2014, $2.8 million again in 2015 and $2.4 million last year.

Other SafeSpeed clients whose cameras are bringing in large amounts include North Riverside, Lakemoor, Country Club Hills, Matteson and Skokie, the Sun-Times and ABC7 found.

Cameras in the suburbs made a total of nearly $67 million in 2016 — a 50 percent increase from 2014.

Click here to see ABC7 report.

Contributing: Ann Pistone and Jason Knowles of ABC7 Chicago

Cash-strapped Northeastern Illinois University — which came under fire for agreeing to pay former Obama White House adviser Valerie Jarrett a fat fee to speak at graduation last month — has paid nearly $270,000 to 28 other speakers since 2005, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Most of that’s come out of taxpayer funds that support the state university on Chicago’s North Side, which cut short its school year and recently announced it would lay off 180 employees because of the state budget crunch.

The university’s interim president had agreed to pay Jarrett $30,000 to speak at commencement. After the Sun-Times reported that, the longtime top aide to former President Barack Obama agreed to forego most of the fee — keeping $1,500 she said was to cover her expenses.

The university had paid a total of $46,000 to other commencement speakers in the past five years, even as other state universities declined to pay fees to graduation speakers, the Sun-Times reported in April.

The newly obtained records show Northeastern has spent far more than that to lure high-profile speakers to speak at other times during the school year since 2005 — a total of $268,001.36.

Political consultants James Carville and Mary Matalin. | AP

The highest-paid? The married political consultants Mary Matalin and James Carville, who together got $82,000 to speak at Northeastern’s main campus on North St. Louis Avenue in February.

That event was paid for out of a fund created with a donation to the university in 2014 by a wealthy alumnus. The expenses to bring other speakers to the university, though, were charged to NEIU or the university’s foundation, the records show.

Northeastern is grappling with financial problems that prompted Moody’s Investors Service, the Wall Street bond-rating agency, to downgrade the state school’s bond rating on June 9 two notches deeper in “junk” status — making it costlier to borrow money. Northeastern now has the second-lowest credit rating of any state university in Illinois, behind only Eastern Illinois.

Northeastern decided to lay staff off this summer after taking other cost-cutting measures that included cancelling three days of classes and ordering a weeklong, unpaid furlough during spring break for its employees.

Announcing the layoffs last month, Richard Helldobler, Northeastern’s interim president, blamed the cutbacks on “financial starvation from Springfield.”

In internal emails obtained by the Sun-Times, Helldobler and one Northeastern trustee acknowledged the Jarrett revelation wouldn’t help.

Valerie Jarrett originally was to be paid $30,000 to speak at Northeastern Illinois University. She gave back all but $1,500 after a Sun-Times report on the fee the cash-strapped school was paying her. | Sun-Times files

“I am sensitive that some of you were concerned about the optics of the cost of Ms. Jarrett’s speaking fee given the state’s budget crisis,” Helldobler wrote to the university’s trustees on April 10. “While I remain committed to giving our students a quality commencement experience befitting their special day, I wanted you to know I heard your concerns.”

Helldobler had hired Jarrett and agreed to her fee without notifying trustees, records show.

One Northeastern trustee, George Vukotich, responded to Helldobler’s email two hours later, saying the deal with Jarrett hurt his chances for getting the “interim” tag removed from his title. Helldobler began serving last July as interim president, and his contract expires next March 31.

Amid the controversy over Jarrett’s contract, Northeastern board agreed to spend nearly $100,000 for an executive search firm to seek a new president.

George Vukotich says Valerie Jarrett is wealthy enough that she “did not need to charge” to speak at the cash-strapped state university. | LinkedIn

“I know it was in your rights to make the decision without consulting the board, but I think the challenge was that one of the reasons individuals were asking for your regular appointment and to skip the search was to save money,” Vukotich wrote April 10 to Helldobler and fellow trustees. “When it came out what Mrs. Jarrett was being paid it did not go over well and weakened that argument.”

Asked about the emails after a board meeting earlier this month, Helldobler declined to comment.

Vukotich says he felt that Jarrett — a lawyer who formerly was a Daley administration official and CEO of the real estate and development company the Habitat Company — is wealthy enough that she “did not need to charge.

“Some individuals thought we should get whatever speakers we could,” Vukotich says. “Others thought we should save money, given the situation” with the university’s finances.

Before Jarrett agreed to forego most but not all of her fee, university officials said they had found an unidentified private donor who would cover the payment to Jarrett.

Daniel L. Goodwin. | The Inland Real Estate Group

According to emails written by Helldobler, Daniel L. Goodwin, a Northeastern alum who’s an Oak Brook real estate executive, agreed to let Jarrett’s speaker’s fee come out of a $300,000 fund that he established in 2014 for speakers to be brought to the school. The payments to Carville and Matalin earlier this year are the only expenditures to date from that fund.

Records show Goodwin agreed to allow his earlier donation to also be used to pay Jarrett after Helldobler directed an aide to approach him with that request.

