Chicago Hts. Cop Admits Faking Report // Says `Senior Officer' OKd Lie

A Chicago Heights police officer admitted in a guilty plea Tuesday that he wrote up a phony report about an illegal drug raid after consulting with his "senior officer" about the matter.

In a written plea agreement, Officer Rick Coulom, 36, said he falsified reports about cocaine evidence, sent the substance to the Illinois State Police for testing and testified falsely in a preliminary hearing about the case.

Coulom, a former tactical officer now working as a patrolman, became the second Chicago Heights officer this year to admit concocting drug evidence with the knowledge of a senior officer.

His plea is the result of a continuing investigation of Chicago Heights police corruption by the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. A third officer is expected to plead guilty later this month.

Coulom is cooperating with the investigators and is expected to serve as a witness in a criminal case in which no indictments have yet been issued, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Gallo said during Coulom's guilty plea to misdemeanor civil rights violations.

Coulom told U.S. Magistrate Bernard Weisberg that on Jan. 12, 1988, he and Officer Allen Vehrs were checking on a Chicago Heights drug flat when a drug lookout dozed, allowing them to reach the flat's front door. Vehrs, the former head of the department's drug unit, has pleaded guilty to charges that he illegally framed a different drug suspect.

Coulom said he and Vehrs listened at the door and considered making an undercover purchase when a man walked out. Coulom said in his plea agreement he and Vehrs entered the apartment illegally, without "probable cause" to believe a crime had been committed, seized cocaine and drug paraphernalia, and arrested two men inside.

Afterward, Coulom and Vehrs discussed the illegal raid with a senior officer and "we decided to write the (police) report as if we had gone ahead and made the drug buy, since we were thinking of doing it anyway," Coulom told Weisberg.

If they had bought drugs, Coulom implied, the purchase would have established the necessary "probable cause."

Based on his police report, the two men in the apartment were charged with drug violations. One man's case was thrown out at a preliminary hearing but the other was ordered to trial. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 100 hours of community service and fined $300.