Fired as Chicago cops — and collecting city pensions
BY TIM NOVAK AND CHRIS FUSCO Staff Reporters / tnovak@suntimes.com June 24, 2013 12:08AM
Police Sgt. Nicholas M. Ortega's Chicago Police Department booking mug from a May 2000 arrest for telephone harassment. He wasn't convicted and has since retired.
COMING TUESDAY
Arrested again and again — but still a cop
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Updated: July 25, 2013 6:02AM
Chicago Police Sgt. Nicholas M. Ortega stood to lose everything — his job, his freedom, his pension.
Ortega was in uniform on duty in March 2005 when he met up with a group of cops at a bar and ended up driving the wife of a rookie officer he supervised back to a Northwest Side police station where they had sex in a basement office, police records show. He then drove her back to the bar.
Ortega, then 43, became the subject of a criminal sexual assault investigation by his own department, police records show. The Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to charge him, citing the woman’s “delayed outcry,” her not telling any officers at the station what happened and “insufficient evidence of force.”
Two years later, acting police Supt. Dana Starks moved to fire Ortega, placing him on suspension until the Chicago Police Board fired Ortega in June 2008.
Ortega went to court to get his job back but lost. Then, when he turned 50 — the minimum retirement age for police in Chicago — he took his pension, collecting $50,032 a year. Ortega, who declined to comment, Another 19 officers who were fired or quit to avoid dismissal will be eligible to collect pensions. They include Anthony Abbate, 44, who was convicted of aggravated battery and sentenced to two years of probation after beating a female bartender in an attack was caught on video, and Richard W. Bolling, 43, now in prison for reckless homicide and DUI in the hit-and-run death of a 13-year-old boy. Abbate was fired. Bolling resigned. Both were off-duty when they committed their crimes. Chicago cops can lose their pensions only if convicted of crimes committed in the line of duty. The retired officers now getting a pension who were fired or quit while facing dismissal include: “You ain’t locking my mother - - - - - - - son up; I’ll kick your ass,” Marshall, with the department 19 years at the time, told the officer, according to police reports. Marshall, now 54, was found guilty in 2007 of two of the counts. When she sought a new trial, prosecutors dropped the charges. In November 2009, the police board voted to fire Marshall, who couldn’t be reached for comment. Nine days later, she retired. She gets an $11,912 pension. Edwards says he missed the drug test because of a family emergency and passed it when he returned to work three days later. “I didn’t want to gamble on the police board,” he says. “I was 60 years old . . . I had maxed out on my pension. I could sense they wanted me out anyway. So I left.” “I didn’t have a weapon,” says Capers, whose pension is $62,253. “What I had in my hand was my telephone.”
