It was 1971 and before I ever pinned on a Chicago police star, I was working with the Cook County Sheriff’s Police, and that’s where I met Ernie Nealy. Ernie was no ordinary copper. He had taken a leave of absence from the Chicago Police Department, a rare move in those days, just to escape the stench of corruption that had permeated the city’s streets. It wasn’t just about ethics — it was survival. He also wanted to live in peace, out in Evergreen Park, where the air was clean and the politics were someone else’s problem.
Ernie had it made. The man drove Cadillacs like they were Chevys, and his wife dripped in mink. Their house looked like something out of a magazine — suburban success, old-school respectability. But greed? That wasn’t in Ernie’s DNA. And yet, fate was about to hand him a test — the kind you don’t study for.
It happened on a gray morning. We were heading up the elevator at 1121 S. State Street to Boys’ Court — to grab a prisoner. Just as the doors were about to slide shut, they were muscled open by a figure you couldn’t miss if you tried. It was Clarence E. Braasch, newly crowned Chief of Traffic under Superintendent James Conlisk. His chest was puffed, his gold braided field cap and uniform crisp, and his eyes lit up when he saw Ernie.
“Ernie Nealy! Is that you?” Braasch beamed. “Jesus, you look good. I’m putting together my unit — getting the old boys back together. I want you. I know I can get you an exempt rank, no sweat.”
It was a golden ticket — prestige, power, and the perks that came with playing the game. Most men would’ve jumped. But Ernie? He smiled politely, shook his head.
“You know, Claire,” he said, “I’m really happy where I am. The wife and I, we’ve got our life out in Evergreen Park. I appreciate the offer… but I’m gonna pass.”
Braasch stepped off at the fifth floor. The elevator continued upward, but my thoughts stayed with him. In my head, I thought he was nuts — turning down an offer like that? But then I heard him mutter, almost to himself: “Putting the old boys back together? That’s not going to end well.”
He was right.
A few short months later, the whole operation exploded. Clarence Braasch — along with nearly two dozen other officers — was arrested, indicted, and convicted in one of the most sweeping police corruption scandals Chicago had ever seen.
Then Captain Braasch’s crew, operating out of the 18th District, had been running a two-tier extortion empire. The “Little Club” shook down over fifty smaller taverns for modest monthly bribes. The “Big Club” bled North Side nightclubs and gambling joints for thousands. Braasch was at the center of it all — approving targets, collecting envelopes, and living large while the law was sold off one payment at a time.
It was greed dressed in uniform — and it came crashing down when the feds swooped in with charges under the Hobbs Act. By 1973, after damning testimony from bar owners and officers alike, Braasch was sentenced to six years in federal prison — the highest-ranking Chicago cop ever locked up at that point.
Ernie Nealy? He wasn’t wearing gold braid. He wasn’t living in the city. But he wasn’t in a courtroom, either. He saw it coming. He knew.
That day in the elevator, Ernie didn’t just say no to a job. He dodged a bullet — a big one!
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