I-Team: Jack Riley, Chicago DEA chief, gets promoted to post in Washington

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The ABC7 I-Team reports that one of Chicago's top crime fighters is getting a promotion. Drug Enforcement Administration Chief Jack Riley is being moved to the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Riley's move to Washington is surprising, not because of his style and success, but because the expectation was he would retire from his post in Chicago - at least that is what Riley has enjoyed telling people over the years.

Though he has accepted a job at DEA headquarters as third in command of the nation's drug-fighting agency, all U.S. and international DEA operations will be under Riley's command according to an agency spokesman.

Street work is what Riley has always considered his strength. The grandson of a Chicago policeman, Riley spent years investigating the Mexican cartels and trying to stop the illicit movement of heroin and cocaine across the southern border.

He made the capture of this man a personal crusade: Joaquin Guzman, known as "El Chapo," the ruthless leader of the notorious Sinaloa cartel and one of the wealthiest people on earth. Riley relished the fact that El Chapo wanted him dead.

"On some wiretaps we heard a number of conversations in which he was willing to pay people to cut my head off," said Riley in February 2011.

Before El Chapo could accomplish that, he was arrested last February. While Riley is believed to have been in on the operation that brought the drug lord to justice, Riley has not yet talked about the raid - undoubtedly a difficult mission for a man who excels at convincing the public just how important the War on Drugs is.

"I've never seen a better organized, more vicious, well-funded crime organization in the world. If you took the old outfit and put it next to Chapo Guzman's people, it'd be a bloodbath," said Riley.

Riley, 56, leaves a city where heroin and crack cocaine are still sold like ice cream bars by street corner vendors, but where dozens of drug operatives await federal prosecution; where cartel leaders have formed coalitions with street gangs, but authorities have an intelligence center to better understand the mechanics and where the majority of Chicago murders are connected to the illegal drug business, but law enforcement partnerships are seeing some improvement in the murder statistics.

From his post in Chicago, Jack Riley has supervised federal drug investigations in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota and in North Dakota, where there have recently been several cases connected to oil pipeline workers. He will start in Washington next month.