Starks' Hatchet Job

This has all the hallmarks of a set up, a cover up and a blame game writ large:

• The head of the Chicago Police Department’s scandal-plagued Special Operations Section was replaced today, signaling an effort by the interim superintendent to reform the unit and put his own stamp on the department.

  [...] The elite SOS unit has became an embarrassment for Mayor Daley. Officer Jerome Finnigan and six officers in the unit have been charged with operating a robbery ring from 2002 to 2006 and other officers are under investigation. They have been charged in state court, but federal authorities also are investigating.

  At a City Council hearing a few weeks ago, Starks acknowledged a need to rein in members of the elite unit after Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) called the behavior of Finnigan and his co-defendants “another form of abusive power.”

The FOP is actually stepping into this one, too:

• Donahue said it would be unfair to pin the SOS scandal on Guilliford.

  “The gentleman who’s in there hasn't been there that long,” Donahue said. “He has been taking steps to address identified problems at SOS. I don’t think he can be blamed for the scandal.”

Unfortunately, that's what seems to be happening. Sneed, Spielman and Main are doing the dirty work. Gulliford took over in July 2005. The SOS scandal had actually been brewing for three years at that point and the State's Attorney had wiretaps, forensic accountants and probably an empaneled Grand Jury looking into the scandal. When IAD started calling SOS Officers down for statements and such, Gulliford pulled the officers off the streets and did everything that would be expected of a Commander to limit the damage. When the whole thing blew up, he did everything asked and ordered from downtown.

And now he's playing the whipping boy for a Department desperate to protect people, some of them retired, who had more to do with bringing allegedly dirty cops back into a unit they had been banished from years before. It's a shame, but truth be told, no one expects anything different from downtown, especially with the current crop of people in charge and those left behind by Cline.