DALEY’S POLICE DETAIL UNDER SCRUTINY
For the 22 years he was mayor, Richard M. Daley relied upon a select group of police officers to ensure his safety and that of his family.
The security detail was more than a palace guard. Its members routinely traveled with Daley and his family. They drove his kids to school. They ran errands for the family.
Now, members of the police detail that served Daley are being questioned by Dan K. Webb, the special prosecutor appointed by a judge last year to reinvestigate the 2004 death of David Koschman.
Sources say Webb wants to know what the security detail’s members know about Koschman’s death — a case that resulted in an involuntary manslaughter indictment last month against Daley nephew Richard J. “R.J.” Vanecko.
Webb continues to look into why police and prosecutors from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office didn’t charge Vanecko.
Webb’s team has questioned retired police Cmdr. Sam Roti, who became the detail’s commander in 2004, about two months after Koschman’s death.
Roti replaced James Keating, a retired police officer who is now head of security for the Chicago Transit Authority.
Keating and Roti both grew up in Bridgeport, the former mayor’s old neighborhood. Each joined the detail on April 25, 1989 — the day after Daley was first sworn in as mayor.
Neither Roti nor Keating would comment.
Nor would Webb, who has refused to discuss the investigation.
Daley spokeswoman Jacquelyn Heard said: “We understand that to be an ongoing investigation and therefore inappropriate for anyone, particularly the former mayor, to comment at all.”
Daley was in Florida, celebrating his 62nd birthday, when the police say the 6-foot-3, 230-pound Vanecko punched the 5-foot-5, 125-pound Koschman during a drunken confrontation in the Rush Street nightlife district on April 25, 2004. Hospitalized in a coma, Koschman died 11