A scandal is brewing, and city officials appear to be battening down the hatches. Tuesday, three city offices involved in the story, the mayor, the police department, and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) all failed to respond to questions about it.
Let’s get you up to speed quickly.
Last week, news broke that a man with a long list of felony drug convictions was charged with felony heroin distribution after he allegedly threw $6,300 worth of heroin from a Lexus owned by CPD’s chief of internal affairs, Yolanda Talley.
Talley was not in the car. Her niece was driving it at the time.
When cops pulled the Lexus over, the niece told them, “My auntie’s probably your boss,” the Sun-Times reported last night. The man who allegedly threw the heroin from the car’s passenger seat is in a relationship with Talley’s niece, according to the report.
CWB reported exclusively on Monday that the man who allegedly threw the heroin from the car, Kenneth Miles, is identified in public records as the confidential police source whose bad information led to the wrongful raid of Anjanette Young’s home in February 2019. The city cut a $2.9 million settlement check to end litigation with Young just two months ago.
Our story also revealed that COPA’s public report about the botched raid exposed Miles as the informant by giving the date, time, and police district where the “John Doe” informant who sparked the Young raid had been arrested. Arrest records, including dates, times, and locations, are public information.
Miles’ CPD arrest report from that date includes a police supervisor’s note that he wanted to “John Doe” a search warrant hours before cops raided Young’s home, we reported.
Asked to confirm Miles’ involvement in the Young search warrant, a CPD spokesperson on Monday said, “To ensure the safety of all involved and to maintain the integrity of the ongoing investigation, CPD cannot and will not comment on whether someone is or is not a confidential source.”
The department has refused to answer any questions about the heroin arrest involving Talley’s car, saying the matter is under investigation by the city’s inspector general.
COPA’s exposure of a confidential police source is troubling. Also troubling is this: CWB found other information in COPA’s report that exposed other private citizens’ personal details. One of those additional exposures is particularly egregious.
We shared that specific example with COPA and the office of Mayor Lori Lightfoot in separate sets of emailed questions on Tuesday morning. We sent a third set of questions to the Chicago Police Department.
Neither the mayor’s office, COPA, nor CPD responded to our inquiries.
We sent the following questions to CPD’s top spokespersons, Don Terry and Tom Ahern, on Tuesday morning. They did not reply.
In a Tuesday morning email to Ephraim Eaddy, COPA’s public information officer, we provided examples of compromising information within the agency’s Anjanette Young report along with the following questions. Our inquiry noted that we were not asking COPA to confirm our previous reporting. The questions stand on their own. He did not reply.
Also on Tuesday morning, we sent examples of COPA’s compromised information and the following questions to Cesar Rodriguez, the mayor’s press secretary. Again, we noted that we were not asking the mayor’s office to confirm CWB’s reporting in any way. He did not reply.
Here’s an interesting nugget.
A Chicago woman named Yolanda Talley received a $20,833 emergency COVID relief loan for her small business last year. According to public records, the loans were to be used for payroll at a one-person sole proprietorship, which provides “other personal care services.” So-called PPP loans are 100% forgivable if the money is used for payroll.
This site links a second, fully-forgiven PPP loan — $20,000 for “sales financing” — to the same address in the name of “Yolanda.” The address is on the 700 block of North St. Louis and a home on that block is owned by someone named Talley, according to public records. But that’s not where Chief Talley lives, so another Yolanda Talley may live there.
Interestingly, the 700 block of North St. Louis is where Kenneth Miles was arrested with 30 bags of heroin on the day he apparently decided to “John Doe” the Anjanette Young warrant.
It’s also within a block of where police allegedly saw him pick up a bag from the street and get into Talley’s car with the chief’s niece driving on February 1. That bag, according to police, is similar to the one containing $6,300 worth of heroin that he allegedly threw from the vehicle when they began to pull it over moments later.