“Tell them it will be better for Ms. Jarrett from a public relations standpoint,” Helldobler wrote in an email. “The media is all over the price given the state budget crisis. If we can say we pay it with private funds will be best.”

Goodwin wasn’t available to comment, according to a spokeswoman for his company.

NEIU records show another 26 speakers were paid a total of more than $185,000 over the past 12 years. In 18 cases, the money came from university funds, the school’s foundation paid four speakers, and Northeastern officials say they could not find records of funding sources for speaker fees prior to 2007.

Asked about the money spent on speakers, Michael Hines, a Northeastern spokesman, says, “These public speaking engagements allow the university to fulfill its mission and demonstrate its commitment to its communities.”

They frequently were presented as being part of Northeastern’s “Presidential Lecture Series.”

One speaker, Chicago journalist Bill Kurtis, who appeared at Northeastern in 2014, had the university donate his $500 fee to a charity, the Children’s Hunger Fund.

Under most of the contracts, the university also agreed to pay for airfare, ground transportation in Chicago and hotel accommodations.

In a couple of cases, Northeastern agreed to cover first-class airfare, including for author Michael Cunningham, who also received a $12,500 speaker’s fee to come from New York to Northeastern in 2006. University officials say they could not locate records to show how much taxpayers had to pay to cover travel expenses in those cases.

WHAT SCHOOL PAID SPEAKERS

• Teresa Woodruff, Northwestern University Women’s Health Research Institute director — $4,000, April 5, 2017

• Falguni Sheth, Emory University professor — $500, Feb. 9, 2017

• James Carville, Mary Matalin, political consultants / TV analysts — $82,500, Feb. 2, 2017

• Kunal Mehta, entrepreneur/author — $3,500, Feb. 4, 2016

• Karen Lewis, Chicago Teachers Union president — $1,000, Jan. 21, 2016

• Omar Yamini, author $1,500, Oct. 24, 2014

• Will Allen, urban farmer/author — $10,000, Oct. 21, 2014

• Bill Kurtis, journalist — $500 (to charity), Oct. 17, 2014

• Carlos Alberto Torres, UCLA professor — $5,151.36, Oct. 14, 2014

• Mary Gaitskill, novelist — $3,500, March 27, 2014

• Rebecca Skloot, author — $15,000, Oct. 29, 2013

• Jose Hernandez, former astronaut — $15,000, Oct. 24, 2013

• Kwame Dawes, poet/actor — $2,500, April 11, 2013

• Maddie Grant and Jamie Notter, authors — $4,500 each, Oct. 25, 2012

• George Everly Jr., co-founder, International Critical Incident Stress Foundation — $5,000, Nov. 3, 2011

• Jane McGonigal, game designer — $10,000, Oct. 27, 2011

• Reza Deghati, photojournalist — $5,000, March 10, 2011

• Ken Auletta, media critic, The New Yorker — $13,500, Oct. 28, 2010

• Dolores Huerta, labor leader/activist — $6,000, April 23, 2009

• Ana Castillo, novelist — $10,000, Oct. 7, 2008

• Claire Messud, novelist — $7,850, Sept. 27, 2007

• Charles Rosen, pianist— $7,000, April 12, 2007

• Michael Cunningham, novelist — $12,500, Oct. 11, 2006

• Suzan Lori-Parks, playwright — $15,000, Sept. 14, 2006

• Khaled Hosseini, novelist — $5,000, Oct. 25, 2005

• Jane Goodall, primatologist/author — $17,500, Sept. 9, 2005

Clint Williams heads to River North from his South Side home in Chatham for the nightlife.

“The clubs, the people, the vibes — the nightlife is different here,” says Williams, 25, a rapper who sells his mixtapes to people on the sidewalk.

It’s easy to meet people, Williams says. “They’re so drunk that they’re just talking, and they want to get to know you.”

But the nightlife scene can get crazy at times, says his friend, Jonathon Williams, 28.

Clint Williams (right) and his friend Jonathon Williams say the vibes are good at River North bars and clubs. | Nader Issa / Sun-Times

“The fights — there are a lot of fights,” he says, pointing to an incident in which “somebody got they a— messed up. But, at the same time, the vibes are there.”

While revelers like the growing nightlife scene, a spate of violent incidents in the past month near the area’s bars and clubs and a fatal crash following a night out there have put a glaring spotlight on the neighborhood north of downtown. Among the incidents:

• A fiery fatal crash in the early-morning hours of June 26 followed a night out at Bottled Blonde, 504 N Wells St. — which now faces license-revocation proceedings after a rash of complaints.

• A fight involving two off-duty cops June 23 came after the men had just left a nightclub near La Salle Street and Hubbard Street.

Security guard Zoa Stigler suffered a fractured eye socket and broken nose in the attack, according to board president of the building where she worked. | GoFundMe

• A 23-year-old man attacked a female security guard on May 14 after drinks at Concrete Cowboy, 646 N. Franklin St.

Overall, even though reported crime in the neighborhood isn’t much higher than it was a decade ago, the number of crimes reported around places that serve alcohol — though still a relatively small number — has more than tripled, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis found.

