Fired as Chicago cops — and collecting city pensions

Monday, June 24, 2013

Chicago Police Sgt. Nicholas M. Ortega stood to lose everything — his job, his freedom, his pension.
Ortega was in uniform on duty in March 2005 when he met up with a group of cops at a bar and ended up driving the wife of a rookie officer he supervised back to a Northwest Side police station where they had sex in a basement office, police records show. He then drove her back to the bar.
Ortega, then 43, became the subject of a criminal sexual assault investigation by his own department, police records show. The Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to charge him, citing the woman’s “delayed outcry,” her not telling any officers at the station what happened and “insufficient evidence of force.”
Two years later, acting police Supt. Dana Starks moved to fire Ortega, placing him on suspension until the Chicago Police Board fired Ortega in June 2008.
Ortega went to court to get his job back but lost.
Then, when he turned 50 — the minimum retirement age for police in Chicago — he took his pension, collecting $50,032 a year.