Chicago's Elite Rogue Cops and a Call to Alderman Burke?

John Kass reports:

The self-proclaimed Rudy "King Rudolph the Great" Acosta has lived a charmed life.

You already know about his gigantic castle on the Northwest Side that looms over the Kennedy Expressway near Addison Street, courtesy of the First Family of Chicago Zoning. But there's more to King Rudy than his magnificent, if rather overdone, chateau.

This King Rudy update is drawn from that Denzel Washington movie of a few years ago, the ultra-violent "Training Day," about corrupt cops on a shakedown spree.

I don't know how King Rudy looks on film, but I have seen him on MySpace, posing with machine guns, flashing his tats, icons of the gangsta rap culture that King Rudy immersed himself in as an owner of a hip-hop record label. Just check out chicagotribune.com/castle, one of my videos on the Chicago Way.

Today's story begins on Archer and Pulaski, one minute after midnight on a steamy pavement night June 30, 2004. Rudy was in a van. A group of tough cops from Mayor Richard Daley's politically favored but now disbanded Special Operations Section (known by blue shirts as "Sons of Supervisors") said Rudy had a gun.

They arrested him and dragged him around to several homes, allegedly seeking cash, and people were pushed around, women threatened with their children. There was screaming and kicking, and they finally dragged King Rudy to one of his other homes on the Northwest Side (not the castle). The SOS case is part of a larger and joint FBI-Cook County State's Attorney investigation into the rogue cops.

There was $112,000 in cash in Rudy's safe and four illegal handguns. Rudy's father, Rudy II, a precinct worker in the 14th Ward Democratic Organization, allegedly called around to stop the cops and protect his son's money, although 14th Ward boss Ald. Edward Burke insists he didn't get a call that night.

"The [SOS] defendants and other officers searched the house, finding four handguns and a locked safe," according to a prosecution proffer read in court about the corrupt officers in 2006. "The defendants and the other officers went outside and began interrogating the victim [King Rudy] regarding the combination to the safe. During this time, the victim had been placed in the back of the squad car with the car's heater turned on high on this midsummer night."

I called King Rudy's top criminal defense attorney, Joseph "The Shark" Lopez, for an explanation.

"They tortured my client," Lopez told me Thursday. "They rolled the windows up, turned up the heat on him in an attempt to get the money. At one point, they forced him to kneel on Pulaski, into a lane of oncoming traffic. At the house, his wife, who was pregnant, fell down the stairs. Thank God the baby was OK," Lopez said.

Has Acosta ever been involved with narcotics trafficking?

"My client has never been convicted of any drug cases," he said.

I waited, silently on the other end of the phone, savoring Lopez's response.

"My client's a legitimate businessman, trying to make good. The more he makes, the more they try to push him down," Lopez said.

For more on gun control in Chicago and Alderman Burke click on this.