Vol. 2, Issue 11: Understanding the Felony Murder Law

Superintendent Eddie Johnson (Photo by Maria Cardona)

At Issue: Stepping up discipline – and evading it

The city’s inspector general released a report on an ongoing investigation into the cover-up following the shooting of Laquan McDonald, with fallout continuing throughout the week. The report has not been made public.

News of the report emerged on the same day that the retirement of Deputy Chief David McNaughton was announced. The Sun-Times reported that McNaughton was “forced out” and was among the ten officers Inspector General Joe Ferguson recommended for termination in connection with the cover-up.

McNaughton approved a report concluding that Officer Jason Van Dyke was in compliance with use-of-force policies when he shot McDonald on October 20, 2014. However, his report contained language that was contradicted by dashcam footage of the shooting.

Preemptive Retirement. For the Sun-Times editorial board, McNaughton’s retirement echoed the retirements of four officers involved in the mishandled investigation of the 2004 killing of David Koschman by a nephew of then-Mayor Richard Daley. These officers evaded discipline—and retained their pension rights—by retiring while the investigation was still ongoing.

Similarly, Officer Dante Servin retained his pension and avoided disciplinary action by resigning just two days before a Police Board hearing on a recommendation that he be fired for the 2012 shooting death of Rekia Boyd.

On Tuesday, First Deputy Superintendent John Escalante resigned to become the head of campus police at Northeastern Illinois University. Escalante was chief of detectives in 2014 but was not named in the inspector general’s report.

On Thursday, Chief of Detectives Eugene Roy retired three months ahead of his mandatory retirement date, as Superintendent Eddie Johnson announced a leadership overhaul. That same day, Johnson moved to fire seven of the ten officers named by Inspector General Joe Ferguson, stating that they had violated Rule 14, which prohibits officers from lying in investigations. According to the Sun-Times, another officer whom Johnson intended to fire—aside from McNaughton—resigned preemptively.

The decision to recommend the firings represents “an important and necessary step,” Craig Futterman of the University of Chicago Law School told The New York Times, “but it can’t be a one-off. It has to be a consistent practice that if you lie, you are fired.”

“The sad fact is that lying has become a regular and entrenched practice when police misconduct occurs, and disciplining officers for engaging in the practice has rarely happened,” Futterman added. He emphasized that disciplinary action must extend beyond the rank-and-file. “The code of silence...goes far higher in this case,” he said. “It’s even more important that those at the top of the food chain be held accountable.”

On Friday, in a press release issued minutes after the superintendent concluded a press conference on an unrelated topic, CPD announced that Johnson was replacing approximately one-third of the department’s district commanders.

The inspector general’s investigation now shifts focus to then-Superintendent Garry McCarthy and his executive staff—who viewed video footage of the McDonald shooting the day after the incident—and whether they disregarded discrepancies between officers’ incident reports and the video evidence.

Taser death. In another case where, as with McDonald, the city has paid millions to settle a wrongful death lawsuit, the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) recommended suspensions ranging from 28 to 120 days for six officers involved in the 2012 death of Phillip Coleman, who was shocked multiple times with a Taser after being arrested during a mental health crisis.

The Sun-Times reported that the longest suspension was recommended for Sgt. Sean Tulley. However, according to the Chicago Reporter, “IPRA said it would have recommended dismissal for a third sergeant who retired in February 2014, and asked instead that the superintendent ‘take any and all action to prevent him from future employment with the City of Chicago.’”

IPRA “found that the officers’ biggest error was not their use of a Taser, but their failure to recognize that Coleman was in need of mental health treatment, not arrest and lockup,” according to the Chicago Reporter. IPRA had previously found no wrongdoing in the case but reopened the investigation after video footage of Coleman’s death was released late last year.

Also last week, a state appeals court overturned a Cook County judge’s 2012 ruling that had blocked CPD from firing two officers involved in a 2006 beating incident at a taco stand on the Northwest Side. In 2011, the Police Board accepted a recommendation from then-Superintendent Jody Weis that the officers be dismissed.

In other news. The Chicago Reader examines how the state’s controversial felony murder law is used to convict civilians in cases where police have killed someone—potentially obscuring police misconduct.

Arrests for misdemeanor marijuana possession still outnumber citations issued, four years after the City Council granted officers the option of issuing tickets for possession of less than 15 grams, the Sun-Times reports. However, the number of both arrests and citations has declined significantly this year.

“Some Chicago cops say decriminalization has taken away a tool they’ve used to combat street dealing and press suspected gang members for information,” according to the report. However, a defense attorney told the Sun-Times, “They’re nickel-and-dime cases that police use to conduct what would otherwise be illegal searches and seizures.”

Racial disparities persist: Nearly 90% of those arrested and convicted of misdemeanor marijuana possession in the past two and a half years were African American, despite similar usage rates across racial groups.

With a Muslim woman’s lawsuit bringing renewed attention to CPD’s profiling of immigrants, advocates are negotiating with the mayor’s office over a proposed amendment to the 2012 Welcoming City Ordinance. The amendment would bar profiling and deportation threats by police and block arrests based on outstanding immigration warrants, according to Fred Tsao of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.

The University of Chicago’s Crime Lab is collaborating with CPD on a predictive data program “designed to determine if an officer is likely to engage in aggressive, improper conduct with a civilian.”

A new RAND study challenges the effectiveness of CPD’s Strategic Subject List, a pilot program aimed at predicting who is at greatest risk of gun violence, WBEZ reports. The study found that individuals on the list were no more likely to be involved in gun violence than a control group and that the program lacked clear guidance on how to intervene with identified individuals. CPD maintains that its data collection has improved since the period analyzed in the study.

Police officials recently told the Chicago Tribune that 85% of the 2,100 people shot in the first half of the year were on the list. Superintendent Eddie Johnson stated that the list is not used for arrests, though the RAND report suggested otherwise.