Accused fake cop beats third impersonation case after defending himself in Cook County trial

As an amateur lawyer, Robert Ellis is now three-for-three in courthouse victories.

Last week, a Cook County judge found the 67-year-old Englewood man not guilty of a felony charge of impersonating a police officer. It was the third such case filed since 2018 in which Ellis has prevailed after representing himself legally.

“I had a sword hanging over my head for eight years,” Ellis said in an interview Monday. “I feel like Martin Luther King. Free at last. Free at last.”

Ellis was arrested twice in the 1990s for felony police impersonation and convicted of both offenses, along with arson in 1997.

Ellis’ latest legal saga began in March 2018 when Chicago cops pulled over his car on the South Side for having an expired temporary license plate. When he opened his wallet to give them his driver’s license, the officers spotted a laminated identification card from the Pembroke Township Police Department.

The officers couldn’t find any evidence of a Pembroke Township police department, so they arrested Ellis on a felony charge of impersonating a cop.

That case dragged on for more than six years while Ellis was in and out of jail, accused of violating the terms of his home confinement and getting arrested in two other cases accusing him of impersonating a cop.

Ellis, who defended himself as what’s legally called a “pro se litigant,” beat the 2018 case at trial in May 2024. He argued the two white cops stopped him because he’s Black, evidence, he said, of “racial animus.”

Then in February 2025, Ellis prevailed in a second case, again representing himself against Cook County prosecutors in the same judge’s court. Judge Carol Howard found Ellis not guilty on charges he impersonated a Pembroke Township police officer in 2021.

In that case, Ellis was arrested on Sept. 12, 2021 after a White Sox game when police saw his car parked on a section of Shields Avenue near the ballpark and reserved for police officers.

When confronted by a Chicago cop, Ellis allegedly said he was a police commissioner in Pembroke Township. The officers said they also found a Beta United States Railroad Corporation and Police Department badge in his possession.

Officers at the scene checked an online database and couldn’t find a record of either police agency.

But Howard found Ellis wasn’t lying that he was a cop. He was appointed by Pembroke Township officials, even though the community of 2,000 people in rural Kankakee County had never put any officers through full police training, didn’t have a police station — or squad cars — or a budget.

Ellis won his third case Friday.

He was acquitted of charges of misrepresenting himself as a police officer on Oct. 16, 2021 when he tried to get new license plates for the car he'd driven to the Sox game.

In court papers, Ellis was accused of presenting a “Beta Alpha” police badge at an Illinois secretary of state motor vehicle facility on the West Side and “making statements to witnesses stating he was a certified police officer to a police department showing no record of existence.”

In an interview, Ellis said he showed his Illinois driver’s license at the Secretary of State’s office to obtain a civilian license plate because the police “M” plate on his car was confiscated at Sox Park.

He said he didn’t even have a Beta United States Railroad Corporation police badge with him because it was taken into evidence after the Sox Park arrest.

He said he had incorporated the Beta United States Railroad Corporation and is legally a police officer for the company. The “Beta Alpha” police don’t even exist, he said.

“This one pissed me off the most,” he said. “I didn’t have a badge. I literally had nothing.”

A Secretary of State clerk and police officer testified at Friday’s trial, along with Ellis.

Ellis says the state’s impersonation law should pertain to an underlying crime like robbery or financial fraud — and not simply representing oneself as a police officer.

“This was ultimately a free speech issue,” Ellis said. “This was unconstitutional. Why did I spend 3-1/2 months in jail and miss my first daughter’s birthday for this?”

Ellis said he thanked the judge, who replied, “You can thank me by staying out of trouble.”

He said he’s considering filing a wrongful arrest lawsuit against police and prosecutors.

“I need the money,” he said.