Cop Hoards Tickets In Home

By Margaret Lyons in News on May 14, 2008 5:56PM

Ugh, paper work is the worst. And we're all guilty of letting it pile up, from time to time. But we're pretty sure cops aren't supposed to do that. With parking tickets. Like, the ones they've issued. Maybe Sal Mungia didn't get the memo? Or maybe it got lost? Under the pile of nearly 300 tickets he wrote but didn't give 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.

Yeargh. Police also found tinfoil packets—the nose-candy kind—when they evicted Mungia from his home after a mortgage foreclosure, but Mungia denies using drugs. He says the tickets are from motorists who drove away or were verbally abusive, and he didn't know what to do with them. He's been fired. [Trib, photo by dwfree1967]