CHICAGO — A Chicago police officer was fired late Thursday for his role 18 years ago in one of the biggest scandals in department history.
The Police Board decided to dismiss Officer Thomas Sherry in a 5-to-1 decision for his alleged actions in the disgraced Special Operations Section, a specialized unit that was disbanded when some of its officers committed home invasions and robberies in the 2000s.
Sherry was originally taken off the street and placed on paid desk duty when he was charged criminally in the scandal, only for those charges to be dropped a few years later. But Chicago police officials kept him on desk duty for more than a decade anyway, prompting him in 2018 to file a federal lawsuit against the city, alleging that the Chicago Police Department violated his due process rights by refusing to hold a disciplinary hearing in his case before the Chicago Police Board.
