Chicago Officer Fired for Keeping Parking Tickets
May 14th, 2008

A Chicago police officer was fired last month after deputy sheriffs evicting him from his home in August 2005 found hundreds of foil packets with cocaine residue and almost 300 parking tickets he wrote up but never issued to drivers.

On top of a fireplace mantel, the deputies found several stacks of traffic tickets that had been filled out by the officer, Sal Mungia, between September 2003 and February 2005, records made public Tuesday show. The tickets had been turned into the department but never given to drivers. The deputies also saw what appeared to be burned tickets in a fireplace, according to a transcript of their testimony before the Chicago Police Board.

Mungia, 35, a patrol officer who had been on the force since 2000, was fired by the board on April 17, the records show. The department stripped him of police powers in October and recommended to the board that he be fired. He has never been criminally charged with any wrongdoing.

While Mungia and his family were being evicted from their home in the 10400 block of South Sacramento Avenue as part of a mortgage foreclosure, Mungia identified himself as a Chicago police officer. As the deputies retrieved his identification, they found hundreds of the tinfoil packets and plastic bags littering his master bedroom, according to testimony in the Police Board hearing in February.

Mungia couldn't explain the presence of the tinfoil packets but denied using drugs, authorities said. His wife told police that they contained cocaine residue, the deputies testified.

In testimony before the Police Board, Mungia said he kept the parking tickets after motorists drove away or were being verbally abusive to him. He said he believed that the drivers would receive notices in the mail from the Department of Revenue.

Mungia testified the 291 parking tickets found at his home represented a fraction of the approximately 7,000 he issued a year.

"I didn't know what to do with them," he told the Police Board. "I didn't know if we were supposed to destroy them or hold on to them for a year or what."

But by keeping and possibly destroying them, he may have left hundreds of people unaware that they had been given citations, said Anna D'Ascenzo, assistant corporation counsel.

Some of the tickets Mungia issued have been dropped, some have been paid and others are under review, said Monique Bond, spokeswoman for the department.