A total of about 100 more crimes were reported in the past year in what the police call Beat No. 1831 — the team of cops covering the area including River North — than in the same 12-month period from 2006 to 2007, the Sun-Times analysis of Chicago Police Department data found.

Along West Hubbard Street alone — home to a stretch of River North’s most popular bars, nightclubs and restaurants — there were 47 crimes reported at a bar, tavern, restaurant or liquor store in that span a decade ago, according to city data, leading to 10 arrests. But in the past year, the number of reported crimes was up to 150, with 23 arrests, the Sun-Times found. Thirty-two of the 150 were violent crimes, up from 16 a decade ago.

Reported crimes just at bars rose from 28 a decade ago to 115 in the past year.

At the same time, the number of violent crimes overall at any location in River North — such as assaults, aggravated assaults and aggravated batteries — dropped over the past decade. And the number of crimes involving weapons fell even in just the past year.

Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) says problems in River North are partly the result of restaurants operating as nightclubs and also because there aren’t enough police officers working in the area overnight. | Sun-Times files

Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) says part of the problem is that there are too few officers on the streets in the area overnight — between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. He says he’s working with the police to add more.

A police spokesman says an unspecified number of cops have been added to control the “post-bar scene,” particularly along Hubbard Street.

Matthew De Leon. | Chicago Police Department arrest photo

“There’s been very close dialogue between the alderman and the district,” the spokesman says.

Reilly says he’s trying to deal with the source of the problems by targeting establishments linked to trouble. Concrete Cowboy — identified by Reilly as the last place to serve drinks to 23-year-old Matthew De Leon before the police say he punched the guard in the face on May 14 — is one of the establishments, along with Bottled Blonde, that the alderman says could be shut down as a result.

Reilly has begun proceedings to revoke the license of Bottled Blonde and says Concrete Cowboy could face the same action if it doesn’t make changes within a month to meet ground rules for the bar established at a recent community meeting — including taking steps to limit late-night noise and to be accountable for violence nearby.

Bottled Blonde, 504. N. Wells St., faces license-revocation proceedings. | Mitchell Armentrout / Sun-Times

Reilly says he’s targeting establishments that are licensed as restaurants — with only an “incidental liquor” license, allowing them to sell alcohol along with food — but basically operate as a bar or nightclub, serving more liquor than food.

He points to Concrete Cowboy, which has an incidental liquor license but also is licensed to stay open and serve until 4 a.m.

“Incidental liquor license, 4 a.m. bar?” Reilly says. “How does that work? We’ve got lots of issues.”

Women attending a bachelorette party head up Hubbard Street in River North. | Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times

Representatives of Bottled Blonde and Concrete Cowboy declined to comment.

Reilly, who’s in his 10th year as alderman, says undercover officers can go into a restaurant to see if it’s inappropriately operating as a bar. That involves taking videos and auditing books and has led to two closings, he says — including that of Nouveau Tavern, 358 W. Ontario St., shut down for good in April 2015 for operating as a nightclub under a restaurant license.

“Within a month of being open, the menu basically went out the window, and half their tables were gone,” Reilly says of Nouveau Tavern.

Some business owners have tried to get around the rules that way, Reilly says, because they’re not allowed to get liquor licenses to operate as a bar. Moratoriums on new liquor licenses have stopped the introduction of new bars and clubs to the neighborhood, he says.

Despite that, the number of places in River North that are allowed to serve alcohol has nearly doubled in the past 10 years. And Reilly says there are about 40 late-night licenses in the ward. Just along Hubbard Street, the number of establishments with various types of liquor licenses — including bars and restaurants — is up to 23 from 13 in 2007.

“Places like Hubbard Street are filling in with a lot of bars,” Reilly says, “which wasn’t like that 10 years ago.”

Party street: A man dances in the middle of Hubbard Street just east of Dearborn Street. | Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times

That scene, new to River North, is how many used to describe life in Wrigleyville. But in the same 10 years that saw an increase in bars and restaurants in River North serving alcohol, the number of places on North Clark Street around Wrigley Field — the North Side neighborhood’s version of Hubbard Street — with some type of liquor license fell from 52 to 45, according to city records. During the same period, crime in that stretch of Clark Street rose slightly — from 114 reported incidents annually a decade ago to 129, but the number of arrests fell from 40 to 18.

Despite having double the number of places to drink in that stretch, crime is lower in Wrigleyville than in River North.

Dan Kelly, 57, remembers a very different River North. He used to live in Lincoln Park before moving to New York City for over two decades. Now, he lives at Clark and Hubbard in River North. He says the neighborhood, unrecognizable when he returned three years ago, is safe enough for him and his family.

“When we came back — we’d been away for 21 years — it was extraordinary how much change had taken place in the city and in particular River North,” Kelly says while out walking his dogs. “When we left 21 years earlier, this was not a nice area.”

Reilly says a small number of nightspots in River North are the source of an outsize portion of the problems in the neighborhood.

