The Top Cop: Public defenders say ISP trooper copied, pasted findings in arrest reports over years
Illinois State Police say all arrests made by Trooper Kevin Bradley based on probable cause
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Public defenders tell the ABC7 I-Team they believe an Illinois State Police trooper lauded for making hundreds of DUI arrests in recent years copied and pasted portions of some of his reports from one driver to the next.
Last week, the ABC7 I-Team first reported on the state's Top Cop: a moniker given by the Illinois nonprofit Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists for the member of law enforcement who has made the highest number of DUI arrests in a calendar year.
ISP Trooper Kevin Bradley won that title for three years in a row, leading him to receive the Mothers Against Drunk Driving "Hero Award" last year.
But some of those arrests have been challenged in court with dozens of drivers saying they were not guilty, and it took years to clear their name.
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Two public defenders tell the I-Team those underlying arrests, and the trooper's required testimony in court, led to a staggering amount of overtime pay year over year, and they believe the state should investigate the trooper's conduct.
"ISP needs to open an inquiry into Trooper Bradley and his arrests," said Assistant Public Defender Andrew Segal. "It's fundamentally unfair, you know, in the case of a number of Trooper Bradley's arrests, where this is not done in the interest of justice, but it's in done in the interest of his pocketbook."
Segal has represented many drivers arrested by Bradley, including Aurora driver Raymond Theus.
"It affected me badly," Theus said.
Theus told the I-Team his trouble started the weekend following Thanksgiving in 2023 when he and his wife were driving home from his mom's birthday party, driving a rental vehicle carrying party equipment, when he saw the flashing lights in his rearview mirror.
"It happened so quickly and I was in cuffs," Theus said.
Theus was pulled over by Trooper Bradley after allegedly swerving on the freeway. According to Bradley's arrest report and dashboard camera video footage of the stop reviewed by the I-Team, Bradley asked Theus to exit the vehicle.
After Theus told Bradley he had a drink earlier that night, Bradley wrote in his report he could smell "a strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emitting from the vehicle," and that Theus' eyes were "bloodshot and glassy."
Theus refused to take any field sobriety tests, and he was arrested and charged with DUI.
A truck driver for ten years, Theus said he lost his commercial driving license and has been out of work since that night.
"Made me feel like deep down, I can do nothing," Theus told the I-Team. "Can't make no money."
Theus is one of hundreds of drivers arrested by Bradley the I-Team found, and in court cases like his, public defenders say they started seeing red flags surrounding Bradley's arrests.
"He really didn't present [as] very credible," Segal said. "And so a number of attorneys, myself included, started digging into his records."
Segal, along with Assistant Public Defender Rae Sanonetti and other attorneys and staff in the office, started their search by reviewing hundreds of Bradley's arrest reports, going back to 2022.
"We sent FOIA requests to the Illinois State Police for all of Trooper Bradley's arrest reports from 2022, 2023 and 2024," Segal said. "ISP refused to grant our [Freedom of Information Act] requests. So, we went about getting them through a different mechanism, which was through the criminal discovery process."
Segal and Sanonetti said their team reviewed nearly 500 arrest reports.
"What we were able to find as a result was striking," Segal said.
After reviewing the reports, Segal and Sanonetti said their team found factual observations written the exact same way in numerous cases spanning years.
"In almost every single DUI arrest, you saw those, those magic words, the 'bloodshot glassy eyes', the odor of an alcoholic beverage," Segal said. "These observations of the fact copied back and forth."
In cases where field sobriety tests were performed, the attorneys found the results were the same across nearly the entire board among Bradley's arrests.
"They [the tests] just didn't come back in a way that was scientifically plausible," Segal said. "If someone's conducting a test 463 times, and in 462 of them, the individual has not only failed, but shown all six clues... It's not like there's a normal distribution, where some people show zero, few more show one. The most is three, kind of a bell curve."
