Plaintiff:
James Dean, Jr.
Incident date:
10/01/2007
Location:
3600 N. Halsted St.
Allegations:
In 2008, Dean and Lopez were driving in the Lakeview neighborhood when Officer Fiorito stopped them and arrested them for DUI. Despite performing the Standardized Field Performance Test, and knowing that they were not driving under the influence, Officer Fiorito charged them with false DUI charges. The officer created false reports and provided false testimony in court. The arrest of Dean and Lopez were part of a series of other improper arrests by Officer Fiorito, done with the purpose of accumulating overtime pay for court appearances. Officer Fiorito is a midnight officer and is paid overtime for every court appearance that is not scheduled during his regular shift. Because all court appearances never occurred while he was on overnight duty, Officer Fiorito was guaranteed overtime pay. Due to the high volume of his cases, the City added “key dates” to his court schedule, happening once a month where the bulk of his cases would be scheduled on those days. However, Fiorito was present in court nearly every day. All of his police reports were similar in content, always claiming that every driver in every DUI arrest would “fail to stay in lanes,” “swerve, speed, drive without headlights,” “almost strike parked cars,” and “fail to wear seatbelts.” Officer Fiorito did this for several years until 2009 when a representative of the Cook County State's Attorney said that Officer Fiorito's credibility was being questioned, and therefore, he could no longer be used as witness for the prosecution. The charges against Dean and Lopez were eventually dismissed.