Depending upon which witness testified Tuesday, Chicago Police Officer Eric Holder was either the victim of a brutal racial attack by fellow officers or an aggressor who provoked police and then stood in the way of an investigation.
Holder, an African-American officer in the Harrison District, is on trial in Cook County Circuit Court on misdemeanor charges of battery and resisting arrest in connection with a July 10 shooting investigation on the city’s West Side. The shooting victim was Holder’s girlfriend’s brother.
Two Austin District police officers testified that Holder, who was off duty, ignited the confrontation when police officers tried to quell a crowd gathered behind a home in the 500 block of North Lawler Avenue. The officers said a crowd, led by Holder, rushed into the back yard.
“I raised my hands and said `Stop,’ ” Officer Ronald Meziere testified. “He continued coming until he came right up to me and then he pushed me.”
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Meziere said Holder used a string of obscenities to identify himself as an officer. Then, he said, Sgt. Patrick Minogue told Holder to stop.
But Holder shoved the sergeant, Meziere said. When Minogue told Holder he was under arrest, Holder resisted, Meziere said.
“He started to raise his hands in fists like he was going to fight,” Meziere testified.
Meziere said he and Minogue grabbed Holder and attempted to handcuff him, and the three officers fell to the ground.
But a pastor who lives nearby, along with Diane and Randy Green, the mother and brother of the man who had been shot, painted a vastly different portrait of that night. They said the Austin District officers, who are white, not only wrestled Holder to the ground but also kicked and punched him, beating him repeatedly with flashlights and batons.
They said Holder told the officers repeatedly that he was a police officer and he also showed his badge.
Rev. Parker Turner said he heard Holder yell “I’m a policeman. I’m a policeman” as 10 officers rushed into the back yard.
“An officer yelled (an obscenity) and said take that mother down,” Turner said. “Three officers started wrestling him to the ground and then a whole group rushed in and pulled out their flashlights and started hitting him.”
Turner and Randy Green also testified that the officers used racial slurs.
“They grabbed him by the arms and pushed him into a darker spot of the yard and threw him down,” Randy Green testified. “They commenced to swinging blunt objects at him. They were yelling slurs at him.”