Somehow, I'm not at all surprised. Not even a little.
It was a waste of $7 million.
That's the conclusion legal and nonprofit groups make -- in a report to be released Tuesday -- about a special prosecutor's probe of alleged police torture under former Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge. Former Appellate Judge Edward Egan and attorney Robert Boyle spent four years investigating 148 cases in which defendants claimed they were tortured by Burge and his men into giving false confessions. The two prosecutors concluded torture occurred in at least three cases but said it was too late to bring charges.
Egan and Boyle offered only mild criticism of then-Cook County State's Attorney Richard M. Daley and then-First Assistant Dick Devine. Transcripts of Egan and Boyle's interview of Daley show they were deferential to him, prompting a federal magistrate to write, "The statement taken by the special prosecutor from Mr. Daley contains little useful information. It consists almost entirely of leading questions posed by the counsel for the special prosecutor, often prefaced by long, factual recitations."
The report -- by a coalition that includes Northwestern University's Center On Wrongful Convictions, Amnesty International and lawyers representing the alleged torture victims in civil suits against the city -- recommends the Cook County Board hold a hearing into "questions concerning the special prosecutors." The report cites a Sun-Times story revealing Egan's family ties to the Police Department, including a nephew who worked under Burge and was the arresting officer in one of the cases investigated. "The record strongly suggests that the Special Prosecutors' investigation and resultant report, which cost the taxpayers of Cook County $7 million, were driven, at least in part, by pro-law-enforcement bias and conflict of interest, were riddled with omissions, inconsistencies, half-truths and misrepresentations, and reflect shoddy investigation and questionable prosecutorial tactics and strategies," the report concludes.
Nobody in the current political power structure -- absolutely NOBODY -- has anything invested in seriously criticizing King Richard II, and a report that genuinely stated, as it surely must, that he at the least tolerated and possibly actively condoned police torture during his time as states' attorney ... well, I can't imagine anyone in this county wanting to go there, can you?
And now, of course, the police seem to have decided that being thugs in public, then either lying about it or intimidating witnesses is the way to go. And nobody seems to be gainsaying them about that, either.
By John Conroy
April 20, 2007
LAST DECEMBER SIX off-duty Chicago police officers reportedly attacked four businessmen in a bar, leaving one in need of reconstructive surgery and another with four broken ribs. In February off-duty officer Anthony Abbate beat up a young female bartender who declined to serve him any more drinks. Both incidents were recorded by security cameras.
Outgoing police superintendent Phil Cline said he was “disgusted” by the assaults. He said what dismayed him wasn’t just the beatings but also how the attackers were subsequently protected by the department. Commanders kept the offenders in the December incident on active duty for months, even after seeing the recording. In videotape of February’s incident, Abbate can be seen repeatedly punching and kicking bartender Karolina Obrycka, yet he was only charged with a misdemeanor till the state’s attorney’s office brought more serious charges. A police captain ordered his men to harass the media who came to cover Abbate’s first court hearing.
“I won’t tolerate any misconduct. If it comes to a criminal nature, we’ll arrest you. If somebody tries to shield Officer Abbate, or any other officer accused of misconduct, then they’re going to have to pay the consequences for it,” Cline said after that hearing. But this isn’t anything Cline hasn’t seen before. [...] On the video, as Weems moves Anderson away from the turnstiles Pleasance follows, holding Anderson’s jacket in his left hand. Pleasance stops at Anderson’s right, in front of the officer, within a foot or so of the waving gun. Pleasance seems much calmer than Anderson or Weems, strangely unintimidated by the proximity of the weapon. Like Anderson, he seems to be disputing Weems’s take on the situation, but he’s not overly agitated or gesticulating.
Pleasance momentarily switches Anderson’s jacket to his right hand. At 6:17:43 Anderson raises his right arm to point again. Pleasance raises his left hand, perhaps to evade Anderson’s rising arm, or perhaps to point at the turnstile area himself. Pleasance stands flat-footed, not pivoting or stepping or shifting his weight as if to land a blow. An instant later, at 6:17:44, Weems raises the Ruger and shoots Pleasance in the head.
Pleasance drops from the frame. Over the next 90 seconds, the CTA cameras show, Weems and Anderson continue talking. Anderson points repeatedly toward the turnstiles. They move down the corridor, away from Pleasance’s body. Weems kicks a leg out from under Anderson, who goes down. They wrestle and then stand again, Anderson still in Weems’s control. [...] AFTER THE SHOOTING Weems filled out a tactical response report in which he indicated that Pleasance had attacked him. According to a copy of the general offense case report filed by officers Walker and Griffin, someone (in the poor copy we obtained lines are missing that might say who) said to Weems, “You ain’t taken (sic) nobody to jail. You will have to shoot all of us,” and Pleasance came up from behind him swinging with a closed fist....
[...] Lori Lightfoot, then chief administrator of the Office of Professional Standards, approved the findings against both officers in a memo to Superintendent Cline dated May 20, 2004. In the memo she recommended that Johnson be suspended for 45 days. According to a high-ranking OPS source, she recommended in a separate document that Weems be fired. [...] Fourteen years later Cline was “downtown,” and he had to decide what to do with Weems, who’d done his share of midnights in Fillmore, having served more than a decade on patrol there. Cline rejected Lightfoot’s recommendation that Weems be fired. Five months passed, and the department imposed no discipline at all.
Weems might never even have been censured but for forces beyond the department’s control. Pamela Pleasance, Michael’s mother, wanted to sue the city, and her lawyers, Al Schwartz and Craig Mannarino of Kralovec, Jambois & Schwartz, asked private investigator John Byrne to see what he could turn up. Byrne is a retired homicide detective and sergeant (he was the right-hand man of former commander Jon Burge during the years that much of the torture of suspects took place at Area Two). “I could see the security cameras suspended from the ceiling,” he said in a recent e-mail, “and, due to their positions, I realized that they had to have captured some of the events that occurred.” Schwartz and Mannarino filed a motion in circuit court to get the CTA to preserve and provide the video. In August 2003, law division judge Diane Joan Larsen ordered the CTA to turn over a DVD but told Schwartz and Mannarino not to publicize or publish it. The following February, Schwartz and Mannarino filed suit against the city, the CTA, and Weems, and in October 2004 another law division judge, Jeffrey Lawrence, lifted the ban on circulating the DVD.
[...] [Weems] admitted that he wasn’t wearing anything that would visibly identify him as a police officer, that contrary to what he’d told OPS he hadn’t feared for his life, that he didn’t think Pleasance’s actions would cause him serious injury or death, and that he hadn’t been surrounded the moment before he’d fired. He said he hadn’t intended to shoot Pleasance because Pleasance had done nothing to warrant being shot....
Officer Weems is, needless to say, still serving at the city's pleasure, so to speak.
As a practical matter, most of the Chicago police are likely reasonable, trustworthy people. Unfortunately, the bad apples are very bad indeed, and there seem to be more and more of them all the time. You wonder how long it will be before Chicago is like New Orleans once was, and apparently is again: a city where you will do anything to avoid calling the police to help you, because you figure that by the time they've "helped" you, you'll be worse off than you were to start with.
Posted by iain at April 23, 2007 12:36 PM
