By FRANK MAIN Staff Reporter / fmain@suntimes.com
Former Chicago Police Department detective and commander Jon Burge leaves his sentencing hearing at the Federal Building on Thursday, January 20. 2011. | Richard A. Chapman~Sun-Times
Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed suit Monday to immediately strip convicted former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge of his $3,000-a-month pension.
Madigan said a police pension board was wrong to let Burge keep it in light of his conviction and sentencing for lying about the torture of crime suspects.
Burge was sentenced last month to 4 1/2 years in prison after being convicted in June of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying in his testimony in a civil lawsuit that he never participated in or witnessed the physical abuse of crime suspects while a Chicago cop.
The Retirement Board of the Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago considered taking away Burge’s pension. But that effort failed on a 4-4 vote. spurring protests by police-torture victims and others.
Burge’s supporters on the pension board argued that his felony conviction involved his testimony after he retired, so it wasn’t, as state law specificies, directly “relating to, arising out of or in connection” with his official duties.
They were wrong, Madigan argues in the lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court against Burge and the police pension board.
In addition to halting Burge’s pension, she’s asking a judge to order Burge to repay any pension benefits he’s been paid since his Jan. 21 sentencing.
“Jon Burge forfeited his right to a public pension when he lied about his knowledge of and participation in the torture and physical abuse of suspects,” Madigan said. “It’s this type of criminal conduct by a public servant that our pension forfeiture laws were designed to discourage. The public should never have to pay for the retirement of a corrupt public official.”
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