The Chicago Sun-Times reported Monday that the Chicago Police Board terminated seven officers over the past four months for a variety of infractions, some of which are pretty out there. Here are some highlights:
> William Whelehan was fired for throwing a bag of dog feces on his neighbor’s porch and pointing a gun at the neighbor after a 2009 argument about whether Whelehan’s dog had urinated on the neighbor’s lawn. Whelehan is also a defendant in the case Geinosky v. City of Chicago, in which he and other officers in Unit 253 of the CPD issued two dozen false parking tickets to Mark Geinosky. Whelehan had been recommended for termination in connection with the Geinosky investigation, but the feces/aggravated assault case came up first.
> Two officers were fired for carrying their guns around while drunk. Dale Prince shot a gun in his backyard while he was drunk and off-duty in 2007. When other (on duty) officers came to investigate the gunfire, they found seven unregistered guns in Prince’s home. Prince said he was investigating a possible intruder. Brian Gentzle was carrying his duty weapon around while drunk in 2008 when police stopped him and another armed man in an apartment building near Fullerton and Clybourn.
> Kevin Carey was driving drunk when he pointed a gun at a civilian in another vehicle. When on-duty officers arrived, they ordered Carey to drop his gun, which he refused to do. Carey, whose BAC was determined to be more than twice the legal limit, called the man he was chasing a racial epithet. He was charged with DUI and aggravated assault, and ultimately pled guilty to the DUI only.
> The weirdest one is Matthew Riley. He was present during an illegal raid of a home with officers from the disgraced Special Operations Section in 2004. Without a warrant, officers broke down a door and searched a Northwest side home and stole $13,000 from the residents. Ultimately, though, Riley wasn’t fired for his role in the illegal search but rather for allegedly lying to investigators about the presence of a supervisor on the scene.
