Police Abuse
07-05-2012, 12:05 PM
Glenn Evans watched from the side of his West Pullman home as a tall man with a wide frame limped up the walk. “Get off my property,” he shouted. But that didn’t stop the man from stepping slowly and steadily forward until he slapped the bright orange paper—a water-shutoff notice—on a drain pipe of Evans’ single-story brick home.
Evans, a lieutenant with the Chicago Police Department, called his fellow officers. “There’s a guy here claiming to be from the water department,” he said, according to court documents. “Send a squad car.”
Evans tore the paper off the pipe and crumpled it up in his hand. Rennie Simmons, the water department employee, turned and snapped a picture, as per protocol. Each has his own take on what happened next. Their stories come together with Simmons pinned to the ground.
Within minutes, two officers had Simmons’ wrists locked in handcuffs and told him to get into the backseat of a squad car. At the 5th District station on East 111th Street, Evans signed a battery complaint. According to the police report, Evans claimed that Simmons shoved him and said, “I got something for your ass” and then “went to the trunk of his car [to get] an unknown object.”
Simmons, who is partially paralyzed on the right side of his body, the aftermath of a stroke he suffered in 2003, said he tried to protest, saying that he was attacked without provocation. But it was the city worker’s word against the lieutenant’s. It would be up to a judge to sort the incident out.
For Evans, his day in court wasn’t his first—or his last. Ultimately, the battery charge against Simmons was tossed, in part because Cook County Circuit Court Judge Adam Donald Bourgeois Jr. found Evans’ witness less than convincing. “Lieutenant,” Bourgeois said as he closed out the hearing on Sept. 17, 2007, “the next time you pick somebody to come in here as a witness, make sure they lie a little better.”
Simmons went on to file a federal lawsuit alleging that Evans tried to pin a false criminal charge on him to cover up his own misconduct. That same year, a second man opened a similar case against Evans.
In 2009, the city settled both cases out of court for a combined payment of $118,999, making Evans part of a small—but costly—group of officers who were named in multiple police misconduct lawsuits that led to city payments in recent years.
The near impunity with which these officers—dubbed “repeaters” for their recurring legal troubles—are allowed to operate, along with the mounting legal cost to defend them, are glaring evidence that the city’s effort to stem police misconduct is falling short of the mark, The Chicago Reporter found.
Of 441 police misconduct lawsuits that led to city payments between January 2009 and November 2011, nearly a third—or 145—involved the “repeaters,” shows a Reporter analysis of federal and state court records. This small group—140 in all—proved costly. Despite making up 1 percent of the police force, they accounted for more than a quarter—or $11.7 million—of all damage payments incurred from police misconduct lawsuits. The city defended a good number of those officers in additional cases as well; nearly a third of the 140 officers were named in at least five misconduct lawsuits since 2000.
But the Reporter found that some fine print in the police union contract and a state statute routinely shields the “repeaters” and any others sued for misconduct from investigations by the Independent Police Review Authority—which was created to help investigate police misconduct—and the police department itself.
The result: Eight in 10 of the “repeaters” remain on the job with few signs of discipline.
As far as Ilana Rosenzweig, the chief administrator of the review authority, is concerned, it’s ultimately up to the police department to track lawsuits and complaints throughout an officer’s career to identify patterns of misconduct. “I can’t say if [the police department] is doing that or to what degree they’re doing that,” she said. “But that’s something that should occur.”
A lack of transparency around what’s being done to vet alleged beatings, frame-ups and unlawful searches raises one question in the mind of Craig Futterman, an attorney who founded the Civil Right and Police Accountability Project at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Legal Aid Clinic: “Who’s policing the police?”
Ralph Price, the police department’s lead attorney, said the department routinely meets with the city’s law department to review allegations of police abuse that are outlined in lawsuits.
“We don’t shut our eyes and ignore it. Absolutely not,” Price said. “There is definitely a follow-up between litigation and a review of department policy and training.”
