{"id":1193125,"date":"2023-08-28T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-28T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.propublica.org\/article\/chicago-officer-kriv-perjury-prosecutors-dropped-criminal-cases"},"modified":"2023-08-28T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T09:00:00","slug":"a-chicago-cop-is-accused-of-lying-under-oath-44-times-now-prosecutors-are-dropping-cases-that-relied-on-his-testimony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/08\/28\/a-chicago-cop-is-accused-of-lying-under-oath-44-times-now-prosecutors-are-dropping-cases-that-relied-on-his-testimony\/","title":{"rendered":"A Chicago Cop Is Accused of Lying Under Oath 44 Times. Now Prosecutors Are Dropping Cases That Relied on His Testimony."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n by Jennifer Smith Richards<\/a> and Jodi S. Cohen<\/a> <\/p>\n \n\n \n \n

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches<\/a>, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n\n \n \n\n\n\n \n

Prosecutors in Illinois have dropped at least 15 court cases that hinged on the word of a former Chicago police officer who\u2019s now charged with perjury and forgery after he got dozens of traffic tickets dismissed by testifying each time that his girlfriend had stolen his car.<\/p>\n\n

Jeffrey Kriv is accused of lying under oath 44 times to get out of speeding, parking and red light camera tickets involving his personal vehicles.<\/p>\n\n

In his 26 years as a Chicago officer, Kriv was known for being one of the city\u2019s most prolific drunken-driving enforcers, which means many more pending cases in which he was an arresting officer could be in peril. The most recent DUI arrests he made involve allegations of dangerous driving.<\/p>\n\n

On just one morning this month, an assistant state\u2019s attorney made motions declining to prosecute seven cases where Kriv was the arresting officer, some of which dated to 2021. The assistant state\u2019s attorney offered no reason, but in court, defense attorneys mentioned Kriv\u2019s alleged credibility issues.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cThis is the officer who has been charged with a felony,\u201d one defense lawyer told Judge Chloe Pedersen after his client\u2019s DUI case was called.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cThis is a Kriv matter,\u201d another defense attorney said as his client\u2019s case was dismissed.<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n Kriv is charged with perjury and forgery.\n \n (Via Chicago Police Chaplains Ministry)\n \n \n \n\n \n\n \n \n \n

While Kriv retired in January just before he was charged criminally, he had faced nearly 100 misconduct complaints from citizens and fellow officers in his tenure on the force. ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune previously detailed Kriv\u2019s long history of alleged misconduct as an officer and his current legal trouble<\/a>. Prosecutors charged him in January with four counts of perjury and five counts of forgery, all felonies, in connection with four of the traffic tickets he accrued. He has pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n\n

The Chicago Police Department knew in early 2022 that the Office of Inspector General was investigating Kriv for lying to get out of tickets. Then, on Oct. 28, the state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office added Kriv to its list of officers whose credibility issues meant the office would not call them to testify in criminal cases, sometimes called the do-not-call list.<\/p>\n\n

But the Police Department would not answer ProPublica when asked why it kept Kriv on the streets until January, when it stripped him of police powers.<\/p>\n\n

In those few months, Kriv made two dozen arrests and issued seven traffic citations, according to Police Department records obtained by ProPublica. He was the primary arresting officer in 18 of those cases; charges already have been dropped in seven of them. A spokesperson for the Police Department declined to comment.<\/p>\n\n

The state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office said there are 10 pending felony cases in which Kriv was the arresting officer. Two cases filed after he was put on the do-not-call list are moving forward; the other eight cases remain under review, a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n\n

There may be other cases \u2014 most of them likely misdemeanor DUIs \u2014 involving Kriv that are still pending. The state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office said it does not track misdemeanors, and the Cook County clerk\u2019s office and chief judge\u2019s office also said they did not have that information. Most DUI cases are misdemeanors, however, and Kriv regularly made about 100 arrests a year on DUI charges, according to annual counts published by an anti-drunken-driving group. Kriv estimated last year that hundreds of his cases might be awaiting an outcome.<\/p>\n\n

Kriv\u2019s attorney, Tim Grace, told reporters that he and his client would not comment for this story, though Kriv has twice emailed reporters to defend himself against misconduct complaints and call ProPublica\u2019s reporting biased, including in an email last week.<\/p>\n\n

In a 2,000-word email sent in June, he said that he had nearly 150 honorable mentions and two life-saving awards and was consistently one of the city\u2019s top arresting officers for DUI charges. He also criticized other officers, a judge and the Police Department as a whole.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been on the job for 27 years and I was a worker. Any officer that works will get complaints. Some false, some true,\u201d Kriv wrote. \u201cI could do what many, many officers do and that would be nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Kriv also sent a strongly worded email to a prosecutor last November, while he was still working as a police officer, after he learned he would not be allowed to testify about arrests he made. In the email, he defended his honesty and threatened to \u201cnot go out of my way to arrest people for DUI\u201d going forward.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cMy reputation as a Chicago Police Officer is immaculate and all my testimony on any case that I have been involved in is spot on,\u201d he wrote to Assistant State\u2019s Attorney Emily Leuin, after calling her a coward. ProPublica obtained the email through a public records request.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cGo ahead and dismiss my cases where someone was seriously hurt because the offender was drunk. This is something you have to live with but by all accounts, you obviously have no qualms about doing so. I\u2019m sure [anti-drunk-driving groups] will like to know what is going on with the dozens, if not hundreds of cases of mine that are currently pending an outcome,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n \n \n \n\n \n \n\n \n \n \n\n The beginning of an email that Kriv sent to Assistant State\u2019s Attorney Emily Leuin.\n \n (Obtained by ProPublica. Redacted by ProPublica)\n \n \n \n\n \n\n \n \n \n

