Brutality
It was 6:30 PM on a night in December, and I was on my way home from work. I had just gotten off the el and was hoofing the 8 long blocks to my house. The walk signal at the intersection of Lincoln, Damen and Irving blinked to white and I began to cross, only to be nearly run over by an impatient driver. I slapped his rear window with my gloved hand, yelled "Asshole!" His car missed my legs by bare centimeters.
It's dark out at 6:30 in December. I didn't see him coming, didn't hear the click of his footsteps running towards me over the music in my headphones. The force of the punch he delivered to the back of my head staggered me, but I stayed on my feet. Some of my military training must have kicked in because the next thing I knew I was running after him, running as fast as I could. I chased him back towards the intersection, caught up with him at his car. By that time I was on the phone with 911, and I had a good look at his license plate number. A crowd had begun to gather, and through the plate glass window of the tapas restaurant next to us, patrons watched with open mouths and forks paused mid-air. He must have known he wasn't getting away clean.
"You hit my car!" he screamed, rounding on me.
"You hit ME!" I screamed back. "That's called assault, motherfucker! You're going to jail!"
He slapped the phone out of my hand, and when I bent to retrieve it, punched me in the chest, shoved me to the ground and kicked the phone into the street. Without any real plan in mind, I wrapped myself around his leg. The only thought in my head was DO NOT LET HIM GET AWAY WITH THIS. Suddenly people came pouring out of the tapas restaurant. "Let go of him," they screamed. "He has a gun."
I scrambled backwards on the sidewalk and the crowd drew back from him, uncertain of what to do next. Suddenly a police car appeared in the traffic on Lincoln. Bystanders yelled and waved their arms to get the cops' attention. "This man has a gun!" Two female officers got out of the car and ran over.
"It's okay," said the man who punched me, as he calmly walked to meet them. "I'm on the job."
He was a cop.
As soon as he identified himself as a police officer, the cops on the scene were laughing and joking with him. I called my neighbor, who is a Chicago police detective, hysterical because I was convinced they were going to let him go. He advised me to say that I wanted to file a complaint. They took us both to the station house.
I was there for nearly three hours. The captain told me this was a good cop with no prior history of bad behavior, and if I pressed charges his life would be over. He hinted darkly at the things that happen to cops in jail. He also knew that I lived in a building with two Chicago cops, and tried to press that to his advantage, going as far as calling my neighbor and telling him to ask me not to file charges. On the privacy of the phone line my neighbor told me he'd support me no matter what, but I didn't know what to do. Did I really want to put a cop in jail and then live with two of them right above me? My head throbbed. The captain claimed the officer wanted to apologize. I declined. The captain said would I at least go home and think about it, and call in the morning if I wanted to press charges. But by the next morning it was too late.
Incredibly, the police report had been written against me, for slapping his car. "Property damage," it claimed. There was little mention that I had been assaulted, which removed the option of pressing charges. Instead, the officer was listed as the victim. And he had no trouble pressing charges against me. I was forced to hire a lawyer and go to court three times before that bullshit was dismissed. In the meantime I lived in fear. He knew my name, where I lived, what I looked like. He had a gun. Clearly he was mentally unwell. The only recourse left to me was to file a complaint of brutality with internal police investigators.
The investigation took a year, and a lot of persistence. I tracked down witnesses myself at times, and some of them refused to talk for fear of police retaliation. I got anonymous phone calls at my house, urging me not to give up, offering nuggets of information that could potentially help. My neighbor went on the record with the things he had been asked to say. He and his roommate put the word out that I was under their roof and their protection. It was terrifying, but at the end of it I got a letter in the mail from the Office of Professional Standards saying that my brutality claim had been substantiated. The officer would be punished. He would not lose his badge as I had hoped, but he would be held accountable in some way for his behavior that night. The punishment was yet to be determined.
I was relieved and ready to put it all behind me, but the story wasn't over yet. A week after I got the letter, there was a knock at my door. One of the cops from upstairs was standing outside. "I didn't want you to hear this from someone else," he said. "But that officer didn't show up for work today, so someone was sent to his apartment to check on him. He was dead. He shot himself."
Now it was over.
I refuse to feel guilt for what happened to him; it was all a direct result of actions by his own hand. He was sworn to enforce the law but he thought he was above it. I heard that he told officers afterwards that he did handle the situation wrong because he should have just "grabbed me up" for something and said that I resisted arrest. As I see it, there's one less bad cop on the streets of Chicago.
But the bigger problem is this attitude of covering things up, this code of silence. Turning the victim into the bad guy. Protecting the bullies because they wear a badge. My neighbor said that he came forward and went on record about this because he believes the force is ultimately hurt by keeping on these rogue cops. It's a black eye for the entire department, and feeds into the existing perception of corruption.
There are plenty of good, honest Chicago cops out there. I personally know a few. But the CPD *must* stop covering for the ones who aren't. The cost of continuing to do so is nothing less than the public trust.