Futterman agrees that the Chicago Police Department has programs—like an early warning system—in place to flag abusive officers. But too few officers are required to participate. The result, Futterman said, is that “The Chicago Police Department has allowed a few bad apples to abuse vulnerable people with impunity.”
* * *
Between January 2009 and November 2011, the City of Chicago paid $45.5 million for damages in 441 lawsuits involving claims of police misconduct—a rate of $5.54 annually per city resident, the Reporter found. That’s more than twice as much as Los Angeles’ $2.66, and roughly half as much as New York City’s $9.93 between 2009 and 2010. These figures don’t include the untold number of legal fees picked up by taxpayers to cover the officers’ legal defense.
“These [payments] have been a cloud over what happens at City Hall for decades,” said 2nd Ward Alderman Bob Fioretti, who sponsored the new police accountability legislation that was adopted in 2007 to empower outsiders, like Rosenzweig, to investigate and root out police misconduct.
A vast majority, 75 percent, of the 441 police misconduct cases were based on excessive force and false arrest allegations, and most of the cases were closed with settlement agreements hashed out by attorneys. The city rarely acknowledged liability in such deals.
That’s a rub for some police officers who think the city is too quick to strike deals that leave them little room to clear their names. In Lieutenant Evan’s case, one of the five lawsuits in which he was named did go to trial, and a jury found him not liable for covering up facts in another officer’s shooting.
But the settlements don’t necessarily say much about culpability, said attorney Standish Willis who specializes in civil rights law. Some lawsuits are settled simply for expedience’s sake. In others, either the plaintiff or the city had a strong case, and in striking the deal, costs could be minimized.
The Reporter found that the three officers named in the largest number of lawsuits—Jerome Finnigan, Donovan Markiewicz and Frank Villareal—were members of an elite tactical unit, the Special Operations Section, which was busted up in 2007 after a federal investigation found its members were running a theft and extortion ring right under the nose of police officials.
Before the city began paying out on lawsuits involving the section, city attorneys were representing the section’s members in a series of lawsuits. Court records show that Finnigan, Markiewicz and Villareal alone were named in at least 16 misconduct cases in the two years before the department pulled the plug on the section.
Not one of the misconduct lawsuits filed against the members of the section ended with a ruling by a judge or jury. Trials are a rarity; only 6 percent of the lawsuits analyzed by the Reporter ended with a judge or jury’s ruling.
Finnigan, Markiewicz and Villareal are off the force today. But a majority—at least 26—of the 42 officers named in five or more cases, including three former Special Operations Section members, are still on the department’s payroll.
That doesn’t surprise Futterman. “The city recognizes the need to look at patterns,” he said. “But with each and every scandal … the Chicago Police Department turns a blind eye to those patterns.”
* * *
Cordell Simmons, a community college student with a long rap sheet of marijuana-related arrests, was picked up at gunpoint by a pair of beat officers near a bus stop at the corner of Loomis and 79th streets on a damp evening in early June 2007.
The 6th District police officers have more than their fair share of the city’s drug dealing and violence to deal with in a typical shift. During 13 months ending on March 31, 2012, officers made more than 20,000 arrests in the South Side district that stretches roughly from 76th to 98th streets between Western and Woodlawn avenues.
The pace can be grating, said Richard Wooten, a 19-year police veteran who works in the 6th District, where he lives, and runs a nonprofit, Gathering Point Community Council, that mentors children from the neighborhood. “This stress level really kicks in, and you are moving, you’re feeling on 10 and you don’t realize it,” he said.
The officers frisked Cordell Simmons and found $20 worth of marijuana tucked in four small plastic bags, according to a police report. Then they banged him around on the hood of a squad car, trying unsuccessfully to get him to cough up the rest of his stash, according to court documents.
The 24-year-old was arrested and taken to the station on 78th and Halsted streets. He was ushered into a processing room. That’s where he crossed paths with Lieutenant Evans.
