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Transcript

Chicago Police Officer Charlie Tousas · NYPD Through The Looking Glass

0:00
SPEAKER_01: In one of your housing projects, you were saying that you had a railroad that backed right up to it.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: That must have kept you busy.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Rockwell Gardens.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: Rockwell a kid.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: They used to hit everything.
0:09
SPEAKER_00: They would take, you know, the old I thought they were like policemen.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, take a bag of shit, you can throw it away later.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: But they hit uh they hit one of the box cars and they had them big 200-pound wheels of cheese that actually rolled the yeah, they were rolled, they rolled it off and it rolled over a kid and killed them.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm retired NYPD detective Vic Ferrari, and welcome to NYPD through the Looking Glass podcast, where you get unique insight into the New York City Police Department.
0:32
SPEAKER_01: Before we get started, I encourage you to check out my Amazon author page where you'll find my series of behind-the-scenes NYPD books, their$10 paperback or$299 ebook download, including my latest NYPD behind the blue wall of silence.
0:43
SPEAKER_01: Today's guest is a retired Chicago police officer who served 24 years in the Windy City.
0:48
SPEAKER_01: Charlie Tusis, welcome to the show.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, sir.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: Charlie, please tell our listeners a little something about yourself.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: Started in 1981, went to 2000 uh started as a foot soldier, worked my way up to undercover work, and that was as high as I ever got.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: My claim to fame is that I had probably the worst record, the most well, until a guy that went to jail beat me.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: I had the highest amount of complaints ever registered against one police officer in the Chicago police department.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: Knowing what I know, that must mean you were doing your job.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, yes, I that you know, spare the rod, spoil the child kind of thing.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: That's uh that was my motto.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: And and you gotta understand, I was basically to be in my position, you gotta be protected.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: So I was doing the work that they wanted me to do.
1:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, they're the street, the street violence masked the corruption.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: And it's still going on today.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: Charlie, how large is the Chicago Police Department?
1:45
SPEAKER_00: How many members?
1:46
SPEAKER_00: 13,000.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: I think they're down to about seven or eight now.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: And when you first came on the job, what kind of guns did you guys carry?
1:52
SPEAKER_00: Smith and Wesson, we can have any kind of automatic.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: I used to carry uh 1911 and I carried a 38 uh special.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: You could carry on duty any kind of semi-automatic you wanted?
2:03
SPEAKER_00: When I came on, yeah.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: As long as you qualify with it, you know, my my choice was the 1911.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Charlie, during your time with the Chicago Police Department, how many housing projects did did you guys cover?
2:14
SPEAKER_00: Everyone in the city.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: We were in uh we were in the public housing unit.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: So there was a north and a south.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: So if it was CHA, we could go there.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: And which one was the worst?
2:24
SPEAKER_00: In those days, it had to be either Rockwell Guard or Henry Horner, and it was a toss-up.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: Cabrini, well, Cabrini got all the attention because they were on the Gold Coast.
2:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, you stand on the roof of uh Cabrini Green, you could see the the lake.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you spent most of your career working in Chicago's infamous Cabrini Green Housing Project.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: Tell us what that was like.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, our office was literally in one of the buildings.
2:45
unknown: Oh man.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: You know, 365 Oak.
2:48
SPEAKER_00: If you do you could do a uh gangland Cabrini Green, and it'll give you there's a couple of them, but the longest one, I think a 40-minute one, will actually show, you know, gangbangers showing their guns, shooting, beating.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, it it was when Daly got it, or when Daly came into office, it wasn't it was bad, but it wasn't that bad.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, he let it deteriorate to the point where he got to knock it down and sell off the property.
3:15
SPEAKER_01: I saw a documentary, that gangland, that talked about Cabrini Gang Green and the gangs, and they said that when they stomped someone's head into the concrete, they called it a PhD or a pumpkin head deluxe.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: A pumpkin head.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: That was comp pumpkin heads, a V that you know, they give you a V, depending on how serious the violations of the gang was.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: You can do anything from a pumpkin head to getting shot in the leg or in the arm.
3:37
SPEAKER_00: How many residents lived in Cabrini Green?
3:39
SPEAKER_00: Legitimately, I think it was like 30,000.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: Actually, it was all almost 60.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: And how many murders a year during your time did the projects average in the city of Chicago?
3:49
SPEAKER_00: Well, the city itself used to do like a thousand, and in the projects, I'd say about 300 throughout the city.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: And that that doesn't count the shootings and the beatings and stabbings.
