By Mark J. Konkol
Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO — Art Bilek is the oldest crime fighter still on the case in Chicago.
Ask him about catching bad guys and he’ll rattle off details of decades-old investigations — the exact address of long-gone betting parlors and the color of a dead girl’s shoes.
The 80-year-old grandpa arrested Al Capone’s cousin, the late Rocco Fischetti, for running a floating craps game; busted Mafia “dons,” and rooted corruption from the Cook County sheriff’s and Cicero police departments.
As a Chicago detective, he even got a rapist to confess by praying with the man in an interrogation room.
These days, Bilek heads the Chicago Crime Commission. He took over in January and quickly made a splash.
Just two days after Bilek revived the commission’s famed Most Wanted List, someone who saw it called the FBI to rat out Sherry Halligan, an alleged murderer who had been on the run for six years.
“Not a bad start,” Bilek says with a grin.
Now, Bilek says he has his sights set on helping police disrupt the new breed of mobsters terrorizing Chicago -- gang-banging drug dealers.
“The drug lords don’t have any rules. They don’t have any decency. They don’t have any morality. They are evil personified. They’re as bad as people can be. They’re poison to the community,” Bilek says in a gruff, fearless voice you wouldn’t expect from your average octogenarian.
He’s not afraid of murdering mobsters and street scum, never has been.
“I’m sure if I harass them directly enough that may be a concern to me,” Bilek said. “But I don’t have a family anymore to worry about. So, if I see a point where I can score a blow against them, I’m going to do it.”
He has always felt that way.
Bilek grew up in Rogers Park. Both his grandfathers were cops.
And every evening over supper the talk revolved around the “crime of the day” splashed on the front pages of Chicago’s newspapers.
“Some of that police gene was in me,” Bilek said. “I’ve always wanted to help people.”
He was the first in his family to get a college education, graduating with a master’s degree in sociology from Loyola University.
After graduation, he was drafted into the Army and worked as a “special agent” in the intelligence corps during the Korean War.
When he returned to Chicago, he knew there was only one job for him: Chicago cop.
“When I told my mom I wanted to be a patrolman, she cried,” he said. “She said, ‘How can you have a master’s degree and want to be a policeman? How are you going to live?’ ”
That was 1955, when the annual salary for a Chicago cop was $4,500.
But Bilek didn’t care about money.
“Being a detective was the ideal place to nurture and grow that sense of responsibility to help others because I was with people every day who were victims of crime,” he said. “It made my resolve deeper, my commitment deeper and more sincere.”
Bilek met the late, famed newspaperman Mike Royko at a crime scene when Royko worked the night shift for the Daily News.
They became friends and drinking buddies. Over shots of Green Chartreuse at Gennaro’s Restaurant on Taylor Street, Bilek and Royko would talk philosophy, debate Catholic dogma and, of course, swap stories about crooked cops and politicians.
Royko had a lust for uncovering corruption in his columns. And Bilek enjoyed taking aim at bad guys, whether they were street hoods or crooked cops.
After being sworn in as former Cook County Sheriff Richard Ogilvie’s chief of police in 1962, Bilek says he fired 92 percent of the force because they were either corrupt or clout-heavy do-nothings.
He changed the sheriff’s department’s training procedures and helped designed new uniforms including the badge sheriff’s police officers wear today.
When Ogilvie was elected governor, Bilek expanded his police training program into a college-level curriculum called “Administration of Criminal Justice” -- which was added to the curriculum at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“Believe it or not that’s the father of the 800 degree programs in the United States,” Bilek said. “That’s how criminal justice began as a separate academic discipline.” Bilek retired for a while and authored a pair of books. After his second wife died of cancer last year, he welcomed the chance to get back to crime fighting again.
“I’m doing this because I want to accomplish something, not because I want a job. I don’t need this job,” Bilek said. “As you get older you discover how little a job title means. What’s important is you do the job well. That’s all that matters.”
Copyright 2010 Chicago Sun-Times, Inc.