Chicago Man Who Once Posed as a Cop as an 8th Grader Pleads Guilty to Third Charge of Impersonation 

A Chicago man didn’t learn his lesson the first time he got caught impersonating a police officer as a 14-year-old eighth-grader, much to the embarrasment of the police force who sent him out on patrol.

The Chicago Tribune reports that Vincent Richardson, now 22, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to impersonating an officer, marking his third time facing the charge. 

According to the report, since Richardson had already been in custody for about 11 months, due to his most recent arrest, he could be released soon , though Cook County and state correction officials could not say when. The 22-year-old faced up to six years in prison for the charge.

Richardson’s mother, Veronica Brock, told the Tribune that her son was pressured into pleading guilty for a crime he didn’t commit, adding that her son was transferred to Cook County Jail’s maximum-security Division 9, where he was housed with inmates facing murder charges. 

Brock claims that she worries about her son not being able to live in Chicago anymore, claiming he was a target after embarrassing the Police Department so many years ago. 

“The police have let it be known that they’re going to pull him over any time they see him,” she said, according to the Tribune. 

The 2009 incident resulted in five officers being suspended for a few days at a time. Richardson, who was 14 at the time, reportedly walked into the South Side poilce station, claiming to be a rookie sent from another district to help out. For the next six hours, the eighth-grade student went out with a partner to five traffic accidents and even used the squad car’s computer to check license plates, handled a police car and may have helped handcuff a suspect. 

He was put on juvenile probation in that case, but was later arrested in 2013 on the same charge after he tried to buy a duty belt and police clothes from a Northwest Side uniform shop. 

Most recently, in May of 2015, Richardson was pulled over and found to be wearing a “police-style” bulletproof vest and “replica firearm” in his waistband, the Tribune notes. He told the authorities that he had those items, along with a police scanner, handcuffs and stun gun, because he worked as a security guard at a Family Dollar store. 

Read more at the Chicago Tribune.