‘The Shark’ swims in hazardous waters
Hi, is Joe Lopez there? “No,” said the pleasant woman at the other end of the phone, “you have the wrong number. I keep getting a lot of calls for him even though I’ve had this number for years. I just got one yesterday.” What do the callers say? “They say, ‘I’m in trouble,’” she recounted, noting sometimes the phone rings at 3 a.m. and on the line are “not the most professional-sounding voices, if you know what I mean.”
I know exactly what she means. In this city there are professionals. And, well, “professionals.”
Joe “The Shark” Lopez, 60, is one of Chicago’s most colorful defense attorneys, and his clients are even more memorable than he. Like Drew Peterson, 24-hour-cable’s favorite former-cop-whose-wives-end-up-dead; Frank Calabrese Sr., the psychopathic mobster whose body count far exceeded anything Peterson is accused of; and Outfit hit man Anthony Chiaramonti.
This week, however, it was Lopez whomade news when the SunTimes’ Rummana Hussain reported he punched out a client in a holding cell at the Leighton Criminal Courts building at 26th & California.
That’s why I was calling on what turned out to be his old mobile number. When we did finally connect, Lopez’s first words were, “I can’t discuss any of the facts. It’s under investigation.”
Abdon Pallasch, spokesman for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, confirmed an investigation is underway and also declined comment.
Lopez, however, makes it clear he views what happened as an act of self-defense against a frustrated, locked-up client whom he says he doesn’t want to blame. But who immediately became his “former” client.
Anybody who thinks it’s a walk in the park in any of the county’s criminal courts hasn’t spent time there. A few months ago in Maywood, an inmate lunged at a judge as he was being led away. In another recent case, a deputy was attacked. Even when defendants are in the lockup bullpen behind the courtroom, public defenders know to stand a few feet away to avoid being yanked by the necktie by an angry defendant on the other side of the steel bars.
Not everyone is sympathetic to Joe Lopez. One defense attorney I talked with who declines to be quoted by name contends, “Lopez is a f------ idiot, press hound and wannabe.”
However, longtime lawyer Bill Murphy takes a different view. “I don’t blame him. Years ago when I was a public defender, I had a client who screamed at me, the judge, and jury for three whole days in court. And then, when I got him acquitted and went back to the bullpen, he wanted to shake my hand. I reached through the bars and grabbed him by the lapels.”
In recent months, working on a story, I’ve watched sheriff’s deputies arrive in force when defendants behaved in a threatening manner to a reporter. It was impressive. But also real. If you ever get tired of watching “Law & Order,” take a trip to 26th and California.
You might even get to see The Shark.
Lopez makes it clear he views what happened as an act of self-defense against a frustrated, locked-up client whom he says he doesn’t want to blame.