“The vast majority of the players do a really good job and aren’t a problem,” the alderman says. “We have a handful of irresponsible liquor license-holders that can turn a neighborhood upside-down.

With Northeastern Illinois University facing a worsening financial situation that soon led to unpaid furloughs, the cancellation of three school days and layoffs of 180 employees, the state college’s $294,500-a-year interim president headed to Washington in January to attend President Donald Trump’s inauguration — a nearly $4,500 trip.

Records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show Richard Helldobler stayed four nights at the Grand Hyatt in a room that cost an average of more than $740 a night — $2,972.42 in all.

In addition, his round-trip airfare ran $459.70, three cab rides totaled $90.92, and Helldobler and another university official used two $475 tickets to the Inaugural Heartland Ball held by the Illinois State Society, a private group of people from Illinois now living in Washington that’s headed by former downstate U.S. Rep. Jerry Weller.

Altogether, the tab for Helldobler’s D.C. trip came to $4,473.04.

Also sent to Washington for the inaugural was Suleyma Perez, Northeastern’s executive director of government relations. Her tab: $3,309.33.

The bills were paid for by the Northeastern Illinois University Foundation, which is run by the university’s vice president of institutional advancement. The foundation raises money from private donors and spends it “to advance the interests and welfare of the university,” according to its mission statement.

To cover the costs of the Washington trip, Helldobler tapped “the president’s discretionary account” that the foundation maintains, records show.

Though the foundation might otherwise have spent the money on something that more directly met its stated aim of playing “a vital role in ensuring that the university remains highly affordable while retaining the highest academic standards,” Northeastern spokesman Michael Hines defends Helldobler’s and Perez’s trip to the Trump inauguration.

“This is private funds . . . not something that involves taxpayer money,” Hines says.

Spokesman Michael Hines on Richard Helldobler’s trip to the Trump inauguration: “He used the opportunity to advocate for Northeastern’s students.” | LinkedIn

Asked why Helldobler went to the inauguration, Hines says many Northeastern students “were fearful and feeling marginalized” at the time, including Muslims, gay and transgender students and “Dreamers” — undocumented foreign nationals who came to this country as kids and were allowed to remain in the United States under former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.Hines says that, while in Washington, Helldobler “introduced himself to Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Sen. Mark Kirk, Rep. Danny Davis, Congresswoman Robin Kelly and state Sen. Mattie Hunter, and he used the opportunity to advocate for Northeastern’s students.”

Helldobler and Perez attended Trump’s inauguration with tickets from U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., according to Hines.

A couple of days after returning to Chicago, Helldobler again traveled to the nation’s capital. This trip — paid for with funds from the taxpayer-supported university — was for Helldobler to serve for two days as an interviewer for an American Council on Education fellowship program. It cost Northeastern $951.01.

The two excursions to Washington in January were among six out-of-state business trips Helldobler took in his first six months as interim president, records show.

Northeastern — which has put a freeze on spending, nearly drained its $40 million in reserves and now has the second-lowest credit rating of any public university in the state, behind only Eastern Illinois — paid a total of about $7,000 for the other trips besides the inauguration. That travel involved conferences between October and April for “professional development,” the records show, including:

• A $1,544 trip to Washington in April for the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities’ National Capitol Forum on Hispanic Education.

• Another conference in Washington in March. The cost for that trip included $975 for registration, an $886.26 hotel bill and $359.90 for taxis, meals and other expenses.

• A trip to three cities in Texas in late February and early March that included a conference in Austin and a meeting to “network with an alum/donor.” Expenses included a $362.25 stay at a hotel in Austin, $461.39 for flights and other expenses of $472.28, mostly to rent a car to meet the alumnus. University officials say the American Council on Education reimbursed Northeastern for the hotel and part of the airfare.

• A $1,288.74 trip for a conference in San Antonio, Texas, in October.

Helldobler declined to be interviewed.

He’s been interim president since Oct. 1 under an 18-month contract to lead the university, which serves about 10,000 students at its main campus on North St. Louis Avenue on the city’s North Side and at four other sites.

Helldobler has blamed the just-ended state budget standoff for the financial problems at the school, which reported total undergraduate and graduate enrollment last fall of 9,500 full- and part-time students.

In a story June 29, The New York Times quoted him saying, “We’ve done as much as we can possibly do to manage what is really a politically manufactured budget crisis.”

He made a similar argument in a written statement provided through Hines, saying, “Through no fault of our own, Northeastern Illinois University has been starved of state funding, forcing me to make some painful decisions on furloughs and layoffs. I am acutely aware of the pain this has inflicted on individuals and families throughout the Northeastern community. As interim president, it is my duty to ensure that I do all I can to protect and preserve this community and to put it in the best position to recover and flourish when the state’s fiscal health stabilizes. That work requires face-to-face interactions with elected officials, alumni, donors and especially my fellow university leaders from across the country.”

Valerie Jarrett delivers the commencement address for Northeastern Illinois University at the UIC Pavilion on May 8. | James Foster / Sun-Times

Helldobler has been in the hot seat since the Sun-Times reported in April that the school had signed a deal to pay $30,000 to former Obama White House adviser Valerie Jarrett to speak at its spring commencement.

