A Chicago Police Board hearing on the proposed firing of two officers allegedly involved in a bogus-ticket-writing scheme wrapped up Tuesday, with city officials saying the cops disgraced the department and have to go, and the officers reiterating their claim that someone stole their citation books to further the harassment of an Orland Park motorist.
A handwriting expert called by the officers testified that it is “more probable than not” that someone other than Officers Horst Hegewald and Paul Roque filled out the seven false tickets at the heart of the hearing. Lawyers for the city called this “very weak” evidence that should be dismissed.
Twenty-four bad tickets in all were written against Mark Geinosky between 2007 and 2008. All were thrown out. But Geinosky, who testified that he thinks they were tied to his contentious divorce proceeding, is suing five police officers in the matter.
Hegewald and Roque are two of five officers named in a police investigation. Two other officers have, respectively, resigned and been terminated on unrelated charges. A fifth is serving with the Air National Guard in Afghanistan; he has not been notified of the charges.
The investigation leading to Tuesday’s hearing was not started until after the case was publicized in the Tribune’s What’s Your Problem? column in early 2009.
Jordan Shea, representing the Police Department, maintained in closing arguments that the case is a simple one, given that the tickets in question came from citation books issued to the two officers and that the tickets were written on nights they were on duty and in the general neighborhoods in which they were working. One of the rules they are charged with violating is bringing discredit on the department.
“If there is any act that can bring discredit on the Chicago Police Department, it’s the act of falsely accusing a citizen of an offense they did not commit,” Shea said.
But Dan Herbert, representing the police officers, assailed a police Internal Affairs investigation into the matter, calling it “slipshod.”
Herbert said the delay in starting the investigation hurt his ability to mount a defense, citing Geinosky’s own frustration as he tried without success to get police to look into the matter.
“You heard Mark Geinosky,” Herbert said in his closing argument. “He’s talking about how he got blown off by everybody. He had no other choice but to go to the Tribune.”
The officers took the stand as well, both reiterating that they did not write the bogus tickets and don’t know who did.
Hegewald, who testified that he was a “heavy ticket writer,” pointed to the fact that his citation book, from which the bad tickets to which he is linked came, had a gap of five months between the last tickets he wrote and the false ones. During that gap, he was writing tickets from another book.
Hegewald said he does not recall specifically but believes the book in question was turned in because it was out of date, and that whoever wrote the bogus tickets pulled it from a poorly monitored box containing other out-of-date citation books.
Roque, meanwhile, said his ticket book was not in his possession on the night the bad tickets were written. He said that on that night he went out on patrol with a third officer, prompting them to request an uncaged patrol car better suited for a three-man team. His book remained in a different car.
The case now moves to the Police Board, which will review transcripts and videotape of the two-day hearing and then hand down a ruling of whether the officers are guilty or not guilty of the charges.
Tuesday’s hearing featured Ellen Mulcrone Schuetzner, a forensic document examiner hired by Herbert on behalf of the officers. Mulcrone Schuetzner said she looked at known examples of their writing as well as the tickets in question.
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“I found that there were indications they may not have been written by the known authors,” she said.
Under cross-examination by Shea, representing the Chicago Police Department, Mulcrone Schuetzner acknowledged that her finding is low on the scale of determinations laid out in standards for document examiners.
Also appearing were several Chicago Police Department officers who supervised Hegewald and Roque. All expressed strong support for the officers, saying they would welcome them back if they are reinstated.
Lt. John Riordan, now assigned to the 8th District, also testified as to what he said are lax controls for police citation books, especially when they become obsolete. Old books must be turned in and new ones issued on a regular basis, usually because fines have increased. Officers are ordered to turn in old books. But Riordan said that usually means someone puts out a cardboard box, and officers toss the old books in.
“There’s no real control over it. They set up a box for people to throw them in as they walk by,” Riordan said. He also said it is common for officers to continue to write tickets using obsolete citation books, even if they have been told to turn them in.