3:59
SPEAKER_00: You were you were in the tens of thousands.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: I was watching you in uh Niles' interview, and you said you've witnessed 12 homicides go down right in front of you.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: On view.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, we we get out of the car, we walk.
4:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, we didn't have a car.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, my my first shooting was about three months into my stint in the projects where we were walking up on a gangway and there was a bad cart or a bad dice game.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: A guy comes running out of the gangway with the money, and a guy looks right behind him and shoots in our direction.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: So he was my first legitimate shooting in the Chicago police department.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: Didn't you have a shooting go down in front of you where the guy killed a guy who had killed his brother a year before?
4:38
SPEAKER_01: He was like hunting him down?
4:39
SPEAKER_00: That was uh I was in Mark's car when I was on one of my sabbaticals from the projects when they yeah, they used to they used to send me, they used to send me away every once in a while.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Uh to cut well, that was just it.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: You know, most guys they would fire or put up on charges.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: Me, they would just send me away to get me away from the people who were complaining about me.
4:57
SPEAKER_00: So I'm sitting in the light, 59th in Ashland.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Guy gets out of his car, walks right up to the driver, and empties a six-shooter in him.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: Then we just pull out, he drops the gun and puts his ass.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: What are you doing?
5:06
SPEAKER_00: He goes, he said he said, uh guy shot my brothers.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: I can't take a chance, I wouldn't see him again.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: How many street gangs were there in Chicago or the projects?
5:13
SPEAKER_00: In the project, like black, white, hispanic?
5:16
SPEAKER_00: Which which ones you want to know about?
5:18
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm guessing the housing projects is more black and Hispanic.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: Mostly black.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: You had uh the disciples, you had this black gangster disciples, the gangster disciples, the disciples, the stones, the peacestones, the black peace stone nation.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: You had the black souls, can I say vice lords?
5:35
SPEAKER_00: What else?
5:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh the four corner hustlers were real big.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: They had one like one or two buildings, but they were probably one of the strongest gangs on the West Side.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: And what was the drug of choice in the Chicago housing projects?
5:46
SPEAKER_00: When I first got there, it was uh white powder.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Cocaine was powder still.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't uh crack hadn't been invented yet.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: So cocaine was the big deal.
5:54
SPEAKER_00: And I'm guessing you had a couple of dust spots?
5:56
SPEAKER_00: Every building was literally set up to sell drugs.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: And they were they were making money.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: Those uh Harrison Quartz was one of the smaller projects, but they would do about 10 to 15,000 bags a day because it's literally right off the expressway.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: People would jump off the expressway, drive up to the dealer, he'd give them the bag, they get right back on the expressway.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: Like a good drug spot, how much could they make a day?
6:18
SPEAKER_00: 25,000, 30,000.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: Hey.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, they had a they had a weed spot.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: My weed spot was by the uh was Black Souls.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: There was two of them.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: One on the west side, one on the south side.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: The south side one was off one block off of Halstead on Green.
6:34
SPEAKER_00: And you would actually have bus drivers, so they sold the hydro.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: So you would have bus drivers drive up the street.
6:40
SPEAKER_00: It was they had a unique situation.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: They had a vacant house where they would fortify, and you break into it.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they'd sell right in front of you, and then by the time you got in, you get in there, they got nothing.
6:52
SPEAKER_00: And you wonder how they do it because they're selling 20, 30 bags a minute.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: I mean, on them on a Saturday night, they were lined up, and the buses would come, trucks, anything, city workers, everything.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: Actually, they caught a policeman by in there once.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: So I well, I had to go on Halstead Street with binoculars one day and I set up on the house what they were doing, the house next door would you they'd sell 10 bags at a time, and they'd throw the money across from house to house.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: So now when I went to hit the house, they threw everything into the house next door, and that's the house I hit.
7:21
SPEAKER_00: And they were loaded.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: They had like five pounds of weed, a bunch of money, a bunch of guns, and it was some old lady.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: But they were doing, well, I got like, I think about 40,000 to take for the day out of that house.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: Is it true that the housing projects were so bad during your time there that the elderly used to get charged by the gangbangers to ride the elevator?
7:40
SPEAKER_00: We were sent to Henry Horner because of the complaints.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: Uh you had to pay a quarter to ride the elevator.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: All the lights were off except for light in the elevator.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: So when we walked in, the guy with the gun was outside the door.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: There was a guy on the elevator, and that that's it was 25 cents to ride the elevator.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Not counting the dope there, man.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: That was for the shorties.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: That was the shorties money.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: In one of your housing projects, you were saying that you had a railroad that backed right up to it.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: That must have kept you busy.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: Rockwell Gardens.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: Rockwell, a kid, they used to hit everything.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: They would take, you know, the old- I thought they were like policemen.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: You know, take a bag of shit, you could throw it away later.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: But they hit uh they hit one of the boxcars and they had them big 200-pound wheels of cheese that actually rolled the yeah, they were rolled, they rolled it off and it rolled over a kid and killed him.
