Cop Faces Shoplifting Charges
Pam Zekman
(CBS) – Shoplifting has escalated in the city,
and the Chicago Police Department’s organized crime division is part of a task
force trying to stop it.
But now the 2 Investigators
have learned one of their own officers was charged with shoplifting after an
alert store security guard and cameras caught the cop in the act.
According to police reports, on
Oct. 18, Costco security saw a customer at its store at 1430 S. Ashland Ave.
take a bottle of wine off the shelf and place it in her shopping cart. She then
moved to the back of the store, where security saw her place the bottle in her
purse.
The customer then walked past
the cashiers and out of the store without paying and was stopped.
It turned out the customer was
off-duty police officer, Katrina Grey, 42, assigned to the organized crime
division. Police reports indicate that after Grey was caught she ran through
the Costco parking lot chased by store officials until she was caught and taken
into custody just down the street.
When Grey was asked to remove
all items from her purse that she had not paid for, she took out five bottles
of wine and a child’s pair of pink boots. The total cost would have been $115,
if she had paid.
Grey is a 14-year veteran of
the police department and makes $80,000 a year. Now, she’s on paid medical
leave pending the outcome of her court case on the misdemeanor retail theft
charges.
David Bradford, the head of
Northwestern University’s Center for Public Safety, says if one of his officers
had done this when he was a police chief, “in addition to being upset, I would
be very disappointed.”
“It creates big problem,” for
the Chicago police department, Bradford says. “The most important thing to do
is to make sure that this person is held accountable for their behavior.”
A police department spokesman
says Grey was stripped of her police powers after her arrest and she could face
further discipline, pending results of an investigation.
“While she currently is on
medical leave, that is unrelated to this incident and has no impact on the
possibility of additional discipline,” the spokesman said.
Grey did not return phone calls
to CBS 2. Her attorney, Thomas Needham,
says Grey, who was deployed in Iraq for a year, has “earned a fine reputation
among her colleagues.”
“Unfortunately,” Needham adds,
Grey “is now in the midst of some significant personal and medical problems.
Once she has addressed these issues, her inexplicable and uncharacteristic
behavior on October 17, 2014 will be easier for people to understand.”
