P.O. Brian Strouse #15806

Police Officer Brian T. Strouse, of the Monroe District, was gunned down while conducting a surveillance of gang activity near West 18th Place and South Loomis.

Officer Strouse was working as a plainclothes tactical officer. At approximately 2 a.m., he went into an alley and shots began to ring out. Wearing a bulletproof vest and a police badge on his utility belt, Strouse yelled out, "Police, drop your gun.” Five more shots continued until a fatal bullet struck Officer Strouse.

The other two officers ran toward the sound of the gunshots where they found Officer Strouse laying on the ground. He had been shot once in the chest and once in the head. The shot to the chest had been stopped by his vest. Officer Strouse was transported to a local hospital where he succumbed to his wounds approximately seven hours later.

On September 17, 2003, the gunman was convicted of first degree murder. On December 8, 2003, after three hours of deliberation, a Cook County jury found the 18-year-old shooter guilty in the killing of an undercover Chicago police officer in the Pilsen neighborhood, a verdict that will send the street gang member to prison for the rest of his life..

Officer Strouse was a 6-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department. During his career, he received 61 commendations and a life-saving award. Officer Strouse is survived by his parents and three sisters, one of whom is a Chicago Police Officer.

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Memory of slain officer 'still lives on' after a decade

Brian T. Strouse
July 01, 2011|By Jeremy Gorner | Tribune reporter

Chicago Police Officer Brian T. Strouse was shot and killed during the early-morning hours of June 30, 2001 as he hid behind a parked van during surveillance for gang and drug activity in the Pilsen neighborhood.

On Friday, 10 years after his death, several of his relatives, dozens of fellow officers, and former police superintendents Phil Cline and Terry Hillard joined about 20 other people along 18th Place and Loomis Street to remember the 33-year-old Monroe District officer.

“He was more than just a police officer,” Strouse’s sister, Kathy, told the crowd. “He was a son, a brother, an uncle, a nephew and he was a friend, as well as for some of you, a partner.” A Marine who served in the Gulf War, Strouse joined the force in January 1995 and was known to many people in Pilsen whom he greeted regularly while working his beat. He was killed in a part of the neighborhood where crossfire between rival gangs occurred regularly. Ald. Daniel Solis, whose 25th Ward covers Pilsen, said violent crime has eased somewhat in Pilsen from those days. He told the crowd about how moved he was when he recently spoke with Strouse’s father.

The alderman quoted Paul Strouse as saying: “As long as things have gotten better, I’m very proud of the fact that it was my son that caused that.”
Solis then said: “If you can point out that Brian’s passing away has brought us together to improve things, to make things better…then this is a very special day. It’s 10 years. It’s a decade. And the memory of Brian still lives on.”

New police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said when he learned about Strouse he was struck by how “it always seems that we lose our best,” pointing to not only Strouse’s military service, but how he received an award by saving a woman from a burning building.
“He (couldn’t) help but run into that building. He couldn’t help but run towards danger,” McCarthy said. “It’s not normal to go towards danger the way that our great Chicago police officers do and that’s why we always seem to lose our best. Because they take those risks. Because they have that courage. Because they have that conviction…

“Brian certainly had that conviction. It’s reflected in his career.”
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Memory of slain officer 'still lives on' after a decade

Brian T. Strouse
July 01, 2011|By Jeremy Gorner | Tribune reporter

Chicago Police Officer Brian T. Strouse was shot and killed during the early-morning hours of June 30, 2001 as he hid behind a parked van during surveillance for gang and drug activity in the Pilsen neighborhood.
On Friday, 10 years after his death, several of his relatives, dozens of fellow officers, and former police superintendents Phil Cline and Terry Hillard joined about 20 other people along 18th Place and Loomis Street to remember the 33-year-old Monroe District officer.

“He was more than just a police officer,” Strouse’s sister, Kathy, told the crowd. “He was a son, a brother, an uncle, a nephew and he was a friend, as well as for some of you, a partner.”
A Marine who served in the Gulf War, Strouse joined the force in January 1995 and was known to many people in Pilsen whom he greeted regularly while working his beat. He was killed in a part of the neighborhood where crossfire between rival gangs occurred regularly.
Ald. Daniel Solis, whose 25th Ward covers Pilsen, said violent crime has eased somewhat in Pilsen from those days. He told the crowd about how moved he was when he recently spoke with Strouse’s father. The alderman quoted Paul Strouse as saying: “As long as things have gotten better, I’m very proud of the fact that it was my son that caused that.”
Solis then said: “If you can point out that Brian’s passing away has brought us together to improve things, to make things better…then this is a very special day. It’s 10 years. It’s a decade. And the memory of Brian still lives on.”
New police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said when he learned about Strouse he was struck by how “it always seems that we lose our best,” pointing to not only Strouse’s military service, but how he received an award by saving a woman from a burning building.
“He (couldn’t) help but run into that building. He couldn’t help but run towards danger,” McCarthy said. “It’s not normal to go towards danger the way that our great Chicago police officers do and that’s why we always seem to lose our best. Because they take those risks. Because they have that courage. Because they have that conviction…
“Brian certainly had that conviction. It’s reflected in his career.”
Sad farewell to a brave cop
Mourners recall officer who made city `safer place'
July 06, 2001|By Rick Hepp and James Janega, Tribune staff reporters.
As the silver hearse bearing Police Officer Brian Strouse's casket rolled up to the church, a phalanx of officers tried to hold their salutes steady, but many white-gloved hands shook.
The officers remained at attention as the casket, a City of Chicago flag tucked around it as snugly as a bedsheet, was drawn from the hearse and carried into the Edgebrook Lutheran Church. The open doors let the first chords of organ music flow to the street.

