DID DRUG THEFT MAKE COP RICH?

An exhaustive investigation launched after 20 kilograms of cocaine were
stolen from a Chicago police warehouse has led to a retired officer who
bought a luxury car, gambled in Las Vegas and moved to Country Club Hills
after he left the force in 1999, a source said Thursday.

"We have him spending all kinds of money he should not have had," the source
said. "He was trying to cover up, but did not do a good enough job."

The man, who is expected to be indicted soon on federal charges, joined the
department in May 1976. He worked in the Evidence and Recovered Property
Section, which first inventoried the cocaine in 1997 after it was seized in
a drug bust.

The cocaine, valued at $400,000, was discovered missing in March 2001.

The man is suspected of stealing the cocaine sometime between 1997 and 1999.

The police, FBI and Internal Revenue Service have conducted a joint
investigation, speaking to hundreds of people.

Investigators have interviewed the man, and he knows he is the target of
their probe.

Other employees in the property room also were questioned, but were
eliminated as suspects because they did not seem to have unusual spending
habits.

Investigators have reviewed the man's tax returns. They think he was trying
to disguise his drug profits by reporting the money on tax returns as
gambling winnings, the source said.

He visited riverboat casinos in the Chicago area and tried his luck in Las
Vegas. Investigators have obtained records that document his gambling.

More than 100 people worked for the unit at the time the drugs were stolen,
officials said.

About a month after the cocaine was found missing in March 2001, police
Supt. Terry Hillard replaced the head of the Evidence and Recovered Property
Section, naming Toby Burton to a newly created commander's position.

The department has moved its evidence from the Criminal Courts Building at
26th and California, where the 20 kilograms of cocaine were stored. Evidence
is now secured in a state-of-the-art facility at Homan Square on the West
Side and tracked with bar codes.

Hillard ordered a top-to-bottom audit of the department's evidence. The
audit is still under way, a police spokesman said Thursday.

A 1996 audit found serious problems with the way property was being stored
by the department. At one point, $7 million in narcotics evidence was
missing, the audit said.

Since that audit, there have been other cases of missing property that gave
the department a black eye.

In February 2001, about $16,000 in jewelry turned up missing when a woman
went to claim her stolen rings, tennis bracelets and necklace. And the year
before, evidence in the trial of a man accused in the beating of Girl X was
mistakenly destroyed. The suspect, Patrick Sykes, was convicted earlier this
year.