CSO photos on Flickr

I didn't know that the Community Service Officer that accosted my wife at the SuperStore that night was having an extramarital affair with the Sergeant in Charge there that night.

I had no idea that she was a practicing Wiccan who considered herself to be a witch.

And she practiced a 'dark brand' of wicca.

It would be days before I heard about any of that.

I didn't know that the Sergeant in Charge at the scene of my wife's arrest... the one having the affair with the CSO... had just lost his wife to cancer only a few days before.

She also worked for the police department.

She was a Community Service Officer too.

There was no way that I could have known that night that the people who arrested my wife for 'child endangerment' and tried to have our child taken away from us were in such pain and unethical turmoil in their own personal lives.

I'm pretty sure that a lot of that came into play there that night in that parking lot where my family was busted up for little or no reason.

Maybe my wife smarted off to the CSO... maybe things didn't go down exactly the way that she said they did... maybe the Sergeant in Charge hadda be the hero for his pissed off CSO mistress.

I didn't know about all of those things that night, but I knew 'something' was wrong with how the whole situation played itself out.

What happened right in front of me was so wrong.

And it was done to my family by people who wore badges and carried guns and were given the authority to use lethal force by the state.

The whole episode had such a 'third world' feel to it.

It was like, without knowing it, my family just walked into a 'domestic' between a couple of 'cops.'

I had no idea then that the officer who'd actually put the cuffs on my wife and arrested her was healthy enough to throw the cuffs on criminals on the street... but he claimed a disability so severe that he had to work a desk job in Chicago at the same time.

It always blew my mind when I thought about it later...

My wife was arrested for 'child endangerment' when she took my children up to the SuperStore to do a good deed by two 'cops' having an extramarital affair with each other, one who was a practicing 'witch' and one who looked like he was guilty of fraudulently claiming disability... in a town where every kid went to bed after drinkin' a glass of poisoned water because that's what the mayor ordered.

Oh and my other two young daughters were abandoned at the scene by the cops.

How messed up is that?

It was like peeling the layers of an onion in that town...

beneath every layer were these sordid secrets that only added to the irony of what happened to my family that night.

These people didn't care about children... they poisoned them.

The 'juvenile officer' in that town had molested young boys and they had to settle the lawsuit that came of it for some big dough.

And he was 'made' the juvenile officer after his penchant for young boys became known!

'What a dirty place my family'd stumbled into' I thought.

My biggest fear the night that the whole thing happened was that the video surveillance tapes from the SuperStore that would show how my family had been abused by the cops would just 'disappear.'

I noticed that night that there were cameras everywhere... the cops should have noticed them too since they had blue flashing lights on top of each one.

But the cops just didn't care.

I don't know if they were just dumb or if they'd just never had anyone go up against 'em like I was about to...

But they just didn't seem to care that the whole incident was caught on tape from so many different angles.

The Community Service Officer... who's not really a police officer... commited another felony that night right in front of those video cameras when she pulled my brother over and she impersonated a police officer and asked him for his identification.

Identification that they knew that they needed to start plugging up the holes in their story.

Man... there were a lot of holes in their 'story' too.

When they arrested my wife and threw her in the back of that police car, the police just abandoned my other two daughters, seven and eight years old, to luck in that parking lot.

That was pretty much the most 'danger' any child would find themselves in that night.

Those poor kids.

They were just left alone and terrified there by the cops.

During the confrontation, as they watched their stepmother being handcuffed they started to cry and they backed away from the scene unnoticed and they hid in the Christmas trees that were for sale in front of the store.

I'd see that on the video months later when my wife's attorney showed it to us.

I was so pissed off.

They just abandoned my little girls there.

Completely left them to their own luck.

That video I saw would also show that the Chief of Police would actually lie to the media about how long my wife was away from the car before her trial.

The day after the arrest I went to the SuperStore myself to talk with the manager and make sure that the video evidence was preserved.

I ran into the Sergeant there.

The one who'd been in charge when my wife was arrested the night before.

He was looking to talk with the manager about the video evidence too... only I suspected we had different objectives in mind.

The cop threatened me with arrest just for being there... he said I was 'interfering with a police investigation.'

The reality I feared was that I was 'interfering with a police coverup.'

I told the officer that I wanted to see the manager about making sure the video was preserved... I didn't expect to go anywhere with it... and besides threatening me with arrest he said 'this is my town' and 'I'm the law around here... this is how we do tihngs' he said.

When I didn't back down and leave he actually called for another car on the radio.

I walked out before that car came, but I think these guys got a little inkling about how pissed off I was about the whole thing and they kinda knew that I wasn't gonna back down.

Still, I'd try to sort it out with the Mayor the next day.

'Maybe he'll be a reasonable guy' I thought.

That's all I was looking for here... a little reason to pierce the darkness of that insanity that enveloped my family there the night before.

I'd done some stupid stuff too... the morning after the arrest I went to my office and made up some magnetic signs and put them on every side of my truck and I drove slowly through the town.

Signs that told anyone who'd read them what the police had done to my children in the SuperStore parking lot the night before.

It wasn't too long before I had a 'police escort' with the cops trying to block the public from seeing what the signs stuck to each side of my truck said.

Maybe that was a little crazy.

But look what they did to my family.

I knew the media'd eat the story up... they always loved irony... and I could see the headlines in my mind before the whole thing was over... 'Cops Arrest Mom Out to Do Good Deed, Take Away Kid' or 'Cops Arrest Mom for Child Endangerment Then Abandon Other Children at Crime Scene.'

I'd worked with the media before... when I ran a big political campaign when I was a college student.

And I still had plenty of names in my 'rolodex.'

I just didn't wanna go that route until the Mayor and I could have a proper talk.

I wanted to give the 'executive' a chance to make right the mistakes of his 'employees.'

I told myself that if he wasn't reasonable that only then I'd go to the media.

The story was a powderkeg and I knew it.

Unleashing that bomb would have consequences.

I just had no idea how great those consequences would be.

On the day my wife's trial was supposed to begin, 97 days after her arrest, the State's Attorney dropped the charges against her.

She should probably never have been charged in the first place.

And they should have dropped the charges a long time before.

They knew they had no case.

They knew that they couldn't convince a jury that she'd done anything wrong.

But they made us wait until that day...

and it had cost us thousands of dollars in legal fees.

I was furious.

The Chicago SunTimes Newspaper ran the story the next day... it was front page news... and second page and third page.

The public was just as furious as we were.

Jody Weis, who'd just been named Superintendent of Police in Chicago that day by Mayor Daley didn't like the fact that his story got pushed to page four because of the whole thing.

In an interview Weis did it was noted that nobody or no story had gotten the first, second and third pages of that newspaper since the hostages had been released from Iran.

I promised them in that parking lot that night that I was gonna make a big deal out of what they did to my family.

They told me to go ahead.

I kept my word...

that was the biggest Chicago newspaper story in what... almost thirty years?

I was really enjoying busting these guys balls.

But it wasn't over yet.

It was gonna get bigger.

Looking back I could see that it'd only just begun.

Ptáčkové u našeho krmítka by Česká společnost ornitologická