CHICAGO — At 5 PM today a federal court jury found two Chicago cops guilty of jamming a screw-driver deep into the rectum of 20-year-old Coprez Coffie in August 2004 in an alley of the West Side's "K-Town" neighborhood.

Officers Scott Korhonen and Gerald Lodwich were also found guilty of covering up the brutal attack. The unanimous verdict came after a two week trial which featured extensive forensic evidence, including tests of the screw driver and the police car glove box in which it was found, showing the presence of fecal matter in the glove box and a large amount of human DNA on the screw-driver which could not have been the result of contact just by human hands.

Coffie testified that he saw the defendant officers take the screw-driver out of the glove box before assaulting him. Korhonen and Lodwich claimed that they'd never seen the screw-driver in the glove box despite driving the police car for 3+ years.

OOPS

Shortly after the attack, the city's Office Of Professional Standards (affectionately known as "OOPS") of course found in favor of Officers Korhonen and Lodwich after its cursory investigation. OOPS finds in favor of civilians over cops in less than 5% of its "investigations." Far fewer than 5% of the cops actually get punished, let alone are fired – this, for crimes that would send any civilian to the clink.

Of course, Daley ally Cook County States Attorney Dick Devine continued his long-standing policy of not criminally prosecuting the brutal police officers, even when there's plenty of forensic evidence against them and they demonstrably perjured themselves repeatedly.

Korhonen and Lodwich are still on the job. But in a perhaps unprecedented move, OOPS tonight announced that it was going to reinvestigate the case in the light of Coprez Coffie's successful civil suit.

Finally, in an interesting minuet of PR double-speak, the Mayor Daley's Law Department announced tonight that it was evaluating appealing the jury verdict. Like its backing away from the $14.8 million settlement proposal with three victims of the Jon Burge-led police tortures, this would appear to violate its commitment to honor a settlement agreement reached with Coffie's attorneys over the weekend, before the verdict was announced. To avoid further litigation, the City's attorneys agreed to settle for $4 million (plus attorneys' fees and expenses) if the jury found in favor of Coffie, and nothing for Coffie if the jury found in favor of the police defendants.

Coffie was represented by attorneys Jon Loevy and Samantha Liskow of the civil rights firm Loevy and Loevy. Dept. of full disclosure: the author of this article also works at Loevy and Loevy, but he alone is responsible for the views expressed herein.

For corporate press coverage of this event, see:

Channel 2 — http://cbs2chicago.com/video/?id=36418@wbbm.dayport.com (lead story)

Channel 5 — http://www.nbc5.com/news/14356188/detail.html?dl=headlineclick

Channel 7 — http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=nation_world&id=5711052 (lead story)

Channel 9 — Story led their 9 PM broadcast, but nothing available on their website as of now.

Channel 32 — http://www.myfoxchicago.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=4657610&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1 (lead story)

CLTV (Chicagoland Television News) — http://cltv.trb.com/

Channel 66 (Univision) No story on their website

Chicago Tribune http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-screwdriver_alloct17,1,1196121.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
Chicago Public Radio http://wbez.org/CityRoom_Story.aspx?storyID=14060

Chicago Sun-Times http://www.suntimes.com/news/index.html