Dur­ing the con­test for Cook Coun­ty state’s attor­ney, which has seen embat­tled incum­bent Ani­ta Alvarez’s record of feal­ty to the Chica­go Police Depart­ment come under the micro­scope, one man’s name seems to have been all but for­got­ten amidst the list of cas­es where Alvarez has alleged­ly allowed dis­hon­est police offi­cers to escape charges: Richard Fiorito.

Alvarez has allowed officers accused of wrongdoing to wriggle free, while at the same time fervently prosecuting civilians accused of much lesser crimes.

But not every­one has for­got­ten. James Dean, Jr., still remem­bers his encounter with the cor­rupt offi­cer that result­ed in a years-long fight to clear his name over a trumped-up DUI charge.

It was in Feb­ru­ary 2007 that Dean had his run-in with Fior­i­to, a then-nine-year Chica­go police vet­er­an who wound up resign­ing in dis­grace in 2011. Dean, who had been arrest­ed ear­li­er in the day for dri­ving on a sus­pend­ed license, had been released with­out charges and warned not to dri­ve again. His car, how­ev­er, was impound­ed and brought to the Town Hall police dis­trict in the Lake­view neigh­bor­hood. Dean says he was ready to return to home, but he then remem­bered that he had left his cell phone in his car. He got per­mis­sion from the sergeant on duty to retrieve it.

As he was walk­ing away from the car in the police sta­tion park­ing lot after get­ting his cell phone, Dean says he was accost­ed by an aggres­sive and bel­liger­ent Fior­i­to, who told him he couldn’t park where he was and demand­ed he move the car. Dean says he tried explain­ing to Fior­i­to that he hadn’t been respon­si­ble for the car’s loca­tion, but see­ing there was no argu­ing with the police offi­cer, who he says was ​“yelling and scream­ing,” he decid­ed to com­ply. After mov­ing the car to what he thought was a legal park­ing space, Dean says Fior­i­to came up behind him in his vehi­cle, switched on his police lights and con­tin­ued to berate him.

“I just real­ly thought at this point I was in the Twi­light Zone,” says Dean. (Fior­i­to died in 2014.)

Not long after that, and only four min­utes after leav­ing the police sta­tion, Dean says he was slapped with 17 tick­ets and a DUI charge by Fior­i­to — even though he had just been released by police and there had been no alco­hol involved at any point.

“From there, my life changed irrepara­bly,” says Dean.

What Dean didn’t know at the time was that his case wasn’t unique. In fact, his encounter was very sim­i­lar to what Fior­i­to had done to many oth­er Chicagoans. It soon came out that Fior­i­to had been arrest­ing peo­ple on false DUI charges for six years as part of what crit­ics believed was a scheme to gain over­time pay for court appearances.

It typ­i­cal­ly went like this: Fior­i­to would stop dri­vers, usu­al­ly in the Lake­view area, on sus­pi­cion of dri­ving drunk. He would then — though not always — con­duct a sobri­ety test on the dri­ver. Regard­less of how they per­formed, Fior­i­to would record them as fail­ing and charge them with a DUI, often mak­ing up details about their drunk dri­ving. The accused, eager to avoid a DUI on their record, would enter a plea bar­gain and plead guilty to less­er charges.

Fiorito’s actions had the addi­tion­al ignominy of being tinged with homo­pho­bia. Because he worked in Chicago’s ​“Boys­town” neigh­bor­hood, a large share of Fiorito’s vic­tims were in the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty, and many accused him of using homo­pho­bic slurs while arrest­ing them.

Between Jan­u­ary 1, 2007 and June 6, 2008, Fior­i­to made a whop­ping 313 DUI arrests; in 2006, he made 230. Giv­en that police offi­cers typ­i­cal­ly work a 40-hour week, Fior­i­to was oper­at­ing at a rate of near­ly one DUI arrest per day. For this seem­ing­ly zeal­ous devo­tion to keep­ing Chicago’s streets free of drunk dri­vers, Fior­i­to was hon­ored by both Moth­ers Against Drunk Dri­ving and the Alliance Against Intox­i­cat­ed Motorists, which named him a ​“top cop.”

Fior­i­to was even­tu­al­ly tak­en off the streets and put on desk duty after dash cam footage emerged in 2009 con­tra­dict­ing Fiorito’s own police report about a dif­fer­ent DUI charge. By the time he resigned, Fior­i­to stood accused of fab­ri­cat­ing at least 40 DUI charges, and the Cook Coun­ty state’s attorney’s office had to drop charges against more than 130 motorists arrest­ed for drunk dri­ving by Fiorito.

Dean was one of two dri­vers who refused to take the plea bar­gain and fought the DUI charge to the very end, main­tain­ing he’d done noth­ing wrong. He even­tu­al­ly won $175,000 in dam­ages from the city, as well as the cost of his legal fees. The oth­er dri­ver was Steve Lopez, a truck dri­ver for whom a DUI could have been a career-killer.

“ She’s not on the right side of the law”

The case is worth remem­ber­ing now as Cook Coun­ty state’s attor­ney Ani­ta Alvarez fights for her polit­i­cal life. One of the chief crit­i­cisms lobbed at Alvarez by her oppo­nents is her hes­i­tan­cy to pros­e­cute police offi­cers who have vio­lat­ed the law. In case after case, Alvarez has allowed offi­cers accused of wrong­do­ing to wrig­gle free, while at the same time fer­vent­ly pros­e­cut­ing civil­ians accused of much less­er crimes. The Robert Fior­i­to episode fits square­ly in this pattern.

Despite the 40 wit­ness­es accus­ing Fior­i­to of fal­si­fy­ing charges, and the video footage which showed Fior­i­to lying about one arrest, Alvarez refused to bring any charges against him. Her office claimed at the time to have been inves­ti­gat­ing the offi­cer for a year, but one source told Chicago​Pride​.com it was real­ly clos­er to one month. And in fact, Fior­i­to had been allowed to keep work­ing as a police offi­cer, mak­ing arrests and tes­ti­fy­ing under oath, even as civ­il rights law­suits against him piled up.

Alvarez’s Chief of Staff Dan Kirk explained to reporters at the time that the state’s attorney’s office was declin­ing to pros­e­cute Fior­i­to because a num­ber of wit­ness­es had ​“severe cred­i­bil­i­ty issues,” a state­ment Dean viewed as ​“a slap in my face.”

“Ani­ta Alvarez, she’s part of the sys­tem,” says Dean. ​“She cer­tain­ly proved to me that she’s not on the right side of the law.”

Though Dean no longer lives in Chica­go, he’s been fol­low­ing the state’s attor­ney elec­tion, and is not enthu­si­as­tic about anoth­er Alvarez term.

“If she gets re-elect­ed, then we’re just in for more of the same cor­rup­tion,” he says.

Dean adds that he feels much more hope­ful about Alvarez’s oppo­nent, Kim Foxx, a for­mer assis­tant state’s attor­ney who has advo­cat­ed that cas­es involv­ing police killings be han­dled by an inde­pen­dent pros­e­cu­tor unaf­fil­i­at­ed with the state’s attor­ney’s office.

“I’m hop­ing that Foxx gets elect­ed, because she under­stands how the sys­tem has been used against par­tic­u­lar­ly peo­ple of col­or,” he says. ​“Hope­ful­ly she can be a cat­a­lyst for change.”

Cook Coun­ty vot­ers will be cast­ing their votes for state’s attor­ney on March 15. As they weigh up whether or not to give Ani­ta Alvarez one more chance, per­haps they should mull over the var­i­ous sec­ond chances she’s giv­en to offi­cers like Robert Fiorito.