Strippers on a golf course, some suburban police and the Chicago mob. They all come together in an unusual lawsuit that is the subject of this Intelligence Report. The case follows an I-Team report from 2002.
Several patrolmen from west suburban Northlake lost their jobs after participating in a police golf outing that featured exotic dancers acting as caddies. That was almost four years ago. Now, one of the former cops who attended the outing is suing Northlake and its police chief for allegedly smearing his reputation and blackballing him with other police departments.
I-Team surveillance spotted Northlake police officers and some local business leaders gathering with female caddies in the summer of 2002. The women had been deployed to the golf outing from their full-time place of employment: Allstars Gentlemen's Club in west suburban Northlake where they work as strippers or barmaids.
"They were dressed just like anybody else going to a golf outing. I doubt any of the golfers knew if they were waitresses or nurses or whatever, and they were working spending their time their day for a good cause helping people get scholarships, and frankly we applaud the Northlake lodge for the efforts that they are doing," said David Wickster, FOP labor council.
Among the outing organizers was veteran lawman Ementi Coary, a Northlake patrolman. After the I-Team report revealed these 18-hole antics, there was an internal investigation of Coary and several other cops who all resigned.
"The outing in question was not a sanctioned by the police department or city," said Chief Dennis Koletsos, Northlake police. But Chief Dennis Koletsos is being sued by ex-officer Coary for slander and allegedly breaching their agreement that Coary's history would not be revealed to any prospective employers.
In the Cook County suit, Coary says he was not hired for a police position in Rosemont after Koletsos revealed he had a videotape of Coary taking cash from the mob-connected strip club and has telephone records of Coary in phone conversations with Chicago outfit boss
James "Jimmy the Man" Marcello.
Coary denies the charges and Chief Koletsos says he never made the comments alleged in the lawsuit.
There is another curious element to this story. The Northlake police produced a slick, 20-minute video to recruit new officers. The tape is accessible on Northlake's web site. But four years after Northlake's police department was embarrassed by a stripper golf outing, the officers involved-, resigned long ago, are still on Northlake's recruitment tape.
Even disgraced officer Ementi Coary, who claims the chief has framed him as being mobbed up and is now suing the department, is still starring in their video.
The police chief says Northlake doesn't have enough money to edit out Coary and the others from that recruitment tape. As for the suit, the chief said "when you open Pandora's box, you never know what's going to come out."
Coary now works as part-time policeman in Melrose Park.
Thanks to
Chuck Goudie
, who presided over the Mafia Cops Trial, of two former police detectives convicted of moonlighting as hit men for the mob denied the defendants' request to overturn the verdict, but the judge acknowledged there is basis for an appeal.