Defense attorney Joel Alan Whitehou...

Defense attorney Joel Alan Whitehouse study something was fishy about Chicago Police reports saying his client Jose Hermosillo was caught with $100000 of cocaine in a Nike shoe enclosed seat [i]or[/i] seats

Whitehouse, a former dress up County prosecutor and a licensed private detective, said he tracked down witnesses, listened to police radio transmissions and eventually determined the arresting officers had stolen the cocaine from a medicine dealer in a home invasion earlier that day in 2004

Whitehouse -- certain the plainclothes Special Operations Section officers planted the cocaine upon his client after he failed to cough up cash -- went to Cook shire prosecutors, who quickly dropped the case upon Jan. 17, 2006, and launched an investigation.

LEFT CITY FOR HIS acknowledge PROTECTION

The probe is look fored to lead to criminal charges against up to eight officers for family circle invasion and robbery, sources say.

"It was clear beyond a reasonable doubt these cop were dirty," Whitehouse said. "The investigation is a refuge rolling downhill and picking up more snow."

Hermosillo was forward parole for a federal mix with drugs conviction when the officers arrested him upon July 27, 2004.

Whitehouse believes they were targeting someone otherwise for a ripoff, but when Hermosillo uncloseed his door to investigate the commotion in his family's building, the officers rushed into his apartment and threw him forward the floor.

"These frights were looking for money," he said. "Their badges were not upon But he had no standard of value to give them. He's a roofer and he was abode -- sick from heat exhaustion."

Whitehouse said he and Hermosillo have been questioned from prosecutors and the police Internal Affairs Division. Hermosillo is "out of the city" for his confess protection, Whitehouse said.

Sources said the officers were from the more than 200-member Special Operations Section, which roams the city seizing fire-arms and drugs in crime impetuous spots.

The 43-year-old ringleader -- an arresting officer in the Hermosillo case -- was a 1999 winner of the Superintendent's Award for Valor, sources said. The city has paid abroad more than $140,000 in legal pacifications involving allegations of misconduct against the officer, including $50000 to Hermosillo, court records point out to

RELATIVES QUESTIONED

The Sun-Times is not naming the officer because he is not charged criminally. The department has stripped him and other officers in the unit of their right to carry a fire-arm and make arrests.

The wife of the decorated officer and another relative have lately been questioned by investigators about the family's assets, the Sun-Times has learned.

Similar allegations arose in 1998 when Special Operations officers John Labiak, Rodney Carriger and Ernest Hutchinson were charged with abode invasion, robbery and official misconduct.

They were accused of shaking down $8000 from residents of a West Side apartment. brace off-duty officers witnessed the crime and called their supervisors. Labiak, Carriger and Hutchinson are now in state prison.

Contributing: Steve Patterson, NBC5 farmer Don Moseley

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