An Illinois state trooper who also worked as a youth hockey referee was arrested on child pornography charges this week while at work at the agency’s Des Plaines headquarters, authorities said.
Colin Gruenke, 38, of Deerfield, was charged in a criminal complaint unsealed in U.S. District Court on Thursday with one count of distribution of child pornography, court records show. Prosecutors are seeking to have Gruenke held without bond pending trial, and a detention hearing is set for Monday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Young Kim.
Gruenke’s lawyer, Ricardo Meza, declined to comment Friday.
According to the complaint, authorities were first alerted in September 2024 that someone using the screen name “cgiceman” was distributing multiple files containing child pornography through the social networking platform Kik.
The screen name appeared to reference Gruenke’s involvement with hockey, from playing in a Northbrook men’s league to refereeing junior hockey league games, including the 2018 Illinois State High School Hockey Championships, the complaint alleged.
After obtaining search warrants for Gruenke’s phone and Deerfield condominium, agents with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations confronted the trooper at about 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Illinois State Police Chicago District offices in Des Plaines, the complaint alleged. At the time, Gruenke was holding an Apple iPhone, which he handed over to the agents.
“During the manual review of the iPhone, officers discovered thumbnails of deleted screenshots depicting child pornography in the iPhone’s “Files” application,” the complaint alleged. The images, which were later fully recovered, depicted “fully nude prepubescent children with their genitals displayed in a lewd and lascivious manner,” according to the charges.
At the same time of Gruenke’s arrest, agents executed a search warrant at his home on Waukegan Road in Deerfield, where they found a 16-gigabyte flash drive inside a nightstand drawer in his bedroom, the complaint alleged. In addition to a folder labeled with Gruenke’s government-issued email, another subfolder on the flash drive labeled “DIVX” contained about 200 video files of children as young as 9 being sexually abused by adults, the complaint alleged.
Gruenke, who has the rank of trooper first class, joined the Illinois State Police in 2019 and currently worked in patrol in Troop 3, which covers the entire Chicago area, according to an agency spokesperson. He’s been placed on administrative leave without pay pending the outcome of the case.
Gruenke’s salary is currently $86,000, state payroll records show.
He’s being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
Originally Published: August 15, 2025 at 12:34 PM CDT