Chicago Police Officer Ediberto Diaz Charged With Shooting Car While Reeking Of Booze Still Gets $70K Check
CHICAGO — It's no secret that the public is often the last to know when police officers behave badly, due to the convoluted way misconduct allegations get investigated.
The latest example is the case of police officer Ediberto Diaz, accused of shooting up a purple Chrysler PT Cruiser.
I stumbled upon Diaz’s run-in with suburban police while fact-checking Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’s campaign commercial claim that she has prosecuted 96 police officers.
If not for that, we still might not know about the night in April when Diaz allegedly confessed to firing shots into the PT Cruiser in Melrose Park.
Alvarez’s campaign sent me a list of city and suburban police officers her office has prosecuted, including names we’ve all heard before, including Jason Van Dyke, who faces first-degree murder charges for shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times, and Dante Servin and Glenn Evans, who each were found not guilty in court.
It didn’t take long to figure out the felony reckless discharge of a weapon charge and endangerment against Diaz — a felony with a sentence range of probation to three years in prison — had flown under the radar while the three-year veteran continues to collect a $69,684-a-year city paycheck.
There’s no evidence of Diaz’s initial bond hearing at the Cook County courthouse in Maywood making headlines last year.
And we didn’t hear a peep about the charges from the Chicago Police Department or the Independent Police Review Authority — the agency charged with probing police-involved shootings — thanks to rules etched in the Fraternal Order of Police union contract that forbid the release of an officer’s identity and details of misconduct allegations during the notoriously slow investigative process.
But a Melrose Park police report obtained through the Freedom Information Act and some helpful law enforcement sources shed light on details the city is contractually forbidden from sharing with taxpayers who are still footing the bill for Diaz’s paycheck.
Around 11 p.m. on April 17, 2015, two Melrose Park officers standing at 24th and Thomas streets heard gunshots “at close range.”
The officers spotted a man later identified as Diaz in the alley in the 1200 block of North 23rd Avenue as he entered a red pickup truck. They stopped Diaz after he started to drive away, police said.
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