8:25
SPEAKER_00: It killed a guy?
8:26
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: Little guy, like a 10, 12-year-old kid, they rolled the cheese off, and the cheese rolled, because it was a steep hill.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: It was up in a bankment, and it rolled down and killed a kid.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: Didn't you have a case with that railroad yard?
8:38
SPEAKER_00: They got a they got a bunch of guns.
8:39
SPEAKER_00: There was uh uh this was in the Alt Geld Gardens.
8:43
SPEAKER_00: They hit a boxcar, they'd had 10 45 automatics go into some gun shop.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it to understand in the early 80s how it worked, the detectives, you know, the guys with the suits never went in there.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: Very rarely would you see a guy with a suit.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: And the guys in the uniforms, every time you see them, they were kind of scary.
9:04
SPEAKER_00: So we get a call from the ATF.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: Listen, they stole 10 guns, they're in the Alcat Garden somewhere.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: So we go out there, you know, park the cars door to door.
9:11
SPEAKER_00: We find the guns, all of them, in the box, the whole thing.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: And we asked the guy, he goes, I got a cousin who works for the railroad.
9:18
SPEAKER_00: You know, you got a hundred cars.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: You got 100 cars.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: My son worked for the railroad, and he's they're a mile long, these cars.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: And how are you?
9:25
SPEAKER_00: I said, You just happen to hit that one?
9:27
SPEAKER_00: He goes, No, my cousin.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: My cousin told us which car, where it was gonna stop, and they got it.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: Well, you were known for taking guns off the streets.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: Tell us about that, how you acquired that six cents.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: I carried a gun since I was 15.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: I know the look.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: When the police looked at me, I guarantee I had that look, but I was quick.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: They couldn't catch me.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, it was like one of those things where the hair on the back of my neck would stand up and I'd say, you know, that guy's got a gun.
9:52
SPEAKER_00: I know he's got a gun.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: It'd stop him, and it was it was crazy.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: I just had that neck.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: And you got shot two times during your time with the Chicago police.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I did.
10:02
SPEAKER_00: It was uh first time was by a sniper out of the building, it was a ricochet from the ground, hit me in the knee, and the second time a guy came up to me at a light and put a gun to my head.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: And he I pushed it away and got shot in the hand.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: What happened to him?
10:14
SPEAKER_00: Died of shock.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, there was a there was a rule on the police department in the 80s.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: Shoot a policeman, you gotta die.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's basically that was it.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: Were you involved in any other shootings?
10:27
SPEAKER_00: About 19.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: Really?
10:28
SPEAKER_00: Were you trading rounds with a perp?
10:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh, basically a lot of the time we were, you know, I wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger only because of where we were.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: You know, a guy pulls a gun out of his waistband, I just opened fire.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we we got it there's a case going now, a civil case, where a guy was chasing a kid with a gun.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: And the kid gets to a fence, gets like ducks halfway in the fence, he drops the gun, and then he just turned on the copper real quick, and the copper lit him up.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: And now they're suing the copper because he didn't have a gun.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: But he had he dropped the gun.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: See, it it when I would chase you, if you had a gun, I would just yell out, turn around and you're dead.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: And that to me was enough warning to I says, drop it.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yang, I said, turn around and I'll kill you.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: And you know, uh very few people didn't heed that warning.
11:17
SPEAKER_01: And Charlie, New York City has some real shitty jails, like I'm sure you heard of Rikers Island, and then in Manhattan, you've got the tombs, which is the criminal court beneath Manhattan Court, and then, you know, Bronx and Brooklyn Central Book.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: And tell us about the Cook County jail.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: They just when I turned my TV off, they just had a thing about Cook County jail where they're smuggling drugs in, they're lacing paper like letters, books, and they've had like what, a dozen overdoses this year alone.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: They stink, they're real bad.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: I used to go interview people there sometimes, and I, you know, like I said, I used I told uh Niles the same thing, I'm too pretty to go to jail.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: And once I was in there interviewing, they slammed that door behind you, and you start telling, you know, where other guys, these guys are going in there for a party.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: But usually the drugs got in through the uh guards.