Segal continued, "With Trooper Bradley's scientific results, you just see one column to the max and another and all the other columns basically blank."
In addition, Segal and Sansonetti told the I-Team they discovered what they considered a "smoking gun."
"We actually came across what we consider a smoking gun, which was a full field report, which was copy and pasted verbatim from one arrestee to another arrestee," Segal said. "And that was shocking."
The field reports were for two DUI arrests that occurred in March 2022. In the first arrest, according to the report, a driver was arrested for DUI on March 20, 2022, after telling Bradley they were taking the medication Lexapro. More than 24 hours later, according to a separate report, Bradley arrested another driver for DUI but the narrative section of the report appears to be copied word for word, including the first driver's name and details from the prior night.
"The reports were 100% verbatim," Sansonetti said. "It included the wrong person's name. The first person who was arrested, Trooper Bradley had written his name wrong, and that same typo was in the second report. So that was startling to me."
According to court records, in both cases, DUI charges were dismissed by prosecutors.
In Theus' criminal case, Segal and Sansonetti laid out all of these points in an evidence motion filed in August 2025, stating "Trooper Bradley repeats this pattern in hundreds of DUI arrests each year by writing cookie cutter field reports, which appear to be copied and pasted."
"That was startling to me because it seemed like he knew he was getting away with this," Sansonetti told the I-Team. "He just, you know, didn't care to check his work because he had been doing it for so long."
The attorneys believe there's a connection between the number of arrests made by Trooper Bradley, and the amount of overtime he has earned through court appearances.
As the I-Team previously reported, Bradley tripled his salary in 2024, earning nearly $250,000 in a single year.
"As his DUI totals went up, year after year after year, so did his salary," Segal said. "[Troopers] make overtime pay for just showing up at court. So even if they show up at court, they testify and the case is garbage and they lose, the trooper still gets paid."
Trooper Bradley and his attorneys have not responded to the I-Team's requests for comment. A spokesperson for ISP previously told the I-Team Bradley is currently on medical leave after suffering injuries from a work-related accident.
Both public defenders tell the I-Team the Illinois State Police and the Cook County State's Attorney's Office learned of their findings last August, but they believe the agencies have not taken any action.
A spokesperson for the Illinois State Police told the I-Team, "ISP is not able to comment on possible internal investigations."
"Witness credibility is an important factor, and we take it very seriously," a spokesperson for the Cook County State's Attorney's Office told the I-Team. "As we do in all cases, the CCSAO continues to evaluate witnesses under our Brady/Giglio policy. We are unable to comment further due to pending litigation."
A CCSAO spokesperson said that pending litigation includes any pending criminal cases involving Trooper Bradley.
For more than two years, Theus fought the DUI charges and just last month, prosecutors abruptly dismissed the charges against him.
"It's scary because anyone can be pulled over," Sansonetti said. "It's very easy for an officer to start a DUI investigation, even if there is no credible evidence of a DUI."
Segal believes the "Top Cop" title should be given to law enforcement not based on arrests but based on convictions.
"We still live in a country where everyone is innocent until proven guilty," Segal explained. "Ray was innocent when he was arrested. It would make more sense to reward convictions... Reward officers who are actually getting drunk drivers off the streets."
After reviewing more than 300 DUI prosecutions listing Trooper Bradley as the arresting officer since 2023, the I-Team found 174 drivers were found not guilty at trial, or their cases were dismissed before adjudication, like in Theus' case. According to court records, 105 drivers were found guilty, with 96 of those drivers accepting plea deals for lesser charges, and as of last month, 40 cases were still pending.
A spokesperson for ISP previously told the I-Team, "A trooper makes an arrest when there is probable cause... Ultimately, it is up to the prosecutor to determine whether they can meet the threshold of proof beyond a reasonable doubt."
Theus is hoping to repair the damage done in his life, he says, by the Top Cop.
"What he's doing is not right," Theus said. "But he's getting away with it. Something's not right."