NOTE: This happened to me in 2003. I have referenced it on this blog once or twice but I don't think I ever told the full story in print. According to an article by Eric Zorn in Sunday's Chicago Tribune, more than 10,000 citizen complaints were made against Chicago police officers from 2002 to 2004. Only 124 were upheld. Mine was one of them.
It's dark out at 6:30 in December. I didn't see him coming, didn't hear the click of his footsteps running towards me over the music in my headphones. The force of the punch he delivered to the back of my head staggered me, but I stayed on my feet. Some of my military training must have kicked in because the next thing I knew I was running after him, running as fast as I could. I chased him back towards the intersection, caught up with him at his car. By that time I was on the phone with 911, and I had a good look at his license plate number. A crowd had begun to gather, and through the plate glass window of the tapas restaurant next to us, patrons watched with open mouths and forks paused mid-air. He must have known he wasn't getting away clean.
"You hit my car!" he screamed, rounding on me.
"You hit ME!" I screamed back. "That's called assault, motherfucker! You're going to jail!"
He slapped the phone out of my hand, and when I bent to retrieve it, punched me in the chest, shoved me to the ground and kicked the phone into the street. Without any real plan in mind, I wrapped myself around his leg. The only thought in my head was DO NOT LET HIM GET AWAY WITH THIS. Suddenly people came pouring out of the tapas restaurant. "Let go of him," they screamed. "He has a gun."
I scrambled backwards on the sidewalk and the crowd drew back from him, uncertain of what to do next. Suddenly a police car appeared in the traffic on Lincoln. Bystanders yelled and waved their arms to get the cops' attention. "This man has a gun!" Two female officers got out of the car and ran over.
"It's okay," said the man who punched me, as he calmly walked to meet them. "I'm on the job."
He was a cop.
As soon as he identified himself as a police officer, the cops on the scene were laughing and joking with him. I called my neighbor, who is a Chicago police detective, hysterical because I was convinced they were going to let him go. He advised me to say that I wanted to file a complaint. They took us both to the station house.
I was there for nearly three hours. The captain told me this was a good cop with no prior history of bad behavior, and if I pressed charges his life would be over. He hinted darkly at the things that happen to cops in jail. He also knew that I lived in a building with two Chicago cops, and tried to press that to his advantage, going as far as calling my neighbor and telling him to ask me not to file charges. On the privacy of the phone line my neighbor told me he'd support me no matter what, but I didn't know what to do. Did I really want to put a cop in jail and then live with two of them right above me? My head throbbed. The captain claimed the officer wanted to apologize. I declined. The captain said would I at least go home and think about it, and call in the morning if I wanted to press charges. But by the next morning it was too late.
Incredibly, the police report had been written against me, for slapping his car. "Property damage," it claimed. There was little mention that I had been assaulted, which removed the option of pressing charges. Instead, the officer was listed as the victim. And he had no trouble pressing charges against me. I was forced to hire a lawyer and go to court three times before that bullshit was dismissed. In the meantime I lived in fear. He knew my name, where I lived, what I looked like. He had a gun. Clearly he was mentally unwell. The only recourse left to me was to file a complaint of brutality with internal police investigators.
The investigation took a year, and a lot of persistence. I tracked down witnesses myself at times, and some of them refused to talk for fear of police retaliation. I got anonymous phone calls at my house, urging me not to give up, offering nuggets of information that could potentially help. My neighbor went on the record with the things he had been asked to say. He and his roommate put the word out that I was under their roof and their protection. It was terrifying, but at the end of it I got a letter in the mail from the Office of Professional Standards saying that my brutality claim had been substantiated. The officer would be punished. He would not lose his badge as I had hoped, but he would be held accountable in some way for his behavior that night. The punishment was yet to be determined.
I was relieved and ready to put it all behind me, but the story wasn't over yet. A week after I got the letter, there was a knock at my door. One of the cops from upstairs was standing outside. "I didn't want you to hear this from someone else," he said. "But that officer didn't show up for work today, so someone was sent to his apartment to check on him. He was dead. He shot himself."
Now it was over.
I refuse to feel guilt for what happened to him; it was all a direct result of actions by his own hand. He was sworn to enforce the law but he thought he was above it. I heard that he told officers afterwards that he did handle the situation wrong because he should have just "grabbed me up" for something and said that I resisted arrest. As I see it, there's one less bad cop on the streets of Chicago.
But the bigger problem is this attitude of covering things up, this code of silence. Turning the victim into the bad guy. Protecting the bullies because they wear a badge. My neighbor said that he came forward and went on record about this because he believes the force is ultimately hurt by keeping on these rogue cops. It's a black eye for the entire department, and feeds into the existing perception of corruption.
There are plenty of good, honest Chicago cops out there. I personally know a few. But the CPD *must* stop covering for the ones who aren't. The cost of continuing to do so is nothing less than the public trust.
NOTE: This happened to me in 2003. I have referenced it on this blog once or twice but I don't think I ever told the full story in print. According to an article by Eric Zorn in Sunday's Chicago Tribune, more than 10,000 citizen complaints were made against Chicago police officers from 2002 to 2004. Only 124 were upheld. Mine was one of them.
Tequila Red called it a day @ 1:41 PM
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