Chicago police investigate 6 officers over alleged false testimony

The Chicago Tribune reports:

Chicago police have begun an internal investigation into allegations that as many as six officers lied in their court testimony and are prepared to take at least one of the officers off the street because of a judge's determination he had testified falsely in a narcotics case.

The inquiry, confirmed by a police spokesman, comes in response to a Tribune investigation that documented more than a dozen examples over the past few years in which judges concluded officers gave false or questionable testimony in court.

The Cook County state's attorney's office, meantime, has filed what it calls a disclosure notice regarding a veteran officer, Jorge Martinez, whose testimony in a narcotics case led a judge earlier this year to throw out the seizure of a $50,000 brick of cocaine, resulting in the release of two suspects. That case was at the center of the weekend Tribune report; prosecutors, responding to the Tribune's inquiries about the case, filed the notice stating that Martinez had been found to have testified falsely.

Prosecutors are reviewing other cases the Tribune highlighted to determine if disclosure notices are warranted in those cases as well.

No word yet on this story from Barack Obama.