It looks bad for this Chicago cop, caught taking money from a tow truck driver to whom he gave business:

The tow truck driver was a cooperating witness in the federal investigation and secretly taped phone conversations with [Officer Michael ] Ciancio. During one such phone conversation, Ciancio agrees to meet the driver on his way home in the Walgreen’s parking lot at Oak Park and Belmont avenues. “Beautiful,” Ciancio reportedly says when allegedly handed $600 cash. At that point the informant said, “Let’s get out of here. There’s too many eyeballs.”

In another phone call between the two in October, 2007, Ciancio, reportedly concerned he hadn’t received a weekly payment, said, “I didn’t hear from you, I say what the f*** happened, you know. I thought it was like, Christmas and I looked under the tree, there was no gift, know what I mean?”

But when the Trinity High School principal, Sister Michelle Germanson, heard about his indictment, she wanted “to go into our chapel and cry,” she considered him such “an absolutely great guy.”

He’s a Trinity basketball coach and also coaches girls’ basketball in River Forest and has so for years.  He is also the second Chicago cop caught in a 16-month investigation by the FBI, Chicago Police and the Internal Revenue Service,

charged with soliciting bribes of between $600 and $800 per week over a two year period from a tow truck driver in return for allowing that driver to work towing away cars involved in traffic accidents [he] handled.

He has to be proven guilty, but the pattern is Chicago, even to the point of the supposed offender being otherwise upstanding.  Public morality is one thing, personal another.  Many Chicagoans know or are related to someone in the same alleged boat.