Bill Hanhardt, Former Cop

I don't remember hearing of him before. It's come to my attention that he was a Chicago cop who was charged as a jewel-theft mastermind. His case is on Court TV "Mastermind" series at 10 PM eastern time Tuesday (2/22/05) night.

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, he was a former cop, very dirty, with his hands into everything. Chicago has a lot of those guys; cops who are more crooked than the guys they arrest. F'r instance, twice in my recent memory, Chicago cops have ripped off _drug dealers_ and hauled them away to jail/prison then took the very same drugs and sold the drugs themselves. Eventually they got caught also (because it is true no matter how smart you are and lucky, there is always someone who is smarter and luckier.) But that's not a big deal (getting caught) either, since police always have dirty judges as tools in reserve. At least a couple times, rumors have been that certain judges were known by police to be cocaine addicts, but to avoid exposure, they agreed to work with police as needed. So despite the rule which says the computer assigns each defendant to a judge based on that particular judge's case load and it is a random selection, there are some exceptions to that: if a defendant has a prior record, then as long as the judge who saw him before is still in office, that same judge will see him again, _or if the prosecutor_ [not defense counsel] asks for a manual assignment to a specific judge it gets done that way. That's why certain judges always get the high profile drug and murder cases; because police have caught them doing the same thing and hold it over their head. Chicago Tribune has explained all of that a few times, most recently in their five-part series a couple years ago called 'Prosecutorial Misconduct'. Of course, the Tribune should know about all that: their own archives of unpublished photos and stories has bailed them out a few times when some politician or judge or police officer has gotten snippy with the Tribune and threatened to file suit, etc. Tribune marches into court and says to the judge, "hey, your honor, remember that story and those pictures we never did get around to using? Do you think we should run the stories now?" Well, you know how the judge winds up ruling when the case gets heard. Such a laugh, Chicago politicians and police are. PAT]