Vol. 2, Issue 7: Ongoing Coverage of Chicago Police Accountability
From the Archive:
"Sometimes you don’t realize how much someone has become a presence in your life until they’re gone. That’s how it was with Fred Hale."
At Issue: Hearings on police reform
Mayor Emanuel announced that the City Council plans to vote in September on an ordinance replacing the Independent Police Review Authority and creating a public safety auditor, following a series of community hearings.
Hearings are scheduled for August 4 at South Shore Cultural Center, August 9 at Senn High School, August 11 at Little Village Lawndale High School, August 16 at Westinghouse College Prep, and August 22 at North Grand High School. Each hearing begins at 6:30 p.m.
Emanuel also announced that community-based organizations will hold a series of meetings focused on establishing a Community Safety Oversight Board.
The Progressive Caucus welcomed the community hearings—each of which is being co-chaired by a caucus member—but emphasized that input from experts was also needed. Alderman Ricardo Muñoz, chair of the police accountability subcommittee, will hold a series of subject-matter hearings in City Council chambers to hear from experts and advocates on topics including community-police relations, oversight and accountability, and early intervention and personnel concerns.
The caucus warned that “rushing passage of legislation this important at this critical juncture in our city’s history” would be “a serious error.”
More Guevara Cases Cleared José Montañez and Armando Serrano were released last Thursday after their convictions in a 1993 murder were vacated—the most recent cases of disgraced Chicago Detective Reynaldo Guevara to be reversed.
They are the fourth and fifth murder convictions based on Guevara’s investigations to be overturned (the others are Xavier Arcos, 1996; Juan Johnson, 2004; and Jacques Rivera, 2011). In addition, the murder conviction of Angel Rodriguez, in an investigation where Guevara played a key behind-the-scenes role, was reversed in 2000; Mario Flores was pardoned by Gov. George Ryan in 2003; and Salvador Ortiz accepted a plea bargain after winning a new trial in 2009.
All followed the same pattern—with no physical evidence linking the suspects to the crime and confessions or witnesses coerced or manipulated by threats or violence. Dozens of men remain in prison based on similar investigations and convictions, advocates say, urging State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez to expedite a review of those cases.
The city hired former U.S. Attorney Scott Lassar to review Guevara-linked cases in 2013 but has refused to release his report.
According to a Better Government Association report last year, Montañez and Serrano were two of eight court cases filed by prisoners who charge they were framed by Guevara.
In another case, Gabriel Solache and Arturo DeLeon-Reyes last month won a hearing on their motion to suppress their confessions in a 1998 murder. The State’s Attorney’s office is expected to disclose whether it plans to appeal that ruling at a court date on Tuesday.
Law Department Reforms. The city’s law department should conduct individual rather than group interviews when multiple police officers are accused of wrongdoing; that is one of 50 recommendations in a report by former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb.
Webb found no evidence of systematic suppression of evidence by the law department in defending police misconduct lawsuits. However, according to one defense attorney, Webb’s recommendations included “basic common sense [practices] that they should have been doing all along.”
The review was commissioned early this year after a city attorney was sanctioned for concealing evidence in a lawsuit charging the wrongful shooting of Darius Pinex in a 2011 traffic stop.
Recently, an Inspector General’s report called on the city to institute a program to reduce the costs of legal settlements, and the city announced the formation of a working group to study the issue—but stated that police misconduct lawsuits will be excluded from the study pending the federal investigation of the police department.
However, “there is no reason to wait to implement those things that can be changed now,” a former Justice Department official told the Chicago Reporter. The DOJ does not expect cities to wait until investigations are complete to institute reforms, said Jonathan M. Smith, former litigation chief for the DOJ.
IPRA Steps Up. The Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) ruled last week that two police shootings were unjustified—making this the third such finding (out of 11 investigations of police shootings concluded) since Sharon Fairley took over as chief administrator of the agency last December.
“The three findings that a police shooting wasn’t justified... is one more than the total number of such rulings by IPRA from the time the agency was created in 2007 to the end of last year,” the Chicago Sun-Times pointed out.
In its quarterly report, IPRA called on the police department to tighten its use-of-force guidelines, restricting authorization for shooting “fleeing felons” to situations where an immediate threat is posed and mandating that officers draw their weapons only in situations where they are likely to have to shoot.
Two lawsuits show that CPD’s use-of-force guidelines allow the use of Tasers against pregnant women who pose no risk, according to the Chicago Reporter.
Hate Crime. Killing a police officer is a horrible crime, but it is not a hate crime—a category until now restricted to crimes based on “immutable identities” rather than employment categories, according to the Chicago Reader.
Beyond that, an ordinance proposed by Alderman Ed Burke would outlaw displays of “animosity” or “hostility” toward police officers—“wording so broad that people engaged in all kinds of constitutionally protected speech could find themselves charged with a hate crime.”
Developments in Court. The City Council last week approved $4.72 million in legal settlements for police misconduct lawsuits, including the last of 25 lawsuits stemming from Special Operations Section corruption.
The convictions of Charles Johnson and Larod Styles for a 1995 double murder at a Southwest Side used car dealership were thrown out after new fingerprint evidence implicated a convicted felon.
A Chicago man serving a 44-year sentence for a 2000 Englewood murder won a hearing on his claim that his confession was coerced after a third eyewitness came forward to say he was not at the scene of the killing.
Anteleto Jones’s confession was elicited by Chicago police polygraph examiner Robert Bartik, who has obtained more than 100 confessions during pretest interviews. A 2013 Chicago Tribune investigation found several cases—including at least one involving Bartik—where confessions obtained by CPD’s polygraph unit turned out to be false.
The Brighton Park family of Heriberto Godinez, who died after being arrested in 2015—with dashcam video showing an officer putting his foot on Godinez’s neck as he lay handcuffed—has sued in federal court, charging that officers used excessive force.
A Cook County judge expects to appoint a special prosecutor in Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke’s murder case by August 4, and Chief Criminal Court Judge Leroy K. Martin may announce the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Chicago police officers suspected of covering up for Van Dyke at a July 29 hearing.
“Why has it taken so long?” asks Locke Bowman of the MacArthur Justice Center. He cites the Jon Burge scandal to note that “lies in police reports sometimes persist for decades.” If Chicago police initiated a cover-up, he says, “Cook County officials have no business sitting idle.”