By Frank Main
Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO — Former Chicago cop Jerome Finnigan was sentenced to 12 years in prison Thursday after he admitted: “I did become a corrupt police officer.”
Dressed in an orange jail uniform, Finnigan said he and other rogue cops were following the “code of the street” when they ripped off drug dealers of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“My bosses knew what I was doing out there,” he added.
Finnigan, who once won the department’s highest award for bravery, also boasted that he took more than 1,000 guns off the street.
“I did more work in one year than some guys do in 30 years,” he told the court.
Still, he acknowledged bringing shame on himself and his family, including his wife and teenage son.
“I should never have taken any money,” he said.
Heavy drinking, fueled by stress over dealing with murders of children and other horrible crimes, may have contributed to his poor decisions, Finnigan said.
Finnigan faced a sentence of 10 to 13 years in prison. He will receive credit for the nearly four years he’s spent in jail and could be released in less than seven years if he gets time off for good behavior in prison.
U.S. District Judge Blanche Manning shaved a year off Finnigan’s maximum sentence because he cooperated with federal authorities after he was arrested in 2007. She said she also was impressed with Finnigan’s accomplishments earlier in his 20-year career.
But the judge said she found his crimes “unfathomable.”
In April, Finnigan pleaded guilty to a plot to have a fellow officer killed to keep him from talking to investigators. He also pleaded guilty to tax evasion for failing to report the cash he stole as income.
“You actually became the scourge yourself,” Manning said.
Finnigan, 48, was a member of the now-disbanded Special Operations Section, a citywide unit responsible for targeting narcotics dealers. He and a crew of SOS cops ransacked homes without warrants and conducted illegal traffic stops while shaking down criminals and innocent citizens alike.
Finnigan has admitted to a role in five robberies in 2004 and 2005. The crew of corrupt cops stole at least $600,000 - and Finnigan’s cut was more than $200,000, prosecutors say.
In 2007, another SOS officer, Keith Herrera, secretly recorded Finnigan plotting to kill an officer he thought was cooperating in the federal investigation of the crew. No one was killed and Finnigan insists he never intended to murder anyone.
“It was a ploy,” he told the court.
Finnigan also denied he was the ringleader of the robbery crew. The other officers snared in the investigation “are not puppets,” he said.
Herrera faces sentencing in November in federal court after pleading guilty to participating in three robberies.
Two officers have pleaded guilty to federal misdemeanors and seven other officers have pleaded guilty to charges in Cook County court.
Federal prosecutor Brian Netols said the SOS investigation is “effectively complete.” There was not enough evidence to charge any high-level police bosses with crimes, he said.
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