LOCAL News :: Crime & Police

Federal Jury Finds Chicago Cops Guilty of Framing Man

Author

• Andy Thayer

Date Created

• 24 Oct 2007

Date Edited

• 24 Oct 2007 12:05:07 AM

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• Current rating: 3

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This work is in the public domain.

 

Once again Chicago ordered to shell out millions to victim of police misconduct.

Federal Jury Finds Chicago Cops Guilty of Framing Man for Child Abduction

CHICAGO – For the second time in a week, a federal court this afternoon found City of Chicago cops guilty of misconduct and ordered millions to be paid out to their victims.

Detectives Martin Garcia and Dion Boyd were found guilty today of framing 40-year-old Timothy Finwall for child abduction by "manipulating photographic and line-up identifications" and doctoring a statement by one of the child victims. Despite the phony "evidence" and perjured testimony by officers Garcia and Boyd, Finwall was found not guilty in his 2005 criminal trial. In today's verdict, the jury ordered the City to pay out more than $2 million.

Last Tuesday a federal jury found Chicago cops guilty of jamming a screw driver deep into the rectum of a then 20-year-old African American man, Coprez Coffie (for Indy Media story and links to corporate coverage, go to http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display/79783/index.php). Besides the cost of its attorneys and outside counsel, the City will pay out $4.675 million to Coffie and his attorneys.
Finwall believes the motive for his frame-up by the police was due to an earlier run-in he and a friend had with an off-duty officer. Finwall, an ex-Marine, disarmed an intoxicated off-duty cop when the cop threatening his friend.

Finwall was represented by Mike Kanovitz, Mark Loevy-Reyes and Amanda Antholt of Loevy and Loevy Attorneys at Law. Dept of full disclosure: the author of this article works at Loevy and Loevy.

In related news, attorneys for the City reportedly agreed today to settle police torture victim Aaron Patterson's lawsuit for $5 million. That makes for over $11 million in taxpayer money out the window in one week's time — ponder that the next time you ride through a CTA slow zone or open up a property tax bill.

For more on Patterson's settlement deal, see the links at the bottom of this article.

Below are links to corporate news stories about today's $2 million jury verdict:

Channel 2 - http://cbs2chicago.com/local/chicago.police.misconduct.2.411905.html

Channel 7 - http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=local&id=5723114

Channel 9 - Had a story on their 9 PM news, but there's nothing on their website.

Channel 32 - Had a story on their 9 PM news, but there's nothing on their website.

Channel 66 - Did a one-on-one interview with Finwall and his attorneys, but my Spanish is too lousy to decipher where (or if) it is on their website.

CLTV - Had a story on their 9:30 PM newscast, but just had a Chicago Tribune story on their website (see below for link).

Chicago Tribune - page 2, top of the page, of the Metro Section, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-verdict_both24oct24,0,3328739.story

Chicago Sun-Times - page 4, top of the page, http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/616853,CST-NWS-cside24.article


Related story from The Economist magazine about Chicago's police:

Breaking the blue wall
Oct 18th 2007 | CHICAGO

In need of reform

THE Windy City's police department has an ugly history. In its most infamous chapter, officers tortured suspects in the 1970s and 1980s. But even with such a past, this year has been particularly fraught for America's second-biggest police force. The police superintendent, Philip Cline, stepped down in April after two videos emerged of off-duty officers beating civilians. Seven members of an elite unit, the Special Operations Section (SOS), face an array of charges including kidnapping, burglary and false arrest, and one officer was accused in September of plotting to kill a defector.

As a whole, Chicago's police are well behaved and effective. The number of murders in the city in 2006 was 44% down on 1995. But the scandals have officials scrambling to restore public trust. On October 9th Dana Starks, the interim police superintendent, announced that he would disband the SOS. On October 15th the Office of Professional Standards (OPS), which investigates police misconduct, issued its first quarterly report. Other recent changes include separating the OPS from the police department. But there is still much work to be done.

Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago, wants the OPS to overhaul the way it investigates complaints. Between 2002 and 2004 civilians filed more than 10,000 reports of serious abuse, such as excessive force and false arrests. Only 19 of these complaints led to an officer's suspension for a week or more, he says. Ilana Rosenzweig, the new head of the OPS, is trying to recruit investigators, but her office is understaffed and is dealing with almost 1,300 open cases.

A broader problem is how to change the police department's culture. It is common for police officers to shield each other from punishment, but the phenomenon reaches an extreme in Chicago. Complaints of brutality were 94% less likely to be sustained in Chicago than in other large police departments in 2004, Mr Futterman reports. Federal prosecutors are now investigating whether any commanders knew of the SOS debacle, but failed to stop it.

Breaking this code of silence might best begin with a strong new police superintendent. But the city is searching high and low for someone to replace Mr Cline. However, the next police chief, whoever he may be, cannot expect an overnight fix. Take Los Angeles. Since 1991, when police were taped beating Rodney King, the city has seen a wearingly repeating pattern of scandal and reform. (On October 9th investigators released their latest report, about police using excessive force against protesters and journalists in May.) If Los Angeles is any indication, Chicago's current wave of reform will not be its last.