The Chicago Police Board on Thursday voted unanimously to fire an officer who menaced a former recruit after she broke up with him for threatening two of her classmates at the police academy.
Livius Tomescu, a human resources officer whose job duties included conducting background checks on recruits, was found guilty of all but one of the 11 administrative charges lodged against him, according to a written ruling by the board.
The allegations centered around Tomescu’s brief and tumultuous relationship with Rafia Iqbal, which began in the summer of 2018 when she was at the police training academy. Iqbal has since become a sworn officer, city records show.
Iqbal ended the relationship by Oct. 3 of that year, just two days after Tomescu threatened two of her classmates over an off-color joke that was made at her expense, according to the board. In the week after the breakup, the jilted cop then directed his ire toward Iqbal.
“You thought you were going to throw me under the bus. I’m taking you with me,” he said, threatening also to report her family to immigration officials.
The board noted that Tomescu had previously grown “very angry” when one of Iqbal’s academy classmates joked that she was another recruit’s “b----“ after she was named their homeroom’s secretary.
He then made threatening calls to the recruit who made the joke and another classmate, prompting them to report him to their homeroom instructor, according to the board.
Iqbal ended the relationship, but the harassment continued when he contacted her sister and asked for help repairing the relationship, the board wrote. Iqbal’s sister was married to another recruit, and Tomescu used his background check information to contact the couple.
Later that October, Tomescu was stripped of his police powers. Then in March 2019, an internal affairs investigator requested he be assigned to a program for police officials having issues affecting their competency. He was for a time found unfit for duty and placed on medical duty, according to the board.
The board also found that Tomescu accessed Iqbal’s personnel file and background information while they were dating and shared certain documents with her. He also improperly accessed a police database to search for her and her ex-boyfriend, who he called.
Tomescu also lied to investigators about where he got the phone number of the recruit who teased Iqbal, according to the report. He was found not guilty of a similar charge alleging he falsely denied accessing Iqbal’s records because he hadn’t done so on the specific day he was questioned about. He did, however, access the records on other days.
Last April, Supt. David Brown recommended Tomescu’s firing. Tomescu then argued last October that Brown was barred from pursuing the charges against him because he had already been punished when he was sent to the program for officers having competency issues and placed on medical leave.
The board denied Tomescu’s motion, saying those weren’t disciplinary actions.
