A former city employee and ward boss for Ald. Jim Gardiner pleaded guilty Thursday to a gun charge after prosecutors said he tried to sell an antique machine gun to an undercover ATF agent while he was on the clock for his Streets and Sanitation job.
Charles Sikanich, 41, admitted to one felony count of unlawful use of a weapon, but the judgment is deferred per a program for first-time gun offenders. Judge Kenneth Wadas ordered him to a 12-month probation term and to perform community service.
Sikanich was arrested by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents and Chicago police officers in April 2022 while continually making requests to allow him to contact Gardiner before he was placed in custody.
Gardiner, who has had legal troubles of his own, represents the 45th Ward, which includes neighborhoods with a heavy presence of city employees on the Far Northwest Side. He has been the subject of an FBI probe reportedly around questions of whether he retaliated against constituents for political purposes, according to Tribune reporting. He has also been sued by constituents alleging wrongdoing in his role as an elected official.
In February 2020, ATF investigators were tipped off by a confidential informant that Sikanich owned an MP 40 submachine gun and was interested in selling it. Sikanich asked the informant to find him a buyer, according to the Illinois attorney general’s office, which prosecuted the case.
In May of that year, Sikanich met with the informant and an undercover ATF agent, and they tried to negotiate a sale price, authorities said. Agents staking out the meeting saw Sikanich arrive in his Department of Streets and Sanitation vehicle, prosecutors said. And time sheet records show he was on the clock at his city job during the time he allegedly was set to discuss the gun sale, according to prosecutors.
In motion hearings throughout the past year, Sikanich’s attorneys have argued that the weapon was a non-operational war trophy and family heirloom.
“If the state wants to charge anybody with a war relic, a war trophy today, what about all the cannons out in front of every VFW hall?” his attorney Jim McKay said at a motion hearing earlier this year.
But Assistant Attorney General Jonas Harger countered that “whether they decided to hang it on the wall, it’s still a machine gun.”
“I don’t care if General MacArthur himself gave it to his grandfather,” Harger said earlier this year.