12:05
SPEAKER_00: Guards would carry them.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my brother worked on Rikers Island, he said the same thing.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: He said probably 75% of the drugs comes in through the correction offices.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: Well mm-hmm.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: Statesville, the day I got shot, uh, they the the word got out that I was shot in the head instead of in the hand, and they actually had to lock the place down.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: Because half the people in there were because of me.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, all the gangers.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, they did.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: They were fucking hooting and hollering, and I was laughing because the the guy came to the fucking hospital to talk to me, and he says, you know, you caused a riot.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: I says, Where?
12:41
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Statesville.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: He says, they're all happy that you that they think you're dead.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: Charlie, every police department or precinct's got characters, and you once worked with a couple of 300-pound cops who both of them had narcolepsy.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: Uh it was, you know, they one of them was a good guy, Lenny.
12:59
SPEAKER_00: Lenny was about uh 350, almost 400.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: His head, he had a 10-gallon head that literally was like 10 gallons.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: And he would eat, come to work with like a fucking shopping bag, was his lunch.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: And then he had Byron who would sit behind the desk and he'd have his arms up on it.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: It looked like an elephant sleeping behind the desk.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: And he was a he got fired for smoking crack.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't figure out how he still weighed that much m that much.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: He was they were in a car.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, we'd go to Rush Street to cool out to get away from the criminals.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: And their car was literally, Byron was driving, and the car was in gear, he had his foot on the brake, his foot eased off the brake, and the car was going by itself.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: Literally had to get out of the car, jump out, slam on the brakes, and put it in park.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: We were dying.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: Me and my two guy partners were dying.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: We were laughing so hard.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: Charlie, I watched some of your interviews when you go into the corruption of the Chicago the Chicago city government, and you said that every promotion to become a sergeant or a detective was up to an alderman, state senate, a congressman, etc.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, they had their uh like Madigan had his fingers in everything daily, definitely.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: They look at the list, excuse me, very few guys got promoted on merit.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: They had to make some of them because some of these guys were geniuses.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: Why they were on a police department, I have no idea.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: But the alderman had one.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: They give count the city council one, they give, you know, the mayor.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: Madigan had as many as he wanted.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you make lieutenant, sergeant, sergeant especially, wasn't that big a deal.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: They gave that to the aldermen.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: But when you got up to the commanders and the chiefs, that was either the mayor or Madigan.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: And you you had you knew a judge who used to have sex in his chambers and let Ray the bailiff adjudicate his cases.
14:43
SPEAKER_01: Could could you go into that?
14:44
SPEAKER_01: I found that fascinating.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: Ranch 61, 61st and Racine, who's 7th District, on the second floor.
14:51
SPEAKER_00: You would go up there and the judge was like, he was a big drinker.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: And he was a big thief.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: He actually went to the penitentiary.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: Ray was his 350-pound bailiff.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: Ray had pockets sewn into his pants.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: He had a divorce, and he didn't want his wife to know he had money, so he'd left thousands of dollars.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: And his Denise, where the stop, that's where his pocket stopped.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: And he had all his money in cash and he carried it with him.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: And the one day we were in the court, and I used to be undercover, so I had the long hair.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: I was kind of drunk when I was in court, so I'm sitting in the back with the criminals.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: And this Mexican kid stands up, and he said, He said, That judge finds me guilty, I'm killing that motherfucker.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: So he stands up and he's got a pistol in his waistband.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, holy shit, I can't let this guy kill the judge.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: So I tackle him, and all the guys in the front row knew me.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: So I grabbed the gun and I threw it toward the front row.
15:43
SPEAKER_00: So we wrestle the guy to the ground.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: The judge literally jumps back, grabs his uh bailiff, because he was doing the bailiff, grabs her, we go in the back.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: The sergeant, you know how them little three-foot things are on TV, you can see the gate.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, all 350 pounds of him tries to hurdle this thing and falls flat on his face.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: We lock this guy up.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: So the judge writes, it's in my jacket.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: A three-piece letter, a three-page letter.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: What a great guy.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: I saved lives.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: I did this, I did that.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: And he calls me in his chambers next time I was in there.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: He said, Listen, you're a sergeant.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: He says, You are guaranteed a great spot.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take care of you, blah, blah, blah.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: So I'm sitting here with my wife one day watching TV on a Sunday night watching 60 Minutes.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: And who's on the fucking 60 Minutes in the cameo restaurant telling a fucking lawyer in a recorded booth, if you don't give me 10 grand, I'm putting your client under the jail.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: So there goes my clout.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: And Ray, the bailiff?
16:37
SPEAKER_00: What happened to him?
