Chicago Police Department

Chicago's police superintendent said he was stepping down as head of the beleaguered department, but he would not say what role two videotaped beatings involving off-duty officers had in his decision. Last month, prosecutors filed felony charges against an officer accused of beating a female bartender. Six other officers were removed from street duty after being accused of assaulting four businessmen in a bar. Superintendent Philip J.

A Chicago police officer has been charged with aggravated battery in the off-duty beating of a 15-year-old high school student last week, authorities said. The student suffered a broken jaw and other injuries in the attack, police said. The incident is the latest in a series of alleged beatings by off-duty Chicago officers.

The Chicago Police Department will disband an elite drug and gang unit under state and federal investigation for allegations including armed violence, home invasion, kidnapping and plotting a murder for hire, officials said. "The recent incidents involving officer misconduct have been disheartening and demoralizing, especially to the officers who serve this department honorably every single day," said interim Police Supt. Dana Starks.

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley picked a Philadelphia FBI official to lead a Police Department tarnished by allegations of misconduct and abuse. J.P. "Jody" Weis, 49, was named to succeed Police Supt. Phil Cline, who announced his retirement this year. The City Council must approve Weis' appointment.

A young Los Angeles woman was at the center of a continuing Chicago police investigation Wednesday after she plunged from one of the last remaining high rises in the city's notorious Robert Taylor Homes project a day after a trespassing arrest. The woman remained hospitalized in critical condition Wednesday night, said Monique Bond, director of news affairs for the Chicago Police Department. The injured woman's name was not released.

Hour after hour, Christina Eilman threw herself at the bars of her cell, shrieking threats one moment and begging for help the next. Even the women in adjoining cells, many of whom were used to the chaos of lockup, called out to guards on Eilman's behalf. "I heard that girl screaming for her life, 'Take me to the hospital! Call my parents!' " Tamalika Harris, 26, said in an interview. "The way she was screaming and kicking on the bars, I knew something was wrong."

The Pigs of 1968 are out in force again. On country club greens and in catering halls, Irish pubs and inside a museum that houses one man's crusade to restore the blighted name of the Chicago Police Department, the graying cops who clubbed young demonstrators during the chaotic Democratic National Convention are looking back in anger.

It was after 1 a.m. when the Ford Heights police impounded Richard Will's car and arrested the friend who'd been driving--he was wanted for failing to pay child support. They left Will, who had had a drink or two, stranded in the nation's poorest suburb, in a neighborhood frequented by drug dealers and gangs. Fifteen minutes later, police responding to a call about a prone person on fire saw Will again. He'd been beaten, doused with lighter fluid and set aflame.

Some of the city's most notorious street gangs are infiltrating the Police Department here, and officials can't do much about it. Until gang members in blue break a law, they are protected by their union contract and the right to associate with whomever they please, officials said. In the last three years, at least 15 police officers have been charged with crimes, forced to resign or investigated for membership in a street gang, the Chicago Sun-Times said in its Sunday editions.