"In
18 years with the Chicago Police Department, the nation’s
second-largest, Jerome Finnigan had never been disciplined — although 68
citizen complaints had been lodged against him, including accusations
that he used excessive force and regularly conducted illegal searches.
Then,
in 2011, he admitted to robbing criminal suspects while serving in an
elite police unit and ordering a hit on a fellow police officer he
thought intended to turn him in. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison. 'My bosses knew what I was doing out there, and it went on and on,' he
said in court when he pleaded guilty. 'And this wasn’t the exception to
the rule. This was the rule.'
Mr. Finnigan is one of thousands of Chicago police officers who have
been the subject of citizen complaints over the years but have not been
disciplined by the department, according to data
released this month by the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit journalism
organization, and the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic of the University of
Chicago Law School. Such information is rarely made public and has come
to light in Chicago only after a decade-long legal battle by the institute and the clinic."
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