A Chicago police officer has been recommended for termination after COPA sustained allegations that he sexually assaulted his then-18-year-old girlfriend, provided her with alcohol, and later accessed the police report identifying him as the suspect. Officer Alberto Rodriguez, 36, a Chicago police officer since 2014, is stripped of his police powers and assigned to a unit that takes police reports by phone at the city’s 311 call center, according to a police spokesperson. He was paid $115,158 last year.
COPA also sustained allegations that Rodriguez lied to investigators and misused CPD resources by accessing the report of the alleged sexual assault. CWB Chicago found no records indicating that criminal charges have been filed against Rodriguez in connection with the allegations.
The allegations stem from a 911 call on August 23, 2019, when officers checked on the woman’s well-being after she called her mother crying and saying, “Please help me, Mom.” Her mother also heard a man yelling in the background, according to the COPA report.
Officers went to Rodriguez’s apartment in the 1100 block of North Monticello Avenue in Humboldt Park, where he did not open the door. After officers warned they would force their way inside, Rodriguez’s father, who lived in the unit below, provided them with a key, according to COPA. The officers handcuffed and questioned Rodriguez, but he was not arrested. The woman initially told police that she was fine, had not been drinking, had not been physically harmed, and had not been threatened.
Her mother remained concerned and took her to Saint Mary and Elizabeth Hospital, where the woman told hospital staff that Rodriguez had sexually assaulted her, according to COPA. A blood sample taken at 11:30 p.m., more than four hours after her mother received the call, showed a blood-alcohol concentration of 0.224 and tested negative for narcotics, according to the COPA report.
Rodriguez, a mixed martial arts fighter, met the woman through her brother, another fighter who worked out at the same gym, according to COPA. The woman told investigators that she and Rodriguez began seeing each other in the spring of 2019. She said Rodriguez frequently brought up legal problems involving her brother when she did not want to do something he wanted, including staying at his apartment.
She told COPA that Rodriguez sometimes implied his position as a police officer could help him influence legal matters, including saying, “You know, like open cases are easy to influence,” and “I can have a lot of leeway in situations like that.”
The woman described several sexual encounters that she said were consensual and others that she said were not. She described one assault that allegedly occurred before Rodriguez was scheduled to compete in an MMA fight and another in August 2019, shortly before she left for a three-week trip to Mexico. Rodriguez later drove her to the airport in her car and kept her keys, according to the report. While she was boarding her flight, she received messages from him saying he had run red lights and received tickets while driving her car.
The woman said she continued communicating with Rodriguez during her trip to Mexico, including exchanging sexually explicit messages. She told COPA that she sometimes responded because she wanted to appease him and feared what he might do with her car.
She returned to Chicago on August 22, 2019, and contacted Rodriguez, who picked her up the next day, ostensibly to take her to her car, according to COPA. Instead, the woman said, he took her to his apartment and sexually assaulted her again.
Afterward, according to the report, Rodriguez brought out a bottle of tequila and insisted that she drink because she was “extra tense.” They each had shots before going to a now-shuttered restaurant in the 2000 block of West Division Street, where Rodriguez ordered several drinks for both of them, according to the woman. She remembered having at least two drinks but said she had no memory of leaving the restaurant or returning to Rodriguez’s apartment. She told COPA that she woke to Rodriguez assaulting her again.
When Rodriguez got up, the woman grabbed her phone and called her mother, crying. The mother told COPA that her daughter sounded intoxicated and she heard a man yelling in the background, “You f***** called your mother. You stupid ass.”
The woman initially did not tell officers what had happened because she was afraid they were friends with Rodriguez, COPA found. She later disclosed the allegations at the hospital, where photographs revealed bruising and abrasions on the woman’s left arm, left thigh and both lower legs, according to COPA.
Rodriguez denied the allegations and gave investigators a substantially different account of what happened, telling COPA that the sexual encounter at his apartment on August 23 was consensual. He said the two went to the West Town restaurant, where they both drank alcohol, and then returned to his apartment.
Rodriguez also insisted that he did not know the woman’s age until after the August 23 incident, according to COPA’s report. But the agency’s investigators obtained Instagram records that showed Rodriguez, who went to the same gym as the woman’s brother, received an invitation to the woman’s 18th birthday and high school graduation party in July 2018, which is where the two met. The records also showed the two discussed her age in April 2019, with Rodriguez writing, “And to think I almost didn’t go to your bday party. Now we have such great memories.” The woman responded, “Welcoming me to the consent age.”
Rodriguez also admitted to COPA that he accessed CPD’s Caboodle crime report tracking system and reviewed a report of the August 23 incident. Rodriguez told investigators that he routinely used Caboodle to monitor crimes in his neighborhood. After the August 23 incident, he said, he saw a sexual-assault symbol on the map at his home address, clicked on it and read the report, which identified him as the offender.
Recently retired CPD Supt. Larry Snelling concurred with most of COPA’s findings in a letter dated April 12, 2024, and COPA’s chief administrator signed off on its final report in November of that year.
Rodriguez’s termination proceedings, like many of CPD’s most serious disciplinary cases, appear to be in a holding pattern. But that may be clearing up soon.
The city and the union representing rank-and-file CPD officers have been engaged in a lengthy legal battle over whether officers facing termination or yearlong suspensions can have their disciplinary cases decided through arbitration rather than the Chicago Police Board’s public disciplinary process.
An arbitrator ruled that the union has the right to arbitration under the 1984 Illinois Public Labor Relations Act. The dispute has centered in part on whether those arbitration proceedings must be open to the public. Cook County and state appellate courts have upheld the arbitrator’s ruling, with the courts holding that the arbitration hearings must be open to the public.
The Illinois Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Thursday, and a decision is expected later this year.
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