The number of Chicago and suburban police officers disciplined by their departments for brutality has grown dramatically in recent years, but the number convicted of the charge in criminal courts hasn`t kept pace.
Like the failed attempt to convict four white Los Angeles police officers of beating black motorist Rodney King, the few criminal brutality cases filed here in recent years have mostly resulted in acquittals, underscoring the formidable barriers to convicting police officers who allegedly beat or abuse citizens, according to prosecutors and defense lawyers.
”These are highly unusual cases to begin with,” said Chicago Police Board head Albert Maule, a lawyer. ”I realize that, viscerally, the King acquittal strikes a terrible chord, but from a lawyer`s standpoint, this is not a shocking result.”
In the last decade, only six Chicago officers have been charged in criminal court with crimes stemming from the alleged abuse of citizens, according to preliminary figures released Friday by county and federal officials.
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Of those, five were acquitted. The sixth-who shot an unarmed man in the back of the head during a 1983 traffic stop-was convicted only of a misdemeanor civil rights violation.
In the suburbs, prosecutors haven`t had much more success. Twelve suburban officers have faced criminal charges following alleged excessive-force incidents in the last decade, according to the preliminary figures;
only four were convicted, all in the same case.
Nationally, the conviction rate looks better. Since October 1988, the Justice Department has prosecuted 123 individual law enforcement officers on charges stemming from police brutality. According to Atty. Gen. William Barr, the department has convicted 75 percent of the officers.
Nevertheless, prosecutors who indict cops for alleged brutality say they encounter a complex tangle of legal and emotional issues in the courtroom. One barrier to conviction stands above all, they say: Incidents of excessive force almost invariably result from ordinary arrests, forcing judges and jurors to draw the line between hard-nosed police work and brutality.
Attorneys also say that last Wednesday`s acquittal in Los Angeles, which came in a case that many had thought was airtight, may have a ripple effect that will discourage already reluctant citizens-especially minorities-from bringing charges against the police.
”I suspect that the publicity of the King video increased the number of people coming forward with brutality complaints, both bogus and real,” said former Assistant U.S. Atty. Scott Lassar. ”This verdict may discourage that.”
”The reaction is, the system doesn`t work-why trust it?” said attorney Matthew Piers, formerly second-in-command of the City of Chicago`s law department.
”Here was a crime witnessed by the whole nation, and yet these officers were acquitted,” said University of Chicago law professor Al Alschuler. ”A lot of people are losing faith in the legal system.”
The acquittal comes at a time when the Chicago Police Department is struggling to restore citizens` faith in its own ability to discipline or rid the force of brutal cops.
Last year, the department`s internal investigative agency recommended that an unprecedented 32 officers be fired because they were found to have beaten or physically abused citizens, records show. That is twice as many as were recommended for firing the year before, and nearly three times the 11 officers accused of brutality and recommended for dismissal by police investigators in 1989.
Most of these cases still are pending before the Chicago Police Board, where they take as long as three years to be heard. And the nine Police Board members, all of whom are appointed by the mayor, often decide to retain the officers.
In three years ending Dec. 31, 1991, board members heard 19 cases in which the superintendent asked that an officer be separated from the force because he or she allegedly had used excessive force, according to preliminary figures released by the board Friday. In only 10 of the 19 cases was the officer actually discharged, the figures show. In five instances, the officer was cleared completely by the board; and in four cases, then-Police Supt. LeRoy Martin withdrew the charges.
The board`s highest-profile case of the decade is that of former Brighton Park area commander Jon Burge and two detectives, who were accused of torturing cop killer Andrew Wilson in 1982. The board is currently
deliberating on Martin`s decision to fire the three officers. One board member, Nancy Jefferson, has said the King verdict and the subsequent rioting in Los Angeles might influence her vote.
It is far easier for a superintendent to fire a police officer than for a prosecutor to convict him of a criminal act of brutality, experts say.
”It is so hard to convict police officers because we have a bias in their favor-they are the forces of civilization, and the last line of defense against anti-social behavior,” said Northwestern University criminal law professor Ron Allen.
”People who sit on juries generally appreciate police officers. They respect them and think of them as protectors, which they are,” said Patrick Murphy, director of the Police Policy Board for the Washington D.C-based U.S. Conference of Mayors. ”It`s awfully hard to swallow that the man who patrols your street every night and keeps the burglars away is a bad man.”
