A crooked Chicago Police officer was sentenced to more than 7 years in prison Friday after he lied to get bogus search warrants to help him and another cop steal drugs and cash.
Federal prosecutors had asked for 10-year prison sentences for Xavier Elizondo and fellow officer David Salgado, who they said cloaked robberies and burglaries with “the veneer of lawfulness” and wrought “institutional havoc” on Cook County’s justice system.
Elizondo received 87 months in prison.
Arguing for a lengthy sentence, federal prosecutor Sean Franzblau said Elizondo and his fellow officer, Salgado, “went into people’s homes and treated it like their personal police playground.” Franzblau said they “manipulated the entire legal system” and caused an “untold loss of public trust.”
A jury last fall convicted both men on several corruption charges after prosecutors accused them of stealing cash and drugs after lying to secure search warrants.
Their sentencing hearings actually began in March, days before the coronavirus pandemic halted most of the business at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse. The conclusion of Elizondo’s sentencing marks the highest profile event in months to take place in the building that now requires face coverings in public areas and limits two people to an elevator.
Salgado’s sentencing hearing is set for July 15.
Michael Clancy, Elizondo’s defense attorney, argued in a March memo that even prosecution witnesses described Elizondo as an “excellent police officer” who “fought crime on the front line for more than twenty years.” Federal prosecutors have defended the role that he played in a separate street-gang case charged in federal court, Clancy wrote.
“Elizondo was involved with the federal investigations and prosecutions of roughly 100 defendants,” Clancy said. “The United State’s Attorney’s Office has not dismissed those cases. It has not petitioned for release of those defendants, or asked to overturn convictions Elizondo helped secure. Essentially, then, depending on the government’s interest in the case, Elizondo was either a reliable, good cop or a dirty cop who deserves ten years in prison.”
Before sentencing Elizondo told the judge “this is not somewhere I expected to be at this point in my life.”
He added: “I hope and pray that there is some consideration of leniency.”
Elizondo and Salgado were first charged in May 2018 and accused of abusing a system that let cops use anonymous “John Doe” informants. The officers had informants lie to judges to get warrants that let them search properties where they stole money, drugs and cartons of cigarettes, according to an indictment that also accused them of sharing illegal proceeds with informants.
Embattled Cook County Circuit Judge Mauricio Araujo found himself drawn into the case because he signed a warrant for Salgado outside the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in River North in December 2017. Elizondo and Salgado used that warrant to search what they believed to be a drug stash house on the West Side.
The FBI had hidden $15,000 inside the house searched by the officers using the Araujo warrant. It also planted surveillance cameras there. The officers found both and decided to inventory the money properly, according to federal prosecutors.
Still, Elizondo was caught on tape telling an informant working for the feds “it would have been a good Christmas” if the cameras hadn’t been there.
Then, in January 2018, that same informant told Elizondo about cash and drugs inside a rental car parked at the Carlton Inn near Midway Airport. The tipster told Elizondo a key had been tucked inside the rear bumper of the car.
The FBI had hidden $18,200 in two Burger King bags in the car, according to court records.
After searching the car with other officers, they eventually took the car to the Homan Square police station, where Salgado reported $14,000 was found inside, records show.