Though Jarrett originally was to be paid with taxpayer funds, records show Northeastern officials expressed concern about how that might look at a time of financial crisis. They got a rich alumnus to agree to let them pay Jarrett instead out of a donation he’d made to the university in 2014. But Jarrett then agreed to repay most of her fee, keeping $1,500 for travel expenses.

The Sun-Times reported a week ago that Northeastern has used a combination of taxpayer and university foundation funds to pay a total of more than $300,000 in fees to speakers for graduations and other events in recent years.

Northeastern’s trustees recently voted to hire a search firm to look for a new president, with one trustee saying reports about Jarrett’s appearance had hurt Helldobler’s efforts to avoid a search and be named to the post permanently.

In addition to his $294,500 salary, Helldobler gets a $35,000 a year stipend because “he agrees to use his personal residence periodically for ceremonial and entertainment purposes,” according to his contract.

If the university’s board replaces Helldobler before his contract runs out next March 31, it would have to pay him the full amount promised under the deal. He would be allowed to return to his former role as provost and vice president of academic affairs, which paid him $192,000 a year.

While backing plans to build condos in their wards, two aldermen representing Logan Square, Humboldt Park, Wicker Park and other booming neighborhoods got loans from a bank headed by the lawyer for the developers, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.

Ald. Roberto Maldonado (45th) and Ald. Proco Joe Moreno (1st) each has gotten mortgages from Belmont Bank & Trust, according to a Sun-Times’ review of the more than 1,200 mortgages that the small, Northwest Side bank has made since it opened 11 years ago.

Maldonado’s loans totaled nearly $1 million, Moreno’s $825,000, according to records and interviews.

The chairman of the bank? James Banks, who’s also one of the city’s busiest zoning and development lawyers. He is the largest shareholder in Belmont Bank, according to records it filed with the Federal Reserve Bank.

Since becoming loan customers of Belmont Bank, Maldonado and Moreno each has voted on more than 200 zoning cases involving Banks’ law firm, including dozens of projects in their wards. They have never abstained from voting on any case involving Banks or his firm, city records show.

They’ve also signed off on tearing down homes and stores that were replaced by condos built by developers who hired the clout-heavy Banks firm to shepherd their construction projects through City Hall, the records show.

Like all Chicago aldermen, Maldonado and Moreno have the power to block any zoning changes in their wards. Once approved, the rest of the City Council typically goes along.

One of every five zoning changes Banks has won from the Chicago City Council the past five years involved property in either Moreno’s 1st Ward or Maldonado’s 26th Ward. The council approved each of them without opposition from any of the 50 aldermen.

Ald. Proco Joe Moreno (1st) | Rich Hein / Sun-Times

Since Moreno got a one-year line of credit and a five-year mortgage from Belmont Bank in 2013, Banks has won 43 zoning cases in Moreno’s ward — more than in any other ward.

Moreno — who landed a seat last year on the City Council zoning committee, which hears Banks’ clients’ zoning cases — says he had no reason to abstain from zoning cases involving the lawyer who’s also chairman of the bank that held two mortgages on his home.

“I got a private mortgage on my house, and I paid it off,” Moreno says. “It’s a private transaction.”

He says aldermen often vote on matters involving financial institutions that gave them a mortgage. He says that’s difficult to avoid.

“Now, I have a mortgage with Guaranteed Rate that was sold to Chase,” Moreno says. “Chase does business with the city.”

Maldonado won’t talk about his loans or answer questions about how they might have affected his official actions, other than providing a written statement. In it, he clarified the amount of money he actually got, saying it’s far less than what records show.

His written statement also says, “I secured these loans according to all bank laws and regulations.”

Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26th). | Ashlee Rezin /S un-Times

Regarding the bank’s chairman, Maldonado wrote: “James Banks is one of Chicago’s leading attorneys in zoning and real estate law and represents clients throughout the city. I review zoning requests based on the merit of the proposal and the impact on the surrounding community, and I have rejected zoning requests from Mr. Banks’ law firm when they were not in the best interest of the community.”

Banks didn’t return calls, referring questions to William McCarty III, the president and chief executive officer of Belmont Bank.

McCarty says the aldermen were treated like all of the banks’ customers, a clientele list that’s included Illinois Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, as well as other politicians and clout-heavy businessmen.

“Anybody that walks in my door and gives an application . . . if they qualify, we have to provide them a loan,” McCarty says. “There’s no special treatment.”

Ald. Roberto Maldonado got a $500,000 mortgage from Belmont Bank & Trust on his Humboldt Park home near The 606 trail. | Kevin Tanaka / Sun Times.

Maldonado first borrowed from Belmont Bank in June 2012. Cook County records show the bank filed eight separate mortgages totaling $4,482,000 against six properties owned by Maldonado — his home, a three-story building and four lots that his wife later sold to a developer, who built eight townhomes along the abandoned railroad that’s been converted into The 606, the popular recreation trail that’s given a boost to the real estate market in the area.