It was only then--when the limestone church had swallowed up the casket and its pallbearers, Strouse's parents, family, police and city officials--that the officers on the street let down their guard. Here one pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. There one appeared to be gasping for a breath between sobs. A head bowed, shaking.
Slain while working a drug investigation, Strouse was buried Thursday with all the sad ceremony accorded police officers killed on duty.
"I stand here feeling a mixture of strong emotions. I am deeply saddened. I am frustrated at the senselessness of violence. And I am proud," police Supt. Terry Hillard said in the church.
"When gunshots are fired in a community, most people run away. In contrast, Brian is the type of man who runs to the sounds of the gunfire because he knows someone needs help," Hillard said.
Mayor Richard Daley, his voice trembling, extended his sympathy to the family. "Words cannot convey the sadness, grief and anger that not only I feel today, but all of Chicago," Daley said. "He wanted and did make this city and its neighborhoods a better and safer place to live."
Outside, hundreds of Chicago police officers in dress blue uniforms stood on the shady, residential street, nodding as they listened over loudspeakers to the service inside. Beside them were officers from dozens of suburbs, the Illinois State Police and departments as far away as Vermilion County.
Most everyone inside the church knew the life story recounted Thursday.
Strouse, 33, was a Monroe District officer who joined the force six years ago after a tour in the Marine Corps.
He had 61 honorable mentions on his record. Last year, he received a lifesaving award for pulling a woman out of a burning building.
On gang surveillance
He volunteered to serve as a plainclothes officer on his district's tactical unit, and he was shot while working gang surveillance in an alleyway early last Saturday in the Pilsen neighborhood.
Two fellow officers nearby heard the pair of shots that struck him and rushed to his aid. Strouse died several hours later at Cook County Hospital.

Although it was not mentioned at the funeral, everyone there also knew that a 16-year-old, Hector Delgado, was charged with first-degree murder in Strouse's death and is being held without bail in Cook County Jail.
Strouse's was the fourth funeral for a Chicago tactical unit officer slain on duty since 1998.
"It's a role that requires special qualifications, and Brian had that," Hillard said. "Someone has to walk the point. Brian walked that point, and Chicago is going to be a lot better than it has been in the past."
Family recollections
On Thursday, as the city mourned Strouse as a fallen officer, his family remembered him also as a lost brother and son.
They remembered his mocking professional wrestler persona "Mr. Perfect" and insistence on using half-off coupons for restaurant meals.
"I will miss smiling at him walking down the aisle at my wedding," said his sister Paula. "I will miss him holding my first-born child. I will miss his own wedding and his own children.
"I will miss our family gatherings at any restaurant when he had a 50 percent off coupon, of which he had many," she said, laughing.
"I will miss you for my lifetime," she said. "Thank you for giving me the honor of being my one and only brother forever."
His mother, Ann Marie, wore a yellow dress, which she said was called for as she celebrated her son's life.
"His light was so special," she said. "Brian was a little bit of sunshine. He spread it around to his family and friends, to his Marine buddies and to the Police Department."
His mother spoke of him growing up playing Little League baseball and always wanting to snag pop-ups for practice. When he couldn't do that, Ann Marie Strouse said, he would throw a ball at the front steps of his Northwest Side home to practice fielding. "I don't know how many doors we replaced," she said.
She asked Daley as part of her son's legacy to resolve the impasse between the city and police union over a new contract. The case is in arbitration.
Several hundred squad cars, bearing insignias from dozens of police departments, lined both sides of Devon Avenue with lights flashing as the hearse bearing Strouse's casket made its way to Mt. Emblem Cemetery in Elmhurst.
An American flag rolled in the breeze, suspended over the entrance by raised ladders of two firetrucks. The long string of squad cars, their lights still flashing, followed Strouse's family and friends under the flag and past two lines of mounted police officers just inside the cemetery.
Honor guard
As his casket was placed by the graveside, pipers from the Police Department's Emerald Society band played "Amazing Grace." Hundreds of officers stood at attention as a Marine Corps honor guard fired off a 21-gun salute and a lone bugler played taps.
After the service, Hillard told reporters Strouse was an outstanding officer doing what he wanted to do, facing risks inherent in the profession.
"This is a war out there, the young man died in a war," he said. "Sadly to say, eventually this is going to happen again, either to a Chicago police officer or to another citizen."