Art Bilek, Mob Fighting Former Cop, to Head the Chicago Crime Commission

A former Chicago cop with decades of experience battling organized crime has been appointed to lead the Chicago Crime Commission.

Art Bilek, 80, helped arrest the “Burglars in Blue” — North Side cops fencing stolen goods — in 1960, and helped break up the Chicago Outfit’s “floating craps game” in the mid-1960s.

He says he plans to reintroduce a program that began in the 1920s: a “Most Wanted” top 10 list for Chicago.

He plans to continue the commission’s work identifying the city’s powerful street gang leaders, who he said pose a “far more serious problem than the Outfit in today’s Chicago,” and to continue campaigning against video gambling machines.

“If you asked 100 Chicagoans to identify who controls the drug trade, you probably wouldn't get a single name,” he said, “We want to change that.”

Bilek, Cook County Sheriff Richard Ogilvie’s police chief in the 1960s, founded the criminal justice department at the University of Illinois at Chicago and led corporate security for Hilton Hotels and First National Bank of Chicago.

Thanks to Kim Janssen