In addition, lawyers say the victims of the worst police brutality rarely are upstanding citizens.
”Police don`t usually beat types like Cardinal (Joseph) Bernardin,”
Lassar said, referring to the Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago.
The alleged victim ”usually has some taint to his background-drug abuse, or a criminal record,” said lawyer Joseph Roddy, who represents police officers. ”That allows jurors (who side with the officer) to feel in their own minds that they`re doing the right thing-a kind of street justice, if you will.”
There is one other problem prosecutors say they invariably face. Unlike acts of corruption, in which an officer deliberately crosses the line into lawlessness, acts of police brutality usually arise when the officer is on the beat enforcing the law. Use of force becomes neccessary, then escalates, and suddenly the thin line between police work and brutality has been crossed.
”It`s one thing if you catch a police officer robbing a drug dealer, but another if he is more or less doing his job,” said Daniel Reidy, a former assistant U.S. attorney.
”These are more or less heat-of-the-moment cases,” Reidy said. ”A guy is slopping around on the street and the cop is fighting him and they go over the edge. For a jury, it`s tough. It`s not ordinary criminal activity-it`s more like a mistake. If you`re trying to do your job and you make a mistake, well, people don`t ordinarily think of throwing you in jail.”
Federal prosecutors thought they had a solid case when they indicted Maywood police Sgt. Harold Jenkins last year on civil rights violations stemming from multiple incidents of alleged brutality.
While arresting or interrogating suspects, Jenkins allegedly beat one man with a claw hammer, burned another with a space heater and smashed a third with an aluminum baseball bat, according to prosecutors.
But last month a federal jury acquitted the officer.
”It was a very similar case to the one in L.A.,” said his lawyer, Terrence Gillespie. The jury was swayed largely by the fact that the most credible alleged victim was a user of PCP, an animal tranquilizer that can cause people to become violent and almost impervious to pain, according to Gillespie, and so they believed that Jenkins used necessary force in a dangerous situation.
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Today, Jenkins is back on the beat as one of the top-ranked officers in Maywood.
”When you have an officer who is aggressive and making arrests, some people don`t want him out there, and so they make up these allegations,” said Maywood Police Chief James Stenson.
”Jenkins just happens to be one of my best drug officers. He used the amount of force neccessary to protect himself and other officers and make the arrests,” Stenson said.
Another case that came as a blow to local authorities was the indictment against Chicago police officers James Serio and Kathleen Moore, one of only two cases brought against officers by the Cook County state`s attorney in the last decade, according to preliminary figures released by officials. All the other cases were tried in federal court.
Serio and Moore were accused of picking up two black youths, insulting and hitting them, then dropping them off in the predominantly white Canaryville neighborhood, where they were chased and beaten by a mob. The officers were charged with simple battery and official misconduct.
But after a trial last year, a Cook County judge said that while she found the incident ”despicable,” none of the victims and witnesses made an uncontested identification of the officers.
”The incident happened,” said Roddy, the attorney for the officers,
”but the wrong officers were arrested.”
Still, as he did in almost every one of the cases where criminal charges were dismissed, then-Supt. Martin asked the Police Board to fire Serio and Moore. The board did so in March. The officers have filed a lawsuit contesting the dismissal.
Reidy, who prosecuted federal brutality cases in the mid-1980s, said a major criminal brutality victory of the last decade came in a 1985 case.
Five Sauk Village police officers-nearly a third of the force-were charged with civil rights violations following the brutal beating of Gregory Moore, a convicted child molester.
Moore wasn`t a sympathetic victim, so Reidy didn`t put him on the stand. The 24-year-old had a prior conviction for molesting an 8-year-old girl, and was described by the presiding judge as a neighborhood bully who taunted police and the people he victimized. He had violated parole four times, once by biting an officer, prosecutors said.
The five officers arrested him at a wild party, then brought him back to the station. They said he had to be subdued. But two other officers-who left the force shortly afterward-testified that the five took turns beating Moore, smashing the bones of his face.
The testimony of those officers was the key to winning the case. But while it was going on, Reidy remembers telling his mother the basic facts about the incident. She listened, he said, ”and then I remember her saying,
`I hope you don`t mind if I root against you on this one.` ”