Despite the figures given for those eight mortgages filed with the Cook County recorder of deeds, Maldonado provided the Sun-Times with a statement from Belmont Bank saying the alderman got only three loans that totaled $984,000. The bank says one loan has been repaid and that the alderman owes a total of $713,097 on the two remaining loans.

William McCarty III. | LinkedIn

“Everything we’ve done with Mr. Maldonado has been paid off in full . . . or is performing,” says McCarty, the bank president. “There’s been no forgiveness of debt. We haven’t forgiven any debt to him. And we haven’t written off any debt to him. Everything is at market rate. We’re not in the business of giving people preferential treatment.”

Maldonado got his first loan from Belmont Bank on June 15, 2012. That was nine days after the alderman was part of a 46-0 City Council vote to subdivide a lot in his ward so a client of Banks’ law firm could replace a single-family home with a pair of three-story buildings.

Though Maldonado and the bank say the loan was for $500,000, the bank placed a $1 million mortgage — double the value of the loan — on the alderman’s two-story home, which he built on three lots in Humboldt Park. The home is half a block south of The 606.

The alderman owes $392,733 on this loan, which the mortgage filed by his bank with the Cook County recorder of deeds shows was due last month. The bank says the loan is current and active.

The view from The 606 of the condos that went up on Ald. Roberto Maldonado’s former vacant lots at 1759 N. Monticello Ave. | Kevin Tanaka / Sun Times.

Maldonado got a second loan four months later, this time borrowing $130,000. Belmont Bank filed three separate mortgages against Maldonado’s property totaling $650,000 — five times the value of the loan — as collateral. It put a second mortgage on the alderman’s home for $260,000, another mortgage for $260,000 on his two vacant lots on Monticello and a mortgage for $130,000 on his two lots on Central Park.

According to the bank, this loan has been repaid.

Maldonado got a third loan from Belmont Bank five months after the second loan, this one for $354,000. To secure this loan, the bank placed four separate mortgages totaling $2,832,000 against Maldonado’s real estate. It put a $708,000 mortgage on his home — the bank’s third mortgage on the alderman’s house — a $708,000 on his two-story building at 2548 W. Division, a $708,000 mortgage on the Monticello vacant lots and a $708,000 mortgage on the Central Park vacant lots.

Maldonado owes $320,364 on this loan, which is due next April. The bank removed the mortgages from the vacant lots last November, nearly two years after Maldonado sold the property, but the mortgages on his house and the Division Street property remain in effect, records show.

McCarty says Belmont Bank typically files mortgages for double the amount of a loan to a customer. He says that’s “to protect the bank and shareholders” if a borrower fails to repay the loan, forcing the bank to take legal action to recover its money and other costs.

Filing mortgages for double the amount of the loan is sometimes done to prevent borrowers from using the same property as collateral to obtain additional loans from other institutions, according to financial sources.

After obtaining the loans on his four vacant lots, which are in his ward, Maldonado transferred the property to a trust in his wife’s name. As with the neighboring homes, these lots were zoned for manufacturing when the alderman’s wife filed with City Hall to rezone the property so she could sell it to a developer who wanted to build homes along The 606 trail.

Maldonado abstained from voting when the City Council rezoned the land on Nov. 19, 2014. Four months later, a lawyer from Banks’ firm helped Maldonado’s wife sell the property to a development company headed by Sergiy Vasilechko for $500,000 — $335,000 over what her husband paid for the land more than a decade earlier.

Though the Maldonados sold the property that had been used as collateral for two loans from Belmont Bank, the bank’s mortgages on the property remained in force for nearly two years, long after Vasilechko began building the townhomes. The bank removed the mortgages last Nov. 16, as Vasilechko’s company borrowed from another lender to finish the eight townhomes, now for sale. One unit sold for $489,250 shortly before Memorial Day, records show.

Ald. Roberto Maldonado used this building, second from left, at 2548 W. Division St. to secure a bank loan. | Kevin Tanaka / Sun Times.

The statement from Belmont Bank says the mortgages were released when the Maldonados sold the property in 2015 a few months before The 606 opened, but the title company “failed to” file the documents with the county showing the mortgages were paid. Belmont Bank says those mortgages were released when it was contacted by a new title company on behalf of Vasilechko, who was seeking a loan for the property.

Though the Belmont Bank mortgages remained on the property long after the Maldonados sold the land, Vasilechko’s attorney, Daniel Lauer, says his client “funded construction out of his pocket, which is the way he does business. He was finally able to get a loan on this property last November, after construction was ongoing for about a year.”Belmont Bank still has two liens on the alderman’s home and another on his building at 2548 W. Division, county records show.

Since Maldonado began borrowing from Belmont Bank, the City Council has approved 278 zoning changes involving clients of the Banks law firm. All passed without opposition. Records show Maldonado voted for 263 of them, including 22 projects in his ward.

Ald. Proco Joe Moreno (1st) got a $125,000 line of credit on his Wicker Park home and a $760,000 mortgage, both from Belmont Bank. | Kevin Tanaka / Sun Times.

