A Chicago police homicide detective has been convicted of assaulting a fellow cop with whom he was carrying on an extramarital affair — and he now faces a disciplinary investigation into his treatment of the same woman, the Sun-Times has learned.
Marco Torres was convicted of misdemeanor assault at a November bench trial for threatening to kill the female detective during an argument near his home in September 2022. Judge Laura Bertucci-Smith sentenced Torres to a year of probation and left in place a restraining order that prevents him from having a gun license required for all police officers.
Torres was ordered to remain on GPS monitoring and to stay away from the victim and the department's Area 1 and Area 4 headquarters. He has been on an unpaid leave, and it's unclear whether he will be able to get his badge back when the protective order expires.
At Torres' sentencing hearing, the female detective tearfully told the judge she lived in fear of him and said he once threatened to kill her “with her own gun and make it look like a suicide.”
Torres was also acquitted of felony battery for allegedly hitting the female detective and shaking her violently during the encounter, though the judge said she believed the testimony of an eyewitness who recalled watching Torres strike the victim.
The female detective has filed more than 20 complaints against Torres, as well as a whistleblower lawsuit alleging she was told by superiors to transfer out of the homicide unit after she reported Torres' alleged threats and abuse. In the lawsuit, she claims she was warned “not to cite a hostile work environment as the reason” for the transfer because it “would upset the department.”
The Sun-Times is not naming her because she was the victim of a crime.
Records from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability indicate the oversight agency received multiple complaints against Torres made by the female detective. The agency is still investigating one such complaint, although the agency often consolidates cases that involve similar allegations against an officer.
Torres was previously at the center of a bizarre on-duty shooting in 2014 in which he claimed his gun accidentally fired when he bumped into a man he was chasing. The man had dropped a gun that was never found.
He later claimed he was grazed by Torres’ bullet, but investigators found it was “more likely than not” that he had struck his head on a rock when he fell. Torres was suspended 15 days for accidentally discharging his weapon.
The trial and civil lawsuit have now 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 he dated sought a protective order against him. She reported he grew angry at her when she asked him to prove that he was no longer married. Torres' wife filed for divorce last year, but it hasn't been finalized.
In a request for protective order filed in October, she said Torres had repeatedly contacted her new boyfriend. The woman said she expected Torres to be upset that she testified he was "stalking" the female detective and that she had warned the officer.
Two other detectives, who had remained friendly with Torres after attending the same police academy class in 2009, testified that he called and texted them, trying to get them to keep the victim 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.” He said he 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," he said. "Both of them I was able to control how they talked to me. I didn’t mean to hit [the female detective]. 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. She said he 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 claimed there was no proof that the calls to the two other detectives who testified came from his phone or the "burner" phones he allegedly used. They also pointed out inconsistencies in the female detective's testimony and said she continued the relationship with Torres even after he allegedly hit her.
Torres denied making the calls, and said he hadn't grown violent. He claimed the female detective had stalked him and his wife and threatened to make false accusations against him. Messages he exchanged with the victim that included apparent 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 the female detective, who he claimed 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.”
