Chicago police detective convicted of threatening to kill fellow officer

Police oversight officials are investigating allegations against a Chicago police homicide detective who last month was convicted of assaulting a fellow officer with whom he was carrying on an extramarital affair.

Det. Marco Torres has been on unpaid leave. In November he was convicted in a bench trial on a misdemeanor count of assault for threatening to kill the female officer during an argument on the street in front of his house in September 2022. The same detective had filed more than 20 complaints against Torres, and a whistleblower lawsuit alleges she was told to transfer out of the homicide unit after she made reports to internal affairs.

Last month, Judge Laura Bertucci-Smith sentenced Torres to a year of probation and left in place a restraining order that prevents him having a firearms license that is required for all police officers. He also will remain on GPS monitoring and is barred from being near the victim or CPD’s Area 1 and Area 4 headquarters. It is not clear whether he will be able to get his badge back after the protective order expires.

At Torres' sentencing hearing, the detective tearfully told the judge she lived in fear of Torres, who she said once threatened to kill her “with her own gun and make it look like a suicide.”

Torres also was acquitted of a felony count of battery for allegedly hitting the woman and shaking her violently during the encounter, though the judge said she believed the testimony of an eyewitness who said she saw Torres strike the victim.

The victim, who is not being named by the Chicago Sun-Times because she is the victim of a crime, in 2023 sued Torres and the department in a whistleblower lawsuit under the name Jane Doe.

In the lawsuit, Doe claims that after she reported instances of threats and abuse by Torres to supervisors and internal affairs, and was told to transfer out of the homicide division, she was warned “not to cite a hostile work environment as the reason” for the transfer because it “would upset the department.”

Records from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability indicate the oversight agency received multiple complaints against Torres made by the victim in the assault case, complaints in 2023, before Torres was charged criminally in March 2024. Records indicate that investigations into multiple complaints were closed, but the agency often consolidates cases that involve multiple, similar allegations against an officer.

The trial and civil lawsuit have surfaced other allegations by women who claim they were romantically involved with Torres and were threatened or abused by him. Ahead of testifying at a hearing in Torres’ criminal case, another woman sought a protective order against him. The woman said she was in a relationship with Torres from 2023 to 2024 and said that Torres, whose wife filed for divorce last year, grew angry at her when she asked him to prove that he was no longer married.

In the months following, she claims Torres contacted her boyfriend on several occasions. The woman said she expected Torres to be upset when he learned from her testimony that he was "stalking" Doe and that she had warned her.

Two CPD detectives, who had remained friendly with Torres after attending the same police academy class in 2009, testified that Torres called and texted them, trying to get them to keep Doe and other witnesses from cooperating with prosecutors.

Torres called one detective from a number that appeared as “No Caller ID,” then sent texts, opening with a plaintive request: “This is my life. Please don’t testify.” The message went on to explain that Torres believed he could conceal calls by using "burner" phones that were "paid for by other people in cash" and included a sort of confession, prosecutors said.

“I always cover my tracks. Both of them I was able to control how they talked to me. I didn’t mean to hit [Doe]. It was an accident.”

In the run-up to Torres' trial, a third woman sought to protect her address and phone records from being subpoenaed by Torres’ lawyers, claiming that Torres had hit her and smashed her phone after she testified in another case that Torres offered to pay her not to testify — a filing that included pictures of her bruised jaw and cracked cellphone.

At trial, Torres’ lawyers pointed out that though the two officers said they recognized Torres’ voice, there was no proof that the calls came from his phone or “burner” phones he allegedly used. They also pointed out inconsistencies in Doe's testimony, and that she had continued the relationship with Torres even after he allegedly hit her.

Torres denied making the calls, and in fact claimed that he never hit Doe. He said that it was she who was stalking him and his wife and threatening to make false accusations against him. Messages he exchanged with Doe that included seeming threats of violence were part of sexual role play, he said.

At his sentencing hearing, Torres gave a rambling statement that he wanted to get away from Doe, who was stalking him.

“I just want an opportunity to get my life back,” Torres said. “I want to go back to work, any kind of work. I apologized to my wife, my mom, my kids for bringing something like that to my home, to our home.”

This is not the first time Torres has been investigated by COPA. In 2014, he was cleared of wrongdoing in a bizarre on-duty shooting in which he claimed his gun accidentally fired when he bumped into a man he was chasing, with the man claiming the bullet grazed his head.

Torres was suspended 15 days for accidentally discharging his weapon, but investigators found that it was more likely that the man’s head wound came from falling and striking his head on a rock found near where Torres fired his gun.