Ex-Melrose Park cop who sold stolen drugs gets 11 years in prison

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Ex-Melrose Park cop Gregory Salvi

Gregory Salvi, once a decorated Melrose Park police officer, sold drugs stolen from the evidence room, offered to illegally carry narcotics in his police car and wore his badge while accepting what he thought was 5 kilograms of cocaine.

And during his sentencing hearing Wednesday, a federal prosecutor also accused Salvi, 44, of selling cocaine to a “kid” but offered no more details in court. A prosecution memo alleged Salvi bragged about selling 6 oz. of cocaine to a “kid” for $4,800.

To U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve, that sale was perhaps the most disturbing of Salvi’s many betrayals of the public trust.

BACKGROUND: Ex-Melrose Park cop admits selling drugs stolen from evidence Feds want 14 years in prison for crooked ex-Melrose Park cop

So, after telling Salvi his crimes went “against everything you stood for when you took that oath as a police officer,” St. Eve sentenced the former cop to 11 years in prison.

Salvi apologized to the judge and told her, “I tried to be something that I wasn’t.”

“I don’t really know what happened,” Salvi said. “I don’t know how I lost my way.”

Salvi pleaded guilty in April to trying to sell 500 or more grams of cocaine and carrying a Glock .45 caliber handgun while doing so. The feds caught him in the scam he tried to pull off as he feathered his nest ahead of retirement in 2015.

“I got f—–‘ three months left in the police department,” Salvi was caught saying in March 2015. “Okay? I’m trying to make whatever I can.”

The scheme began when the Melrose Park police seized a kilogram of cocaine in the spring of 2014, according to Salvi’s 21-page plea agreement. Salvi got his hands on it and sold it for cash later that summer.

Then, on Nov. 30, 2014, Salvi sold 2.4 grams of heroin stolen from the Melrose Park evidence room, along with baking soda that appeared to be cocaine, to a pair of federal informants in exchange for $500. On Dec. 13, 2014, Salvi sold another four grams of cocaine and 1.3 grams of heroin to the same informants for $300.

Salvi offered in February 2015 to move cocaine for the informants, telling one of them, “I’ll work that night, meet you here with the f—–’ police car, and I’ll bring it right downtown, just give me a spot where we pull right in, you can even put somebody in the car with me, I don’t give a f— if you think I’m gonna bail on ya, I’m not gonna do that.”

The next month, Salvi agreed to move drugs for one of the informants for $2,000. He said he would use a vehicle with law enforcement plates and wear his police ballistic vest.

On April 9, 2015, Salvi arrived in a law enforcement vehicle at a storage locker facility in Hanover Park and accepted five “brick-shaped objects” from an undercover officer — he thought it was five kilograms of cocaine — which he took to his vehicle. That’s when he was swarmed by police and arrested, records show. The FBI has said he was wearing his badge at the time and had planned to deliver the drugs to a condo in the South Loop.


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