Garry Gets a "Family" Job

Hinted at numerous times by commenters that Garry was continuing an unseemly tradition of Chicago Police Superintendents hobnobbing with Outfit figures, this one turns out to be close to the mark:

• 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.

And who does Rick Simon like to hang out with?

• 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.

He certainly knows a lot of interesting.....characters.