Moreno became a customer of Belmont Bank after Maldonado. He got a $125,000 line of credit on his Wicker Park home in April 2013 and a $760,000 mortgage six months later, records show — a total of $885,000.

But the bank recorded two mortgages totaling $1.77 million on Moreno’s home. The bank removed those liens last December, when Moreno says he repaid the money.

The line of credit was supposed to repaid in April 2014, and the mortgage was due late next year. Both loans were released on Dec. 23, 2016, indicating Moreno repaid the mortgage two years early, while his 12-month line of credit appears to have remained open for 44 months.

Moreno says he was always current on his payments to Belmont Bank. He says he never renegotiated the loans and doesn’t know why his line of credit remained open years after he was to have repaid it.

Attorney James Banks at City Hall. | Sun-Times files

Bank’s chairman a key player in building, development in Chicago

Over the past two decades, James Banks has become one of Chicago’s go-to zoning attorneys.

He’s helped numerous small developers reshape neighborhoods across the city, often replacing single-family homes with condo buildings.

Many of those condos have been built with financing from Belmont Bank, where he’s chairman and the biggest shareholder.

Sales of those condos often go through Sergio & Banks, a real estate company Banks co-owns with his wife Grace Sergio.

Banks also owns the Law Offices of Samuel V.P. Banks, a three-lawyer firm founded by his late father, a criminal defense attorney who represented clients accused of being mobsters. At the Operation Family Secrets mob trial a decade ago, a one-time burglar testified he’d bribed cops by passing them money through Sam Banks, who was never charged with any wrongdoing.

James Banks — a member of the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority board since his appointment by Gov. Jim Edgar in 1993 — also came up during that mob trial in 2007. The widow of slain mobster Michael Spilotro testified that she sold her late husband’s restaurant to Banks and his business partner, former state Sen. James DeLeo. She testified she was unhappy with the sale price, though, and appealed to Chicago mob boss James Marcello.

Sam Banks was the brother of attorney William Banks, a former Chicago alderman who headed the City Council’s zoning committee when James Banks began representing developers seeking zoning changes from Chicago’s aldermen. William Banks resigned from the City Council eight years ago to become an attorney for developers seeking zoning changes from City Hall.

James Banks once served on the board of Citizens Bank and Trust of Chicago but left the board long before state and federal regulators shut down the bank.

A few years later, he started Belmont Bank, which opened in 2006 next door to his real estate firm on the Far Northwest Side with his father on the board of directors. His cousin, Ronald Banks, is the bank’s chief financial officer. DeLeo also serves on the board.

Besides many of the developers Banks has represented, the bank’s customers include several of his family members and some business partners, including an owner of Tavern on Rush.

The former head of the scandal-tainted United Neighborhood Organization and its charter-school network settled a wrongful-termination suit filed by his former top deputy after a judge ordered a powerful alderman and others to testify in the case, court records show.

The terms of former UNO chief executive Juan Rangel’s settlement with Miguel d’Escoto, who was forced out in 2013, weren’t disclosed.

Through a spokesman, d’Escoto declined to comment. Rangel and his lawyer did not return messages.

D’Escoto — who previously was city transportation commissioner under former Mayor Richard M. Daley — made $200,000 a year as senior vice president of operations for the politically connected organization when it ran what at the time was the city’s largest network of taxpayer-supported charter schools.

D’Escoto was forced out in February 2013, eight days after the Chicago Sun-Times reported UNO had paid millions of dollars to two companies owned by his brothers Federico d’Escote and Rodrigo d’Escoto. The money came from a $98 million state school-construction grant to UNO that was shepherded through Springfield in 2009 by House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.

The Sun-Times report led to Rangel’s firing and civil sanctions against UNO by the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.

Juan Rangel has formed the Mexican American Leadership, Policy and Action Committee.

Juan Rangel. | Supplied photo

D’Escoto filed the lawsuit filed against UNO and Rangel in 2014. He said he’d been made a scapegoat even though he “had no role in the decision-making process” of hiring Federico d’Escoto’s d’Escoto Inc. and Rodrigo d’Escoto’s Reflection Window Co.

The courts threw out his case against UNO but refused to dismiss the complaint against Rangel, who’d been a significant player in Chicago politics. He was co-chairman of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2011 campaign and was a political ally of figures including Madigan, Daley and Ald. Edward Burke (14th).

Court records show Rangel and d’Escoto settled out of court on Dec. 2 — the day that a judge had set as the deadline for testimony in the case from:

Ald. Danny Solis (25th). | Sun-Times files

• Ald. Danny Solis (25th), a key Emanuel ally who was the leader of UNO before Daley appointed him to the Chicago City Council in 1996 and turning over the reins to Rangel.

• Mary Patricia Burns, a lawyer for UNO with ties to Madigan.

• Eric Sedler and Eric Herman, whose Chicago public relations firm was founded by Democratic consultant David Axelrod. The company, then known as ASGK Public Relations, worked with Burns’ law firm to blunt fallout from the UNO scandal.

