Fox Lake Police Officer Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz had a hero’s funeral.
In a final tribute punctuated with military tradition and pageantry, police from across the country on Monday honored a fallen Fox Lake officer who was shot on the job as he neared retirement.
Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz was laid to rest with full military honors before a grateful community of mourners who stood in lines for hours despite the heat to pay their respects to the veteran officer.
As bagpipes wailed amid a sea of starched blue uniforms, an honor guard attended to the Army veteran’s flag-draped casket as it was led out of Antioch Community High School to begin an 18-mile procession to his final resting place.
It turns out he committed suicide because he was under investigation for stealing from Boy Scouts. And the way he committed his suicide implicated three unknown people who the police went searching for. Luckily they didn’t kill anyone in the search.
But it gets better. His family was implicated in his theft. They knew.
And now at least one organization that donated money to the officer’s family wants its money back.
An organization that assists survivors of officers killed in the line of duty now wants its donation back from the family of Fox Lake police Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz.
Joe Ahern, CEO of the 100 Club of Chicago, said this is the first time that the nearly 50-year-old organization has requested the return of a donation.
The day Gliniewicz was found dead on Sept. 1, Ahern attended a vigil in Fox Lake and presented a check to the officer’s widow for $15,000.
It is not just Prohibition that is responsible for declining trust in police. Gliniewicz was stealing for seven years. I find it hard to believe that NONE of his fellow officers knew what was going on. That he was living well beyond his means had to be noticed by other officers. Maybe they kept silent because they had their own games going on. Prohibition spawns all kinds of corruption. Because you can’t be a big drug dealer without four things. Production. Transportation. Distribution. PROTECTION. And guess who supplies that protection locally? The local police. There is big money in it. Or as Hillary Clinton put it, “There is too much money in it.” When Prohibition ends – so does the gravy train.
Drug use – if it is a problem – is a medical problem. The police can not solve it. Nor is it their interest to solve it. So the “War” grinds on. To the profit of everyone except the drug users and the American people.
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Update: 5 Nov 2015 0902z
It turns out this officer was a real class act.
Gliniewicz ran the village’s Explorer youth police training program and he had been stealing money from it for some seven years, Filenko said. Gliniewicz stole an amount in the five figures and used the money for personal expenses, including mortgage payments, travel and adult websites, Filenko said.
Looks like free porn on the ‘net was not good enough for him.
There is evidence that he was planning unspecified nastiness possibly including murder for the woman investigating him:
Text messages Gliniewicz had sent, which authorities revealed Wednesday, appeared to suggest threats against Village Administrator Anne Marrin. Investigators have also seen evidence that Gliniewicz had made contact with a woman linked to the Outlaws motorcycle gang to discuss the possibility of a gang member doing harm to Marrin, said multiple sources with knowledge of the investigation. The interest in harming the official is one of several areas of possible wrongdoing still under investigation, the sources said.
A police officer soliciting an outlaw motorcycle gang for skulduggery? What kind of police do we have in America?
Update: 7 November 2015 1012z
As strange as the case has been so far – it just got weirder.
This report has more text:
…claims DJ Gliniewicz married his father’s mistress to get thousands of dollars in extra benefits, including health care and pay, from the Army. Court records show DJ Gliniewicz and Kathryn Grams were married on July 23, 2013. A month later, they reported living apart. They were divorced by December 2014.
When Grams lived in Ingleside, which is just east of Fox Lake, a neighbor, who did not want to be identified, said she saw Officer Gliniewicz at Gram’s home almost every afternoon.
“I knew what the guy was doing there, which everyone suspected anyway. He just comes in the middle of the day, goes in for an hour, leaves. Put two and two together,” the neighbor said.
This is a story that just keeps on giving. It seems Officer Gliniewicz not only cheated the Explorers, he also cheated on his wife (she had to know, so maybe it was an open marriage) and on top of all that he was a “welfare Queen”. Cheating the Army is going to bring in the Feds. Lovely.