16:38
SPEAKER_00: Ray, you know, those guys, they survive.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, the judge would he would call all the bullshit cases, you know, get rid of all the bullshit cases, and at the end, they'd have all the lawyers up there making deals with Ray.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: Ray would put the the thing, put the uh robe on and sit in the judge, sit in the judge's chair and adjudicate how much money they were gonna get.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: And he'd split it with the judge.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna throw some names, the Chicago politicians at you, and I just want your opinion.
17:03
SPEAKER_01: All right.
17:03
SPEAKER_01: So Richard J.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: Daly.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: Which one?
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Big Dick or Little Dick?
17:07
SPEAKER_00: Big Dick.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: Big Dick, federal informant, big time master thief, because he never got caught.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: His claim to fame was we uh when I first got on, I was making like 14 or 15,000 a year.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it was.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: And somebody actually asked him, he said, Do you think that's enough money to survive in the city of Chicago as a policeman?
17:25
SPEAKER_00: He said, They're the police, they should know how to make money.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: All right, next name, Jane Byrne.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: Great person.
17:30
SPEAKER_00: Gave us overtime, took care, loved the police, loved us.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: She had a little drinking problem, but we're not gonna hold that against her.
17:37
SPEAKER_00: Well, she actually came to the projects to make a difference, and then when she learned what was going on, she got the fuck out of there as fast as she could.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: All right, little dick, Richard M.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: Daley.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: Crooked as a fucking uh there's we got a street here called Archer Avenue that runs on an angle.
17:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's there's a guy.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: Did you ever hear of John Burge?
17:56
SPEAKER_00: All right, John Burge was a warrior.
17:59
SPEAKER_00: He did what he was told.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: Little Dick was the state's attorney at the time and wanted to be mayor, so they needed a clear-up rate.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of homicide, 11, 1,200, whatever, shootings, stabbings, get them over with.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: So Burge did what he could to clear up the murder rate to get it because it was like 10, 15%.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: He got it up to 50, 60%.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: So what happens is they say, oh, you're brutal, you're beating people.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: One of his guys says, no, no, he told us to do this, blah, you know, some it was always a rat in a fucking group.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, Burge didn't say a word, took it like a man.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: When it was Daly's turn to testify, he said he had a, you know, he said he had a yak attack.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: He couldn't stand up, he had vertigo, you know, like somebody put an egg beater in his ear and scrambled his fucking brain.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: So he never, well, Burge never said a word.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: He went to jail, took his punishment, came out.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he died of cancer eventually.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: But and that was his claim to fame was he'd throw you out of the bus in a minute.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: He hated the fucking police and everything they stood for.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: All right.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: Lori Lightfoot.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: Beetlejuice?
19:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna, I I heard this from a guy, but it was supposedly on the detail.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: But Lori was lived with well, she was married to another woman.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And they had like a 12 or 13-year-old daughter, and the daughter comes running out of the house one day and goes, My mommies are fighting.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, Lori fell in love, I guess, with one of the female bodyguards or security guards and got caught.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: And I they guess they beat the shit out of each other.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: But as as a mayor, she was a total zero.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: What did what did you think of Blogo, Rob Blogoevich?
19:37
SPEAKER_00: I was actually his bodyguard at a function one time.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: I think Blog, I mean his his wife was my financial advisor for a while.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: I gave her some money, she lost it.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: So we yeah, good investments.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: Anyways, he was he was a great guy, you know, uh down.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: Again, remember what I told you about splitting the pot.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: You don't split, you go to jail.
19:59
SPEAKER_00: And finally, Bob's big boy, J.B.
20:01
SPEAKER_00: Pritzgard.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: You mean you mean Fred Flintstone?
20:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, Fred, another guy I knew as bodyguards, because they're all Chicago policemen, he bought a house on the Gold Coast and he bought the house next door to him, took out the toilets, claimed it is a uninhabitable property, and he did that so he can control who lives next door to him.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: He's still, I mean, the guy's a clown.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: But people, this is Chicago, and don't nobody votes that the Democrats voted a guy that was in jail waiting for murder, gun, and drug charges, and he won as a fucking state representative.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: So that that'll give you an idea of what you know the mentality of the Chicago voter.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: And you know, Charlie, corruption in Chicago went past City Hall and into the police department.
20:47
SPEAKER_01: Could you go into that a little?
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, in the late 80s, early 90s, you know, when the numbers went away, the police department ran the numbers.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: They they controlled it in their district.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: There was a couple, there was a uh big-time deputy chief and an alder woman who controlled the numbers.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: You're talking about the illegal lottery.
21:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, that's when the lottery came in, a lot of that shit went away.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: So they needed a new cash cow.
21:12
SPEAKER_00: And they were, you know, they were dabbling in taking payoffs from the drug guys, but I named Sanford Neal was the 15th district commander.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: He had a guy, Rick Miller, Sergeant Miller, working for him.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: Rick was not implicated, but suspected of about a dozen murders, maybe more.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: Sarge?
21:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, anyways, what happened was that on the south uh Fluky Stokes, I don't know if you ever heard of Fluky Stokes.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: He was like one of the biggest drug dealers in the city.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Fluky Stokes on the South Side, Styx, on the West Side, Monroe Banks on the Northwest Side.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: They were all murdered.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: And the department decided that you know what?
21:49
SPEAKER_00: We could do this better.
21:50
SPEAKER_00: So the 15th district ran the drug trade on the west side.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: The police department.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: So you had to be careful who you arrested.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, after I locked up, I got their dope.
21:59
SPEAKER_00: I got their gun.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: guns and I went right to the FBI because I didn't know it was that, you know, they took my guy said it's a stash house.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: So I drew the stash house and I didn't think that this was all police dope.
22:10
SPEAKER_00: And that's what somebody told me and said, hey man, you just hit the you just hit the 15th district stash house.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: So I went to the FBI and I gave them the it was a uh like a uh like a hotel.
22:21
SPEAKER_00: It was like a hundred room hotel one way in, one way out and they ran all the drugs out of there.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: Because when they hit the place the one day they found Rick Miller in there on duty with a squad car out in front uh Willie Penn found in bed with a hooker in one of the apartments and the day after they hit the place Sanford Neal's wife got caught at the airport with over a million dollars in a duffel bag on her way to their summer house in Tennessee.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: Did all these guys go to jail?
22:46
SPEAKER_00: No, Rick Miller went to jail.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: How'd they explain getting caught with a million dollars?
22:50
SPEAKER_00: You're in Chicago.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: You ain't got to explain shit.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: Look at that I mean you can what I'm telling you now people are probably sitting out there going, oh but this guy's full of shit.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: No Google it.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Ariose Meets the mob was on Chicago Avenue and they were supplying the drugs to the police department who was distributing it.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: Rick Miller's kids had twins unsold to the disciples and one sold to the vice lord in the bulk they gotta believe me.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: You can google you I weren't you afraid for your life they tried to kill me a bunch of times that's why I was in so many shootings.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: I used to call it uh the get a motherfucker up off me the first six or seven rounds where we're meant you know it's easy to shoot somebody when they ain't shooting back at you.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: But I'd always make sure that I had ample firepower and I was always ready.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: This guy Nedra Killer Miller that you said had 12 bodies on him the sergeant how much time did he get?
23:44
SPEAKER_00: Well they let him out he had diabetes real bad I think he did two or three uh years they cut both his legs off and then wheeled him yeah oh yeah they wheeled him out back into the street told him get the fuck out of here but you've got to remember he's still getting his pension.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: Still alive?
23:58
SPEAKER_00: No he's still getting his I don't know now but when he was in jail he was still getting his pension.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: All right Charlie I want to throw a couple of names of a couple of Chicago cops turned celebrities.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: Steve Wilkes from the Jerry Springer fame never met the guy really he was a he was a north sider uh we were in the projects you gotta understand we I worked with probably thirty people max so unless I met you in a bar or something I didn't know who you were Dennis Farina great guy Dennis not the police but a great guy Dennis right he was we used to call you know he used to get all dressed up go to Rush Street him and this other Greek guy used to walk around all dressed up drink have a good time and uh he got discovered he definitely looked apart oh yeah yeah he was a good he was a good undercover uh detective or a gangster either one Charlie since the days of Al sh Al Capone Chicago was famously known for organized crime I want to throw a couple of mobsters names at you see if you have any stories about him or if you met him so from the Grand Avenue crew and I've always been fascinated with this guy Joey the clown Lombardo.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: Good guy never bothered I I met him and one of his lieutenants one day and it was because of a case that uh I locked up one of their boys and all they wanted to know was it would the guy raped the girl got out of joint it was a made guy raped abroad got out and he was looking for lawyer money because he hadn't been out that long.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: So the first thing they only asked me one question did he do it and I said yep because this guy was complaining he said that the girl he raped her she had consensual sex with him she wanted it rough you know so he knocked one of her teeth out broke her nose shit like that.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah so I told him I said no I said this guy's a fucking rapist he's a piece of shit and I met him through a guy that I used to work out with.
25:42
SPEAKER_00: Did you have any interactions with the Spilatro brothers?
25:44
SPEAKER_00: No no they were Northsiders uh a lot of my friends some of my current friends used to hang out with him.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: All right so from the Southside 26th crew the Calabriese brothers Frank uh Frank Sr.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: or Nikki I met Nikki but no you know I couldn't deal with these guys too much because they were always under uh surveillance Ronnie Jarrett was from that crew he was a vicious and creative killer Ronnie was second good second story man good story about Ronnie Ronnie was on his way home got in his car and the FBI hit him under video surveillance and his car blew up right in front of him that's the end of that's the end of Ronnie how about this this guy um from the wild bunch Harry the hitman Oliman no never met him so we we were talking we were talking the other day on the phone for about 20 minutes and I and I said to my I told you this you're probably one of the most quotable people I've ever met I mean they were just coming out like this the RG22 was the gun that won the west side yes you never see one you ever see an RG22?
26:44
SPEAKER_00: I don't think so they fit in the palm of your hand yeah they fit in the palm of your hand there six shot 22 and I I probably recovered 50 or 60 of them.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Here's another one of your one line is chaos mass corruption that's a fact they called the truce uh Vince Lane and uh our young Dick when there was a truce well there was a truce uh two guys I worked with two um two black coppers they went to the gangs set them down said listen you got to stop killing each other blah blah blah you know this is your part of town this is their part of town and they split up the city to where these guys were this is why I get my sabbatical because they split it up and said you guys sell dope here as long as you don't kill anybody and I would have never gone for that so they had to one of the things was if they're gonna agree to that I had to be transferred out.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: So they send me to a white area I lasted there about eight months and they send me to Inglewood and after Daly and Lane broke the truce and they went back to killing each other I got to go back to the projects but they needed there was no now there's no gang shootings for weeks.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: You know what are they gonna do?
27:51
SPEAKER_00: How are they gonna fucking cover up that they're selling city contracts and their projects eight to ten million dollars and they're doing$100 worth of work.
27:59
SPEAKER_00: So now they need something to mask all this bullshit.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: So what's better than a bunch of murders or killing some kids?
28:05
SPEAKER_01: Well I saw you on another podcast and it made total sense to me you said like the the shopping district in Chicago was always off limits to rioting and you said the cops would have shut that down in five minutes and then around 2020 that all changed where you used to see all the smash and grabs and the Black Lives Matter riots down there in downtown Chicago.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: Well it wasn't allowed you know you can hit State Street the you can hit the southern end of State Street because there was a bunch of shit there anyways but you can't go to the Gold Coast.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: You can't riot on the Gold Coast they would have I mean they they could shut this down in a day when they do these street takeovers and they could shut it down within a half an hour you could shut it down.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: They just don't want to you know they're not showing our new mayor this pushead he's paying his new they give he's giving him$250$3000 salaries for people that do nothing.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: So what's better what are you going to talk about oh they took over the street again he goes well you know kids being kids you know what I mean that's but the thing is that they're stealing money with both hands.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: It definitely makes sense I I got a kick out of that quote and I I also got a kick out of a story you told about your daughter needed an exotic bug for a science project.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: But I took a Cabrini roach they're like three, four inches they're like them with uh the Madagascar hissing cockroaches we had those in the basement of Cabrini nobody ever seen anything that big and look like that.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: What did you say you went down there and stuck a pin in one and put it up on a board?
29:31
SPEAKER_00: Put on a board I left it outside so I didn't bring it in the house.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean I used to change outside I wouldn't come in the house with the clothes I worked in.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: I'd change outside or in the garage uh but these I'll tell you when you turn the lights on you go do a search warrant or you go you turn the lights on when you go into a house and look around the walls move.
29:49
SPEAKER_00: And I mean all the walls you know you'd look in the crib yeah I'm just you look in the crib and there's kids and they're sleeping covered in roaches.
29:56
unknown: Yeah.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: That's the sad part.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: And Charlie the only thing I know about the city of Chicago is what I've seen in the Blues brothers.
30:02
SPEAKER_01: Do you have any stories about the filming or the making of that movie?
30:06
SPEAKER_00: No I would I that was before my time I think you know it's uh they smashed up a lot of cars I can tell that they emptied out the the lot of shit cars.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: That was our that was our pool car.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: You get a pool car that's what you got one of those cars that they smashed.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: But you know I like the movie but other than that that's all I can tell you.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: Charles you know Chicago and the police department runs inside and out and in 2011 Rahmanuel hired former NYPD deputy chief Gary McCarthy to head the department.