Cook County Circuit Judge Patrick J. Sherlock had ruled that Solis, Burns, Sedler and Herman each “must appear before Dec. 2, 2016 for their deposition” by d’Escoto’s lawyer and ordered each to sit for 1½ hours of questioning under oath.

Solis says he didn’t know anything about UNO to answer d’Escoto’s lawyer’s questions anyway: “I was gone from UNO for 18 years” by the time d’Escoto was forced out.

One former longtime UNO official did appear for a deposition before the case was settled. But Phil Mullins, who’d been chief strategy officer, refused to answer nearly every question posed to him under oath on Nov. 9. A transcript of his deposition shows Mullins responded to 30 questions by asserting his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

For years, UNO was getting tens of millions of taxpayer dollars a year from its charter-school network, which serves mostly poor, Hispanic students in neighborhoods across the city.

But state officials froze the last $15 million that was left from the 2009 grant after the Sun-Times’ reports, saying the deals with d’Escoto Inc. and Reflection Window violated conflict-of-interest clauses in UNO’s grant agreement.

And the SEC filed civil fraud charges against UNO and Rangel for not revealing the insider deals to bond investors. UNO settled the SEC case in June 2014, instituting reforms.

The UNO Charter School Network has since severed ties with the nonprofit community organization.

Rangel — who was pushed out from his $275,000-a-year job at UNO in December 2013 — agreed to pay a $10,000 fine last year to settle the SEC’s civil fraud case against him.

Once one of the most influential players in Latino politics in Chicago, Rangel now runs a consulting firm.

A Chicago cop, found dead amid an FBI investigation into her cop-husband’s shooting death, accidentally drowned in her bathtub after drinking alcohol and taking an anti-anxiety drug, the Cook County medical examiner has ruled.

Officer Dina Markham’s body was found at 5:58 p.m. May 28 — about 14 hours after she texted a friend, Patti Thornton, saying, “Help. Please . . . no kidding,” according to records released Monday by the medical examiner’s office.

Thornton and another friend, Christine Jummati, had gone to Markham’s home on the Northwest Side around 5 p.m. and were let inside by one of her sons, the records show.

When Markham’s friends found her bathroom door locked, “They assumed Markham was inside ‘hiding’ from them . . . and didn’t want to talk with them at the time,” according to the medical examiner. “They left a note on her pillow but returned shortly afterwards out of concern.”

When they came back about 45 minutes later, they were let inside by the same son. He unlocked the door to his mother’s bathroom, where she was found “fully immersed in a bathtub filled with water,” according to the medical examiner’s office.

Her cellphone was on the floor. There was no suicide note.

Markham, 47, had a blood-alcohol level of .187 percent, an autopsy found. Under state law, a level of .08 percent while driving is considered evidence of drunk driving. A medical examiner’s investigator found “an empty bottle of champagne and Jack Daniels” on the kitchen counter and also found an empty bottle of the prescription medication alprazolam — an anti-anxiety drug sold under brand names including Xanax, a drug that, when taken with alcohol, can be deadly.

The autopsy found she had mild hepatic steatosis — fatty liver disease — from chronic alcohol use.

Her death came after the FBI urged the Chicago Police Department to reexamine its conclusion that her husband, Sgt. Don Markham, committed suicide, the Chicago Sun-Times has reported.

Donald Markham was found dead in bed in the master bedroom of the family’s home in Old Norwood Park of a gunshot wound to the head on Sept. 2, 2015.

Detectives led by Lt. Denis P. Walsh concluded that Donald Markham killed himself after arguing with his wife for keeping him out too late at a country bar in Edison Park on a work night.

But months after Donald Markham was found dead and the police concluded his death was a suicide, the FBI got a tip that the narcotics unit supervisor might have been murdered. After reviewing the case, the FBI urged the police to reexamine the suicide finding — a task that would have been assigned to the Bureau of Internal Affairs, where Dina Markham was working when her husband died.

But police brass were concerned, sources previously have told the Sun-Times, that Dina Markham, who reported finding the body, had worked in internal affairs for years. That was until June 2016, when she was transferred to the Area North detectives division at Belmont and Western, which ruled her husband’s death a suicide. She was then reassigned to police headquarters.

Instead, the police referred the case to City Hall Inspector General Joseph Ferguson, whose staff is looking into how police handled the investigation of Donald Markham’s death.

Walsh —who at the time was under investigation for his role in the botched investigation of David Koschman’s death at the hands of a nephew of Mayor Richard M. Daley — has since retired to avoid being fired over the Koschman case.

Dina Markham died six days after two Sun-Times reporters came to her home to try to interview her about her husband’s death. Asked whether she was aware of the FBI’s investigation, she said she wasn’t. Asked about the police reports on her husband’s death, she told the reporters she didn’t need to see those, saying, “I don’t need to review it. I lived it.”

The Markhams have five children.

READ MORE:

• Chicago cop couple’s mysterious deaths under investigation, May 31, 2017

• Another mystery in case of Chicago cop couple’s mysterious deaths, June 16, 2017

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