The Better Government Association should apologize for accusing Palatine police of botching the investigation into the Brown’s restaurant murders, a law enforcement activist said Monday, contending that investigators’ caution may have saved the state from another wrongful-conviction scandal.
The BGA issued a highly publicized report in 1997 that ripped police tactics and suggested that the real murderers could have been members of a Puerto Rican gang in Chicago. The report marked the height of criticism that built over the course of the investigation, with everybody from media to a former owner of the restaurant chiming in.
But the arrests last week of two former Fremd High School students, James Degorski and Juan Luna, have vindicated the Palatine police’s methods, said Jerry Elsner, director of the Illinois State Crime Commission. Elsner’s non-profit group supported the police investigation in its own report in 2000.
“I’m sitting here today saying, `Where’s the Puerto Rican gang members?'” Elsner said Monday. “I’m waiting for the apologies to come.”
The return of `Lead 80′
The 1997 BGA report accused police of failing to properly investigate “Lead 80,” a statement by a jailed gang member who said his gang was responsible for the killings.
Elsner said the recent arrests show that police should be lauded for not rushing to judgment.
“They could have grabbed one of 10, 15 people and said, `You did it.’ Then everyone would have clapped,” Elsner said. “There would have been no reports. Then you would have had some innocent man on Death Row.”
Aldo Botti, an attorney and former DuPage County Chairman who led the crime commission panel, said Monday that the BGA staff report was based on hearsay and leaks from individual police officers with axes to grind.
But Terrence Brunner, who headed the BGA at the time, said Monday that there was nothing in the recent arrests to cause him to reconsider the staff report.
Brunner said he stands by the accusations that authorities mishandled the crime scene and fouled evidence and that Palatine police who supervised the Brown’s task force had incorrectly discounted the input of experienced outside investigators. Brunner said the crime commission isn’t a serious law enforcement group and its conclusions to back the police were preordained.
He said the BGA’s discussion of Lead 80 was meant to show there was dissension and a lack of coordination in the multiagency police task force assembled to investigate the crime.
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“It was an illustration of the approach,” Brunner said.
The BGA report did say that Lead 80 “paints a picture of overwhelming circumstantial evidence” against one of the gang members.
Elsner also called for an apology from the Chicago Crime Commission, which joined with the BGA in creating an expert panel to study the Brown’s investigation.
That expert panel’s report, released at the same time as the BGA staff report, leveled milder criticisms at Palatine police, concluding that inexperienced suburban investigators were given too much responsibility and that regional teams were needed to fight major suburban crimes.
Chicago Crime Commission officials could not be reached Monday. But Terrance Norton, current BGA director and a member of the expert panel, said he, like Brunner, saw no need to apologize.
“There were certain inadequacies in the work that was done by the authorities at that time,” Norton said. “Through good police work, done very recently, they apparently have the right suspects.”
Police had other critics
Advocacy groups were not the only ones raising questions about the investigators.
Five days after the slayings, the Tribune reported that Palatine police waited more than two days before contacting many potential witnesses and still hadn’t interviewed some residents and business owners within 100 yards of the restaurant.
A Tribune editorial on Jan. 15, 1993, took Palatine police to task. Letters to the editor fiercely debated the issue.
A police official and a media consultant complained that television news investigative reporters were using overly aggressive tactics in chasing would-be suspects on their own.
And every anniversary of the massacre gave the news media an opportunity to resurrect the crime, spotlighting the investigation’s lack of success.
Another prominent police critic, Frank Portillo, president of Brown’s Chicken & Pasta, said that last week’s breakthrough has changed his mind.
Portillo, who called for the BGA review of the investigation, said Monday that he regrets criticizing the police, including former Palatine Chief Jerry Bratcher. “I know Chief Bratcher wanted to solve the crime just like anyone else,” Portillo said. “I feel bad I was a critic, and if I could do it all again I’d take it back.”
Portillo said his criticism was a reaction to the anger he felt over the murders and the emotions he experienced after meeting with the victims’ families.
Bratcher said Monday that his task force did include and respect the input of Chicago police, state police and the FBI. He said his investigators “beat [Lead 80] to death,” then, after criticism emerged, took the lead to the FBI to be reinvestigated.
“I don’t need their apology,” Bratcher said of the BGA. “I’ve got enough scar tissue that I’m insulated. Maybe they should apologize to the law enforcement community and the people they misled.”