High-level Chicago police official’s car stopped in West Side drug bust

Yolanda Talley, chief of the internal affairs bureau for the Chicago Police Department | Chicago Police Department

A top Chicago police official’s car was stopped on the West Side during a drug arrest earlier this month, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

A Lexus registered to Yolanda Talley, chief of internal affairs, was pulled over Feb. 1 in the 500 block of North St. Louis Avenue and officers arrested Kenneth Miles, 34, on drug charges, according to an arrest report and police sources.

Talley wasn’t in the car.

Her niece was driving the Lexus, a police source said.

According to a police report, officers in a gang investigations squad were targeting drug sales in the area when they saw a man in a black mask pick up a bag near a black SUV and enter the passenger side of a four-door silver Lexus.

Officers said they stopped the car because the driver made a left turn without using a turn signal. Miles tossed a Ziploc bag containing 84 pink packets of heroin out of the window, police said.

Police said they recovered about 42 grams of heroin worth about $6,300. Miles was charged with possession of a controlled substance, a felony. He’s in jail, according to Cook County sheriff’s records.

Kenneth Miles.

Miles has a criminal record that includes multiple drug-related arrests, seven of which resulted in convictions, court records show. At the time of the Feb. 1 arrest, he was free on bond in a separate felony case for manufacturing and delivering fentanyl.

It’s unclear why Talley’s niece was driving her Lexus. Talley’s niece wasn’t arrested.

A second police source said the officers involved in the arrest haven’t been allowed to go back on the street but haven’t been officially stripped of their police powers or put on “desk duty.”

Instead, the two are on what that source referred to as “‘soft desk duty.’”

“It’s all very hush hush,” the source said.

Talley, who, in a police video, said she grew up on the West Side and still lives there, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.

The matter has been referred to the city’s inspector general’s office, said Don Terry, a police spokesman. A spokeswoman for the inspector general didn’t return a call seeking comment.

Talley was promoted to chief of internal affairs in December. Before that, she was deputy chief of recruitment and retention in the police department and a deputy chief in charge of district commanders on the South Side.