Chicago DEA head Jack Riley: El Chapo arrest was 'the milestone for me'

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The I-Team spoke exclusively with the Chicago lawman who made a career of pursuing Mexico's top drug lord. Jack Riley, head of the DEA in Chicago, is being promoted to a top agency position in Washington.

Now in a Mexican jail, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is off the grid - and since being arrested in February, his Sinaloa Cartel has kicked into reorganization mode. Here in Chicago, Drug Enforcement Administration head Jack Riley is packing for a promotion to the No. 3 spot at DEA headquarters. The two situations are not disconnected.

"Clearly his organization has been damaged, but we still got a lot of work to do there," said Riley.

After almost three decades, Jack Riley will continue doing that work as he accepted the highest ranking non-presidential-appointed job in the DEA. The offer interrupted his retirement plans, and came after what happened last February, when the man Riley had pursued for years was caught.

El Chapo, short for "shorty," was arrested in a military police raid on a beachfront resort in Mazatlan. The billionaire drug lord who accounted for 80-percent of Chicago's drug trade was out of commission, and Riley says things in Chicago changed.

"If you look at the price of heroin, it has gone up to a certain extent in parts of the five states I have. It's a little tougher to get, it's a good sign. In general when you look at organizations, when we remove somebody--what happens to the organization? Internal communications, alliances shift. All of those are opportunities for law enforcement both domestic and international to have a bigger effect on the criminal organization," said Riley.

The government almost got El Chapo in 2012 hiding in a Baja mansion, but he slipped away. He's now facing multi-count indictments in Chicago and other cities, but Riley wants him tried here.

"I can't talk about the case. I certainly would like to see that happen," said Riley.

ABC7's Chuck Goudie asked: "In three years' time, do you expect El Chapo to be here or to have that question resolved?"

"I would hope we'd get some answers on that," said Riley.

"Is there anything that could happen under your watch in the next three years that could be any bigger than El Chapo's arrest?" Goudie asked.

"Probably not to me, personally. That was really kind of the milestone for me," said Riley.

Riley's next milestone in Washington, he says, will be curbing street violence associated with drug gangs and cutting off the flow of narcotics money to foreign terrorist organizations.