Report: 3 Chicago cops get desk duty after video

updated 5:14 a.m. ET Oct. 7, 2007

CHICAGO - Three police officers in a troubled unit have been assigned to desk duty after questions arose about the accuracy of a police report on a March 2004 drug arrest, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Officers claimed Raymundo Martinez was arrested outside a bar after they found drugs on him, but a surveillance video showed about 30 officers searching patrons and arresting him inside the bar, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The officers have been assigned to desk work, Chicago police spokeswoman Monique Bond said.

The 2004 bar search involved an elite police unit now under state and federal investigation. Seven members of the same unit already face state charges, including armed robbery and aggravated kidnapping. All have pleaded not guilty.

The newspaper reported the report was filed by special operations section Officers Eric Olsen and Greg Insley. Bond would not name the officers, citing a pending investigation, and did not confirm that Olsen and Insley were among them.

A call to the police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, was not immediately returned. A phone message left with an Eric Olsen in Chicago also was not immediately returned, and no published listing could be found for Greg Insley in Chicago.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald last week revealed a federal investigation of the unit on the same day that a former special operations section officer was charged with planning the murder for hire of another officer.

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