Ex-cop with ties to reputed wiseguys hires Garry McCarthy’s firm

Since Mayor Rahm Emanuel abruptly fired him four months ago, former police Supt. Garry McCarthy has pined for the glamorous top-cop job at Scotland Yard, telling the British press he’d “fix London’s police the way I sorted Chicago’s.”

But the next chapter of his career apparently will be more V.I. Warshawski than Sherlock Holmes.

According to Trade Show Executive magazine, a South Loop firm led by Richard Simon — a former police sergeant and major Emanuel administration contractor — has provided a soft landing for McCarthy and his longtime aide Robert Tracy.

“Garry McCarthy will work . . . with United on various industry-based projects through his new private-sector venture, GFM-Strategies,” the magazine reported on Feb. 18.

Tracy has become senior vice president of Simon’s United Security Services Inc. He previously worked with McCarthy at the New York Police Department and as the chief of crime control strategy at the Chicago police, which he left in January.

McCarthy didn’t want to talk about his new venture and its client when I emailed him Tuesday.

“Your understanding is wrong,” he wrote in response to questions about his work for Simon. “I have my own company. Now go away.”

McCarthy’s new outfit is based at the same building in the 1500 block of Indiana Avenue where Simon’s companies are headquartered, according to the web site of GFM-Strategies. State records show McCarthy’s wife, Chicago lawyer Kristin Barnette, incorporated GFM-Strategies on Jan. 19.

Simon was excited about what McCarthy and Tracy can do for him, Trade Show Executive reported.

“Robert Tracy is a distinguished member of both the public law enforcement sector and the private corporate sector,” the magazine quoted Simon as saying. “His leadership, along with the ability to partner with Garry McCarthy and GFM-Strategies, gives us a significant advantage as we ramp up our next generation security at public facilities.”

Reached by phone Tuesday, Simon declined to comment.

One of Simon’s firms has been paid more than $70 million by the Emanuel administration under a 2012 deal to perform janitorial services at O’Hare Airport, city records show.

At the time his United Maintenance Inc. won the O’Hare deal, Simon claimed to city officials he was the firm’s 100 percent owner. But the Sun-Times revealed Simon had sold a 50 percent stake to a local investment group.

City officials said they could have nixed the deal but decided not to do so, despite criticism from some aldermen.

Back then, Simon employed a man who had served in prison after being indicted along with the late mob boss Anthony “Big Tuna” Accardo.

Simon has also been a business partner in a heavy equipment company with a man who has been described by law enforcement as a member of the mob.

Simon joined the Chicago police 40 years ago and moonlighted at the company of the Ben Stein, Chicago’s “King of Janitors.” Stein, a convicted felon, also was a mob associate.

According to a 1983 police file obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, Simon refused to testify before a grand jury investigating the disappearance of Karen Lee Koppel, a “close female friend and companion” of Stein.

Simon “had been conducting negotiations” on Stein’s behalf with Koppel, offering “a posh Lake Shore Drive apartment” and new cars for her to get out of Stein’s life. The CPD document also says Simon met Koppel at a bar on the night of her disappearance. Koppel hasn’t been seen since.

Investigators again approached Simon in 1988, to ask about the attempted mob hit on labor leader Dominic Senese. According to an FBI report, Simon “stated that he had known Dominic Senese and his family for so long that he could not remember how long” but told agents he did not know who tried to kill Senese.

After Stein died, Simon bought out his family. The company has thousands of employees working at convention centers, airports, hotels and hospitals across the country.

Still, the Rivers Casino in Des Plaines got rid of Simon’s company last year after the Better Government Association reported it was working there.

McCarthy began socializing with Simon — whose company also cleans the lakefront police memorial for free — since arriving in Chicago as Emanuel’s first CPD head in 2011.

McCarthy was the city’s highest-paid employee, with an annual salary of $260,000. Tracy was paid more than $194,000 a year.

Despite boasting that the mayor had his back, McCarthy was fired after officials released the dash-cam video of an officer shooting 16 bullets into 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

At the time of Tracy’s departure, then-Interim Supt. John Escalante said only that Tracy was retiring “to accept an executive-level security position in the private sector.”