Dirty Chicago cop gets 15
months in prison after flipping for feds
BY KIM JANSSEN
Ali Haleem, a Chicago Police
officer, used his skills as an undercover narcotics officer to serve as an
informant for feds in corruption cases.
A dirty Chicago cop who
proclaimed himself the “Mayor of 63rd Street” was sentenced to 15 months in
prison Wednesday for shaking down a tow truck driver and selling guns to a
convicted felon.
Ali Haleem was only spared a
longer sentence because of his “extraordinary degree of cooperation” with
prosecutors, U.S. District Judge John Z. Lee said.
Suspected of wrongdoing for
years, Haleem, 47, was allowed to keep his police job when he was busted by the
feds in 2008, so that he could use his skills as an undercover informant.
He wore a wire and helped build
public corruption cases against nine other defendants, including the campaign
treasurer for former State Sen. Rickey Hendon and two brothers who took bribes
to cut property taxes at the Cook County Board of Review.
Speaking Wednesday, an
emotional Haleem told the court that in an attempt to right his wrongs he had
taken “a 180 degree turn” by working for the FBI for four years following his
capture.
Apologizing to the judge, his
family and “the citizens of Chicago,” he said, “to say that I’m sorry is an
understatement.”
He is one of 10 former Chicago
cops to be convicted in recent years of extorting tow truck drivers at accident
scenes.
But Lee told him that by
selling two guns for $1,000 to a convicted felon at a South Side Dunkin’ Donuts
in 2007 and later selling another stolen gun at a White Castle, Haleem had
“increased the risk of violence” on Chicago’s streets.
The betrayal of his badge “put
more guns on the street and it ruptured the trust that the public is entitled
to have in the police,” the judge said.
Prosecutors had asked for a
sentence of 20 months.
But Lee said he took into
account Haleem’s work building trust between authorities and the Arab-American
community, his service in the National Guard and his otherwise “distinguished
career as a police officer” in sparing him.
He said prosecutors provided no
evidence to support their allegation that Haleem once offered $10,000 to an
alderman in an attempt to get a promotion in the police department.
Unmentioned at Wednesday’s
sentencing hearing were prior allegations that Haleem was paid by a drug
smuggling ring in 2001 to tip them off about investigations.
Both federal and internal
police probes of those alleged crimes went nowhere. And it wasn’t until Haleem
was unmasked as an informant in 2012 that he finally left the police
department.