Officers suspected that Cordell Simmons slipped additional drugs into the station and was trying to swallow them before he got caught, according to the police report. As Evans moved closer, the report says he was kicked in the legs by the Moraine Valley Community College student. Evans then grew frustrated that Simmons was “not cooperating,” according to court documents. One of the cops who hauled him back to the station pulled off his pants and shoes.
Evans, a lieutenant with the Chicago Police Department, called his fellow officers. “There’s a guy here claiming to be from the water department,” he said, according to court documents. “Send a squad car.”
Evans tore the paper off the pipe and crumpled it up in his hand. Rennie Simmons, the water department employee, turned and snapped a picture, as per protocol. Each has his own take on what happened next. Their stories come together with Simmons pinned to the ground.
Within minutes, two officers had Simmons’ wrists locked in handcuffs and told him to get into the backseat of a squad car. At the 5th District station on East 111th Street, Evans signed a battery complaint. According to the police report, Evans claimed that Simmons shoved him and said, “I got something for your ass” and then “went to the trunk of his car [to get] an unknown object.”
Simmons, who is partially paralyzed on the right side of his body, the aftermath of a stroke he suffered in 2003, said he tried to protest, saying that he was attacked without provocation. But it was the city worker’s word against the lieutenant’s. It would be up to a judge to sort the incident out.
For Evans, his day in court wasn’t his first—or his last. Ultimately, the battery charge against Simmons was tossed, in part because Cook County Circuit Court Judge Adam Donald Bourgeois Jr. found Evans’ witness less than convincing. “Lieutenant,” Bourgeois said as he closed out the hearing on Sept. 17, 2007, “the next time you pick somebody to come in here as a witness, make sure they lie a little better.”
Simmons went on to file a federal lawsuit alleging that Evans tried to pin a false criminal charge on him to cover up his own misconduct. That same year, a second man opened a similar case against Evans.
In 2009, the city settled both cases out of court for a combined payment of $118,999, making Evans part of a small—but costly—group of officers who were named in multiple police misconduct lawsuits that led to city payments in recent years.
The near impunity with which these officers—dubbed “repeaters” for their recurring legal troubles—are allowed to operate, along with the mounting legal cost to defend them, are glaring evidence that the city’s effort to stem police misconduct is falling short of the mark, The Chicago Reporter found.
Of 441 police misconduct lawsuits that led to city payments between January 2009 and November 2011, nearly a third—or 145—involved the “repeaters,” shows a Reporter analysis of federal and state court records. This small group—140 in all—proved costly. Despite making up 1 percent of the police force, they accounted for more than a quarter—or $11.7 million—of all damage payments incurred from police misconduct lawsuits. The city defended a good number of those officers in additional cases as well; nearly a third of the 140 officers were named in at least five misconduct lawsuits since 2000.
But the Reporter found that some fine print in the police union contract and a state statute routinely shields the “repeaters” and any others sued for misconduct from investigations by the Independent Police Review Authority—which was created to help investigate police misconduct—and the police department itself.
The result: Eight in 10 of the “repeaters” remain on the job with few signs of discipline.
As far as Ilana Rosenzweig, the chief administrator of the review authority, is concerned, it’s ultimately up to the police department to track lawsuits and complaints throughout an officer’s career to identify patterns of misconduct. “I can’t say if [the police department] is doing that or to what degree they’re doing that,” she said. “But that’s something that should occur.”
A lack of transparency around what’s being done to vet alleged beatings, frame-ups and unlawful searches raises one question in the mind of Craig Futterman, an attorney who founded the Civil Right and Police Accountability Project at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Legal Aid Clinic: “Who’s policing the police?”
Ralph Price, the police department’s lead attorney, said the department routinely meets with the city’s law department to review allegations of police abuse that are outlined in lawsuits.
“We don’t shut our eyes and ignore it. Absolutely not,” Price said. “There is definitely a follow-up between litigation and a review of department policy and training.”
Futterman agrees that the Chicago Police Department has programs—like an early warning system—in place to flag abusive officers. But too few officers are required to participate. The result, Futterman said, is that “The Chicago Police Department has allowed a few bad apples to abuse vulnerable people with impunity.”
