Police Board Scandal Breaks

CrimeFile has the complaint up. Breaking News has the story:

• A Chicago police officer was charged with lying to FBI agents for denying he took cash from another officer in disciplinary trouble after promising he could influence the board weighing the other officer's punishment.

  Victor Brown, 36, a 12-year veteran, was arrested today by FBI agents and Chicago police internal affairs officers on multiple charges of making false statements when he was confronted by federal authorities in February.

  Brown is accused of pocketing a total of $4,500 in 2008 and 2009 from an officer who was facing serious disciplinary trouble. Brown claimed he had influence with the Chicago Police Board. But the officer he offered to help worked undercover with federal authorities, wearing a hidden recorder as he passed the cash and surreptitiously recording their telephone conversations.

This has been whispered around for quite a while now that someone was taking money for favorable verdicts at the Board hearings. This would explain quite a bit of their convoluted decisions where people would be reinstated three and four times. Brown is accused of being the go-between.

The trouble is the feebs seem unable to pull the trigger on who was getting the money. This could be huge because Police Board members aren't elected - they are chosen by one person without any oversight whatsoever. And those chosen, if caught dirty, don't really have a bargaining chip to give up.

What did John Kass call them? Oh yeah..."buffers."

And everyone reading knows what has happened to all the "buffers" lately.