Jun 1, 2008 9:50 pm US/Central
Cop Tells FBI He Terrorized Chicago Citizens
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
He took a vow to serve and protect, but wound up terrorizing Chicago citizens.
Speaking out for the first time on 60 Minutes, former Chicago cop Keith Herrera freely admits he often broke the law, but then, broke the Blue Wall of silence in an attempt to redeem himself.
"We're dealing with bad people, drug dealers. If you want these people to go to jail, you have to cross the line sometimes," Herrera said.
Keith Herrera told Katie Couric that as a Chicago cop with the now-disbanded Special Operations Section, or SOS, he crossed the line often -- falsifying police reports, brutalizing citizens, to get guns and drugs off the street. And Herrera said, his superiors knew all about it, telling him: "keep it up, as long as you're getting guns, drugs, bad guys, keep it up. If they tell you to keep it up, you keep it up."
Herrera says, his SOS crew stole hundreds of thousands in cash from drug dealers and divided it among themselves.
Seven former SOS members now face federal charges of armed robbery, aggravated kidnapping and home invasion.
But Herrera drew the line when Jerome Finnigan, the rogue cops' acknowledged ringleader, asked Herrera to help kill two other SOS officers who planned to testify against him.
"Jerome Finnigan decided they didn't need to be breathing anymore," Herrera said.
Herrera thought he was nuts, and said this has got to stop.
So Herrera did the unthinkable: went to the FBI, and offered to wear a wire to record Finnigan, who told Herrera he didn't want to stop with two murders. Finnigan wanted to kill at least two other SOS cops, too.
"If we take care of these first two, we might as well kill everybody else," Herrera said.
Herrera hopes his cooperation with federal prosecutors will produce a lighter sentence. And he says, he'd like to go back to the police academy someday, to tell young recruits where he went wrong. Police Superintendent Jody Weis says, he might consider that.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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