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Former Chicago police officer Peter Bella noticed issues by way of a digital camera lens that others didn’t.
After years of patrolling the North and West Sides, Mr. Bella turned a police forensics photographer, taking footage of bloody crime scenes.
After retiring from the police power in 2007, after almost 30 years on the job, he centered on avenue pictures, capturing photographs of all the pieces from ice cream vans to candids of the late Joseph “Walking Man” Kromelis, the hanging, enigmatic and mustachioed man who merely strolled the town for years.
He held one gallery present in 2023 on the late artist Tony Fitzpatrick’s area The Dime on Western Avenue. The two males had been buddies.
During the pandemic Mr. Bella began a blog and wrote about no matter crossed his thoughts, from hotdog toppings to politics, in tones starting from exuberant to curmudgeonly.
He wrote that being a Chicago cop was “the best job in the world” in a publish from April 2024.
But he additionally wrote: “Being a Chicago police officer is an all-access pass to all the things you never wanted to see, feel, or experience. I saw and witnessed some horrible things that humans do to one another. Every time you think you saw the worst, human nature says hold my beer . . .Some say we did God’s work. That is a lie. We did the work God did not want to do. Were we necessary? You are damn right.”
A couple of months later, in July 2024, he wrote: “Life is short, no matter how long you keep breathing. Live, love, laugh, and eat the damn sandwich.”
Mr. Bella died Dec. 27 from esophageal most cancers. He was 72.
Mr. Bella lived in Lincoln Square and cherished sitting by the fountain, individuals watching and chatting with strangers in Giddings Plaza.
He learn a ton, completed a crossword on daily basis and loved watching Jeopardy with different regulars at his favourite pub.
Mr. Bella loved staying on the transfer. He attended Kendall College, the culinary coaching college, after he retired from the police division. And he turned a docent on the Driehaus Museum.
“Before work he’d stand outside the museum and see people and drink coffee and chat,” mentioned his daughter, Cordelia Bella.
“He was the type of person who’d be driving down the street and, if there was something interesting, he’d go look at it. He was really engaged with the world around him,” she mentioned.
Mr. Bella instructed the Sun-Times in 2023, forward of his gallery exhibit: “I spent years in the front seat of a car driving in square circles around places like Little Village and Pilsen, but you don’t see anything until you get out and walk.”
Mr. Bella was born in Chicago Jan. 10, 1953, to Vincent and Angeline Bella — a butcher and a secretary.
He grew up close to Midway Airport, attended Brother Rice High School and studied at Roosevelt University and University of Illinois Chicago, the place he turned thinking about pictures.
He labored as an investigator for the Cook County health worker’s workplace earlier than changing into a cop.
“He was a very deadpan, good-looking man,” mentioned his spouse, Mary Louise Hamilton. “Not the kind of guy you’d see walking down the street with a grin on his face, but if you asked him to do something he’d do it.”
Over the years, his spouse and daughter often obtained him to go away city to go on trip, however he was content material in Chicago.
“If it was up to him, he never would have left the city, he’d have been poking around looking at gravestones or old buildings — he just thought the whole world was here,” his spouse mentioned.
Mr. Bella was a longtime common at a Catholic Mass held on Sundays for law enforcement officials on the Mercy Home for Boys & Girls on Jackson Boulevard, recalled retired Chicago Police Chaplain Fr. Tom Nangle.
“He was so damn curious about life,” Nangle mentioned. “He was a most unusual man. He knew the street and the good, the bad and the ugly. But the flip side, he knew the fine things in life, too, like food, art, books, the warmth of a family — the guy really was a lifelong learner.”
Services have been held.
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