Leuin did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n\n

Despite his threats, Kriv did make DUI arrests for the rest of his tenure as an officer. He arrested a Chicago man in December 2022 after he said he watched the driver go the wrong way on a one-way street and then go through a stop sign. \u201cVery strong odor of alcoholic beverage on breath, slurred\/thick-tongued speech, glassy eyes, confused,\u201d Kriv wrote in the charging documents.<\/p>\n\n

That case was dismissed in April.<\/p>\n\n

Other cases, meanwhile, are moving forward despite Kriv\u2019s indictment. In traffic court this month, defense attorney Steve Roach asked the prosecutor whether Kriv, who made the arrest, would be subpoenaed in his client\u2019s DUI case. The prosecutor said no, leaving Roach to wonder how the state could continue with its case.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cBecause you\u2019ve got a primary arresting officer who has an indictment against him which involves questions of one\u2019s honesty, I wouldn\u2019t be playing games with these cases,\u201d Roach said in an interview.<\/p>\n\n

The Cook County public defender\u2019s office is representing several people in Kriv\u2019s arrest cases. A spokesperson said that in cases the state continues to pursue, the office will demand trials and the state will have to decide whether to make its cases without Kriv.<\/p>\n\n

The collapse of Kriv\u2019s cases shares some similarities with the problematic DUI arrests made by Chicago police officer John Haleas nearly 20 years ago. Even after the police administration confirmed that Haleas had falsified reports in DUI arrests, he remained on duty. (In fact, he is still a Chicago police officer, though he was later convicted of attempted obstruction of justice and the department tried to fire him.)<\/p>\n\n

There\u2019s also a key difference between Haleas and Kriv: how the state\u2019s attorney has reacted to pending court cases. The state\u2019s attorney dismissed more than 150 of Haleas\u2019 pending cases when he was found to have lied.<\/p>\n\n

The state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office in July made public its list of officers in Cook County who it has barred from testifying in criminal cases \u2014 more than 300 officers in all, the vast majority of them from the Chicago Police Department. About 60 officers were added this year, and the office adopted a new policy last month that spells out prosecutors\u2019 duty to disclose its problematic witnesses to defendants.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe culture that allowed disreputable law enforcement officers to testify in court propelled Cook County\u2019s reputation as the wrongful conviction capital of the country,\u201d State\u2019s Attorney Kim Foxx said in a press release about the disclosure list.<\/p>\n\n

Chicago has a long history of scandalous cops whose cases fell apart when their own corruption or misdeeds were revealed. Over the years, officials have grappled with how to handle the fallout in court, as well as what to disclose to defendants and the public about these cases.<\/p>\n\n

A spokesperson for the state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office said the list of officers with credibility issues is public and that disclosures to defendants would be made when evidence is typically shared.<\/p>\n\n

ProPublica contacted more than a dozen defense attorneys currently representing clients arrested by Kriv, and only one said he had been notified by a prosecutor that Kriv was barred from testifying. Other lawyers were unaware that Kriv would not be called as a witness. One said the state\u2019s attorney\u2019s office had left his case \u201cin limbo\u201d and he is skeptical that the prosecutor can mount a case without Kriv.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cEvery time I show up, the state\u2019s attorney doesn\u2019t know what\u2019s going on,\u201d said defense attorney Marco Rodriguez, who is representing a client in a DUI case. <\/p>\n\n

Among the Kriv cases that have been dismissed is one from October 2022 involving a woman who was idling in a crosswalk but asleep, according to Kriv\u2019s police report. He noted in the report that there was vomit on the car seat and on the woman\u2019s pants. Her blood alcohol content was 0.19%, more than twice the legal limit to drive, according to the report, obtained through a public records request.<\/p>\n\n

Prosecutors dropped the case against her in March.<\/p>\n\n

Even in his last weeks as a police officer, Kriv arrested at least five people over four days on DUI charges, including a 41-year-old driver he said he\u2019d found on Dec. 10 passed out behind the wheel of his running Honda Accord in the middle of a dead-end street. The man \u201cseemed confused\u201d and the \u201cwhole front end\u201d of his car was damaged and the tires shredded.<\/p>\n\n

Kriv noted that the driver had an explanation for the car\u2019s damage.<\/p>\n\n

He wrote that the man \u201cstated his car was like that from his girlfriend as it was her fault previously.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

That case also has been dismissed.<\/p>\n \n \n

This post was originally published on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen <\/p>\n

ProPublica i…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29181,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4134],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193125"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1193125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1193133,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1193125\/revisions\/1193133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1193125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1193125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1193125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}