30:35
SPEAKER_01: How was an outsider from New York City seen to run the Chicago Police Department?
30:41
SPEAKER_00: Well the the week I retired they brought in an FBI guy Jody Weiss.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you remember him well Jody Weiss had a list of five or six guys that he was going to get rid of immediately and I retired the day before he took the oath of office because I wanted my pension.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: But a guy up mainly you know funny you mention his name I live in Willow Springs and guess who the police chief of Willow Springs is it's Gary McCarthy.
31:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah I was just curious because I know he brought Compstat which we had success with and then they overdid it here in New York so I was just kind of curious like how he was viewed.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: He fucked everything up he did he fucked it all up he came out now you know we had we had six detective districts you know area one through six and he cut it down to three or four.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: I forgot what he did.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: I was gone but you know he's still I was fresh gone.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: Charlie the Chicago police department used to operate the morgue wagon did you ever have to do that?
31:40
SPEAKER_00: I did I did that's I did that probably three bodies where uh you well I did the first one the second I remember the second day on the job I was working with an old wagon guy and we had a job the midnight wagon guys were always drunk they never answered anything.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: So we come in seven o'clock starting I'm starting with this old timer to work the wagon and the first call he says the you know captain comes up grabs you says here's the address get over there right away I don't know what the fuck these guys were doing.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: They got the call at three o'clock and it's still not done.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: So we go out there it's a Sid's death so you know second day on the job and the guy looked at me old time you could tell he's just a grisly old fucking guy that didn't give a shit about anything and he says he says I said yeah I've seen dead bodies he says they say I'm not squeamish.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: So go in the house he grabs as we're walking by people wailing parents grandparents aunts uncles everybody's in there he said watch my back don't let anybody jump on me I got you so we go in there and here's a dead baby wraps it up in a blanket and I'm pushing people away as he's walking out with the baby we get in a wagon and you know you can't put the baby in a fucking wagon to roll around so he puts it between us on the seat.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking I'm like holy shit you know I ain't never been close this close to a dead kid so first his first stop was Huck Finn donuts.
32:58
SPEAKER_00: He I didn't need a coffee and donut.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: So he's eating donut drinking coffee and we take the kid to the morgue.
33:04
SPEAKER_00: That's how that was my first wake-up call and how just how cruel and how hard in some of these guys World War II vet you know had no problem yeah that's what I mean it's it's not like you're talking to a guy that uh grew up in a in a nice area he was used to death and you know and it's the rest of the day it was like hey just watched a game the other day blah blah blah nothing about the kids dying nothing about anything else.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: So Charlie now that you're retired a bunch of years you look like you're doing well what's next for Charlie Tusis?
33:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh a movie trying to write my movie so if anybody out there what do you got going?
33:40
SPEAKER_00: Uh I send you the script did you read the script?
33:43
SPEAKER_01: What'd you think?
33:44
SPEAKER_01: I liked it.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: I also like the reel you sent me as well.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: That was really well done.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: Yep they you think that gangsters and gangbangers are treacherous?
33:53
SPEAKER_00: Fuck around in Hollywood.
33:55
SPEAKER_00: We've had this sold three times and all three times somebody tried to steal it they told me that the one guy told me that I was a consultant on what he considered to be public domain.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean all my personal stories he considered them public domain and he didn't pay me shit.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: Well our lawyers had something you know a little different take on it.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: So is is there some is there someplace where s people can view that that video or the video is on uh it's on IMBD but I gave you the password I don't know if I can give out the password I can give it you know I can give it a few I can't make it public because we were in court with it and the other people that made it they spent like a half million dollars making it oh it's very well produced I enjoyed it well no they're they're it's it's legit and HBO tried to buy it and the guy wouldn't sell it to him he wanted more money and he forgot to tell us he forgot to tell them that he had partners so did the second guy.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: Charlie Tussis thank you so much for coming on the show I really appreciate you spending your time with us today.
34:55
SPEAKER_01: Well thanks for having me appreciate you and as always I'd like to thank everyone for tuning in especially my listeners in Chase City Virginia Wesley Chapel Florida Peachtree Corners Georgia Henry Winkler Manitoba and of course Chicago Illinois if you worked in law enforcement or had an interesting criminal background please drop me a note on Twitter or Instagram at VicFerrari50.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: If you're watching on YouTube please hit the like subscribe and hype buttons and if you enjoyed the content check out my Amazon author page type in my name Vic Ferrari like the car where you can preview all my NYPD books for free.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: Thanks again everyone I'll see you next week