City of Chicago pays nearly $8 million a year to cops it tried to fire
BY TIM NOVAK AND CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporters / tnovak@suntimes.com June 24, 2013 1:34AM
Chicago police Sgt. Will D. Redmond's 2003 mugshot, taken after the McHenry Police Department charged him with aggravated assault. McHenry Police Dept.
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Updated: July 25, 2013 6:02AM
T he Chicago Police Department is paying nearly $8 million a year to 99 officers and other employees it once tried to fire.
The two highest-paid: Lt. Richard J. Guerrero and Sgt. Will D. Redmond, each making $115,644 a year.
Guerrero, a 31-year department veteran, nearly lost his job eight years ago when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for making “approximately 10” harassing calls to a woman whose number he got from a police report. He was sentenced to court supervision, and then-police Supt. Phil Cline moved to fire him in 2006.
The Chicago Police Board instead suspended Guerrero for a year. It also noted his internal department record, which shows Guerrero was given a two-day suspension in 2004 and a reprimand in 2002 — in each case for a “domestic altercation / incident off-duty.” Those incidents led to Guerrero being demoted from deputy chief of patrol to lieutenant.
“I’m grateful to the police board for giving me my job,” says Guerrero, 55. “We make mistakes and fumbles . . . I don’t believe I did anything wrong. . . . It’s more of a perception problem.”
Redmond, with the department 27 years, was arrested in 2003 for battery and aggravated assault after pulling his service weapon on two women at an auto-repossession company in McHenry that had seized his girlfriend’s car, according to police reports. He also allegedly pushed one of the women to the ground.
Cline tried to get Redmond fired for violating four department rules, including unnecessary use of a weapon, maltreatment of the women and bringing discredit on the department. But the police board dismissed the case, noting that he wasn’t convicted in court . There’s no record of Redmond, 50, having been disciplined by the superintendent, and the criminal case against him in McHenry County has been expunged.
