ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. There was a court hearing today in Chicago to address an unusual case. On Saturday, a young man reported for duty at the Grand Crossing district of the Chicago Police Department. He was dressed in full uniform and even though nobody recognized the officer, everyone bought his story that he was a transfer from another district.
He was assigned a partner and sent out on duty. Five hours later, the officers returned to do paperwork, and someone noticed the rookie wasn't wearing a badge or a gun, and he was only 14 years old.
Joining me now is Angela Rozas who's been covering the story for the Chicago Tribune. Angela, 14 years old, how did he pull this off?
Ms. ANGELA ROZAS (Reporter, Chicago Tribune): Well, he's five foot three, muscular and my colleagues who've been working on this with me, tell me that he looks mature. He apparently had a great love of police. He had been watching "Cops" for years and was also a member of - something we call the Explorers here. It's a program through our community policing office in which the youth are supposed to get to know police officers, and I guess he took his homework a little far.
NORRIS: Where did he get the uniform?
Ms. ROZAS: The police are still investigating that, however, a pastor, who was a guardian to the boy - he's had a troubled life, said that he was told that in the past, the boy had stolen a uniform from a locker room at some point. The interesting part that we've learned today was that he's been arrested several times before for impersonating a police officer in the last year.
So, police are looking into how he got the uniform. The idea is you're supposed to present a badge when you get a uniform, but obviously, police are looking into those security measures at this point.
NORRIS: What's the penalty for impersonating a police officer?
Ms. ROZAS: That's a great question that - I don't know the answer to that. They charged him as a juvenile, and in juvenile court, it operates very differently from adult court. We know that the judge today asked that the boy be held and also that an evaluation be done of him, a psychological evaluation.
NORRIS: The notion that someone could so easily infiltrate the Chicago Police Department, does this raise real security issues for them?
Ms. ROZAS: Yes, it does. The deputy superintendent, speaking at a press conference yesterday, raised that issue and said, you know, we've identified an egregious security breech, and I'm hearing this morning that commanders are meeting and talking about this.
The ability of anyone who hasn't shown proper identification to be able to get into a police vehicle and check out a ticket book as he is alleged to have done, it does raise an issue that Chicago police tell me they are looking into it. Because, all right, so it's funny, it's a 14 year old boy. But what if it was somebody else with less innocent intentions? The top brass are meeting to discuss, you know, how did this happen, and how can we prevent this from happening again?
NORRIS: Do you have any idea what he actually did during those five hours that he was on duty?
Ms. ROZAS: That's the other interesting tale is - my colleagues and I were talking about this, talking to Chicago police and yet pretending to be a Chicago police officer, any police officer for that matter - it's pretty baffling how he was able to pull that off for a number of hours.
NORRIS: Oh yeah, they have their own vernacular, I mean.
Ms. ROZAS: Exactly. They have their own way of speaking. I've been covering cops for 10 years, and I come up short, even though I talk to cops all the time. We have some conflicting reports on what happened. Chicago police insists he was not behind the wheel of the vehicle. He went out with a partner, but we're told from other sources that he did so much as to write tickets and respond to a domestic battery call.
So just the extent of his involvement, that's something that we're pursuing to figure out just who he was talking to and what he was doing.
NORRIS: Angela Rozas, thank you so much.
Ms. ROZAS: You're welcome.
NORRIS: Angela Rozas is a reporter with The Chicago Tribune.