* * *
Between January 2009 and November 2011, the City of Chicago paid $45.5 million for damages in 441 lawsuits involving claims of police misconduct—a rate of $5.54 annually per city resident, the Reporter found. That’s more than twice as much as Los Angeles’ $2.66, and roughly half as much as New York City’s $9.93 between 2009 and 2010. These figures don’t include the untold number of legal fees picked up by taxpayers to cover the officers’ legal defense.
“These [payments] have been a cloud over what happens at City Hall for decades,” said 2nd Ward Alderman Bob Fioretti, who sponsored the new police accountability legislation that was adopted in 2007 to empower outsiders, like Rosenzweig, to investigate and root out police misconduct.
A vast majority, 75 percent, of the 441 police misconduct cases were based on excessive force and false arrest allegations, and most of the cases were closed with settlement agreements hashed out by attorneys. The city rarely acknowledged liability in such deals.
That’s a rub for some police officers who think the city is too quick to strike deals that leave them little room to clear their names. In Lieutenant Evan’s case, one of the five lawsuits in which he was named did go to trial, and a jury found him not liable for covering up facts in another officer’s shooting.
But the settlements don’t necessarily say much about culpability, said attorney Standish Willis who specializes in civil rights law. Some lawsuits are settled simply for expedience’s sake. In others, either the plaintiff or the city had a strong case, and in striking the deal, costs could be minimized.
The Reporter found that the three officers named in the largest number of lawsuits—Jerome Finnigan, Donovan Markiewicz and Frank Villareal—were members of an elite tactical unit, the Special Operations Section, which was busted up in 2007 after a federal investigation found its members were running a theft and extortion ring right under the nose of police officials.
Before the city began paying out on lawsuits involving the section, city attorneys were representing the section’s members in a series of lawsuits. Court records show that Finnigan, Markiewicz and Villareal alone were named in at least 16 misconduct cases in the two years before the department pulled the plug on the section.
Not one of the misconduct lawsuits filed against the members of the section ended with a ruling by a judge or jury. Trials are a rarity; only 6 percent of the lawsuits analyzed by the Reporter ended with a judge or jury’s ruling.
Finnigan, Markiewicz and Villareal are off the force today. But a majority—at least 26—of the 42 officers named in five or more cases, including three former Special Operations Section members, are still on the department’s payroll.
That doesn’t surprise Futterman. “The city recognizes the need to look at patterns,” he said. “But with each and every scandal … the Chicago Police Department turns a blind eye to those patterns.”
* * *
Cordell Simmons, a community college student with a long rap sheet of marijuana-related arrests, was picked up at gunpoint by a pair of beat officers near a bus stop at the corner of Loomis and 79th streets on a damp evening in early June 2007.
The 6th District police officers have more than their fair share of the city’s drug dealing and violence to deal with in a typical shift. During 13 months ending on March 31, 2012, officers made more than 20,000 arrests in the South Side district that stretches roughly from 76th to 98th streets between Western and Woodlawn avenues.
The pace can be grating, said Richard Wooten, a 19-year police veteran who works in the 6th District, where he lives, and runs a nonprofit, Gathering Point Community Council, that mentors children from the neighborhood. “This stress level really kicks in, and you are moving, you’re feeling on 10 and you don’t realize it,” he said.
The officers frisked Cordell Simmons and found $20 worth of marijuana tucked in four small plastic bags, according to a police report. Then they banged him around on the hood of a squad car, trying unsuccessfully to get him to cough up the rest of his stash, according to court documents.
The 24-year-old was arrested and taken to the station on 78th and Halsted streets. He was ushered into a processing room. That’s where he crossed paths with Lieutenant Evans.
Officers suspected that Cordell Simmons slipped additional drugs into the station and was trying to swallow them before he got caught, according to the police report. As Evans moved closer, the report says he was kicked in the legs by the Moraine Valley Community College student. Evans then grew frustrated that Simmons was “not cooperating,” according to court documents. One of the cops who hauled him back to the station pulled off his pants and shoes.