Joseph Vecchio had more misconduct complaints than any active officer in the Chicago Police Department — 76 complaint log numbers in six years, against a department average of 3.5. The city’s oversight agency had warned the superintendent about him in writing. The Police Board had already announced it wanted him fired. Then on Friday, August 21, the 31-year-old officer turned himself in, charged with attacking his girlfriend.
The three days that caught up with him
Prosecutors say the attack happened Tuesday, August 18, at Vecchio’s apartment on the far Northwest Side. According to their court filing, he struck his girlfriend repeatedly, then placed both hands around her neck for ten to fifteen seconds. The filing says he told her he wouldn’t even need his gun — that he could, quote, “just crack her skull” — made her scrub floors and wash sheets, and set his department firearm on the counter, blocking the front door. She escaped over a third-floor balcony, and a neighbor drove her to a police station.
Wednesday, a judge granted an emergency protective order. Thursday, the Chicago Police Board announced termination proceedings in two disciplinary cases. Friday, Vecchio turned himself in.
He is charged with felony aggravated domestic battery. Judge Kimberly Przekota denied him pretrial release, writing that he poses “a real and present threat to the safety of any person.”
Six years of warnings
Vecchio was hired by CPD in October 2019 and assigned to Tact Team 1863, patrolling the 18th District — River North, Streeterville, the Gold Coast, the Magnificent Mile. On October 6, 2025, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability sent Superintendent Larry Snelling a formal letter flagging at least 76 complaint log numbers — the most of any officer in the department — including false reports, civil rights violations and domestic abuse, and recommended he be pulled off the street immediately. Twenty-four complaints were sustained — investigators confirmed the misconduct — totaling more than 230 days of recommended suspensions.
Two false-report cases stand out. COPA concluded an August 2024 false report led to an innocent Chicago man’s conviction. Another case collapsed entirely after COPA found false statements under oath.
Then there was the October 21, 2024 stop: Vecchio boxed in a driver named Eddie Wilson for parking more than twelve inches from the curb, cuffed and searched him, and wrote no citation. The city paid Wilson $80,000. COPA said Vecchio violated his constitutional rights and treated him in a “highly disrespectful manner” — while his own sergeant stood nearby, watching.
The unit, and the money
The trouble wasn’t one officer. Tact Team 1863 drew more than 50 complaints in 2024 alone. COPA found more than 90 percent of the stops it investigated targeted Black drivers — a disparity the agency wrote “may be indicative of implicit bias, or racial profiling.” The team faces 17 federal lawsuits, and the city is now negotiating a package settlement of all of them.
What happens next
Vecchio remains behind bars, held without pretrial release, as the criminal case works through Cook County court. The termination proceedings sit with the Police Board. The 17 civil lawsuits hang over the city.
And every case Vecchio ever touched — every arrest, every report — is now open to challenge in court. His attorney declined to comment. The department says he’s been stripped of police powers. The attorney for the drivers he stopped put it simply: it took a long time for officials to see through the lies.
Seventy-six complaints. Six years. One question remains: who else is still wearing a badge with a file like his?
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