Comments
13 responses to “A Hero In Blue”
Defining silence from all the folks screaming about the War on Cops.
@Simon:
Good and bad. Check out the comments on the post Fox Lake Death to be Ruled Suicide over at Second City Cop. The vast majority of cops say the guy was a scumbag. Ex:
Considering the large number of LEOs in this country, the number of dirty cops seems very, very low.
Bastards. As far as I’m concerned, any cop, judge, or DA involved in imprisoning people for victimless crimes is at least as dirty as this man.
For those believing in the integrity of police – look up ” testilying ” .
All that does is put the innocent in jail to keep the police dept. budget up. Not quite as good as direct stealing. But that is the beauty of it. It is a “small” crime compared to stealing from the Explorers.
And since “criminals” are abundant and police are not – you can do as much overtime as you want. just “testily” your way into another case.
Here’s an interesting site that tracks police misconduct from across the nation. There are lots of ethically challenged LEO’s all across the nation as the links at this site will show.
http://www.policemisconduct.net/
Brought to you by the good folks at the Cato Institute.
For those of us who believe in the integrity of doctors, look up “medical malpractice”.
For those of us who believe in the integrity of school teachers, look up “child molesters”.
There are bad apples in every profession. Cops have to enforce the law, good or bad. The problem isn’t so much the front line law enforcers, rather it’s the politicians and high-level law enforcers who write and enforce law for votes and profit. Directing the majority of your ire at the sharp end of the stick is like blaming Vietnam combat vets for that fiasco of a war.
Yeah there’re sleazy, corrupt cops. Probably the best way to cull them from the ranks is to eliminate government employee unions which protect them and keep them from getting fired. But that would entail cutting the union-politician-union gravy train. It won’t be easy.
@CapRoader
Public employee unions should be outlawed. At least in the private sector, unions have an incentive to keep their employers viable (aka profitable) in order to keep people in their jobs. Public sector unions have zero incentive in that regard. They are incentivized to elect politicians favorable to union demands and the Demos are there for them. Cap Az’s Democrats happily give the farm away to public sector employees in exchange for their votes. Democrat political corruption, all nice and legal like.
Sadly, the Repubs more or less do the same for police and firefighter unions along with the Demos. When it comes to those two public employee unions, it’s a bipartisan BJ administered to the public employees.
@Randy:
No doubt. IL governor Rauner is getting beat up by previous GOP governors, when in fact it was their sleazy, corrupt deals with unions that put IL in the sorry state it’s in now.
But it doesn’t make a whit of difference to them, does it? Those GOP governors kicked the can down the road and got the hell out before the shit hit the fan.
[…] a look at my latest update at A Hero In Blue. The sleaze factor just went up by […]
@Randy,
Here’s another reason. Juries that think cops should be above the law.
It’s really too bad that Karma’s not a real thing. Maybe a similar fate visited upon a jury-member’s close family might give them a new perspective.
https://reason.com/blog/2015/11/06/angry-upset-cop-kills-shocked-unarmed-ma
http://www.pennlive.com/news/2015/11/lisa-mearkle_david-kassick_hum_3.html
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/years-kelly-thomas-beating-fullerton-pd-primed-kill/
Twenty or more years ago I was on a jury in a case to send an ex-felon back to jail on a weapon possession charge. The poor guy had been pulled over after dark for a tail light out. He remained in his car, hands on the wheel, until a back up arrived, and a warrant was obtained. When they searched his car they found 22 shell casings in the glove box supposedly. Underneath the car they found a 38 with serial numbers ground off, with no shells in it. According to California law as read to us by the judge, the guy was “in possession of a firearm” because of the proximity of the weapon. Long story short, the cops planted the weapon and lied. We never learned why they wanted him but we knew he was set up. Three of us would not convict which resulted in a hung jury. I assume they retried it. They polled the jury and the 3 of us were outed. Talk about hate looks from the cops.
It testilying been’s going on a long, long time.
It works both ways if you believe this guy. Quote [original emphasis]: