A Chicago police internal affairs investigator has testified before a federal grand jury about a memo he wrote questioning whether his bosses ignored alleged misconduct that grew into one of the biggest corruption scandals to hit the Police Department, the Chicago Tribune reports. Christopher Taliaferro, testified April 17 before a grand jury probing the Special Operations Section, an elite unit that had wide latitude to search for guns and drugs in gang-infested neighborhoods.
Taliaferro’s testimony indicates that federal authorities continue to investigate whether Police Department higher-ups allowed officers to incur hundreds of complaints of illegal searches and robberies without stopping them. One of the unit’s officers, Jerome Finnigan, is the alleged leader of a ring that falsely arrested and robbed people for years. On a broadcast last night, Keith Herrera, one of the accused officers, told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that supervisors in SOS routinely encouraged officers to lie on police reports to cover up unauthorized searches.
Link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-sos-grand-jury-02-jun02,0,7266621.story