Chicago cop charged with aiding in frame job — chicagotribune.com
A Crystal Lake man didn’t like his wife’s parenting skills or her spending habits, and that’s why he got a Chicago police officer to help him frame her with drugs and a gun, Cook County prosecutors said.The prosecutors said the man gave them another reason, too: He wanted her money.
Bogdan Mazur, who is in the midst of a divorce, tried to set up his estranged wife by planting cocaine, marijuana and a gun in her vehicle in April 2007 and having Grand-Central District Officer Slawomir Plewa arrest her, according to Assistant State’s Atty. Lynn McCarthy.
Plewa, 30, was arrested Monday and charged with official misconduct, perjury, obstruction of justice, unlawful restraint and false reporting.
On April 1, 2007, Mazur met with several police officers, included Plewa, at a parking garage near Belmont and Central Avenues, McCarthy said. There, Mazur told the officers he was certain drugs were in his wife’s vehicle. Mazur then called his wife in the officers’ presence and told her his car wouldn’t start and she needed to come pick up their two young children, who were with him, McCarthy said.
Mazur and the uncharged co-conspirator had put a .22-caliber pistol, cocaine and cannabis in the spare-tire compartment, McCarthy said.
When the woman arrived, Plewa stopped her and asked if he could search her vehicle, McCarthy said. She said yes. Police found the plastic bag, which contained 44.5 grams of cocaine, 62 grams of cannabis and a gun, McCarthy said. The woman was arrested and charged with gun and drug offenses.
Chicago police said Plewa was the subject of an internal investigation that resulted in his arrest. He was the third officer arrested this year based on an internal investigation.
“The actions of this officer do not represent the vast majority of honorable, hard-working police officers who risk their lives everyday,” Deputy Supt. Peter Brust said in a statement.
In 2006, Plewa was sued in federal court by a mentally handicapped man who claimed that the officer and others pulled him from a parked vehicle, beat him and dragged him in the street. In March 2007, the city settled the suit for $50,000.
How many drug war POWs are sitting in prison right now because the actions of a crooked cop planting drugs went undetected by the victim and unreviewed by the police? This is one of the forgotten aspects of the War on Drugs is that it provides easy money for crooked cops who steal evidence and sell it and an easy frame job for crooked cops who plant evidence on unsuspecting citizens.
