TheU.S. Department of Justiceconfirmed Friday that it is conducting a preliminary inquiry into the case of a man who died after North Chicago police punched, tackled and Tasered him during an arrest.
The inquiry was revealed the same day that the Rev. Jesse Jacksonheld a news conference at North Chicago City Hall to condemn the alleged brutality against Darrin Hanna and drum up support for a protest planned for Saturday dubbed the “Ten Thousand Man March.”
“This is a man who was beaten to death, and this is beneath the dignity of all of us,” Jackson said Friday as stood with Hanna’s mother and held up photos showing Hanna bruised, swollen and bloodied. “We will not let these forces be on the loose, uniforms or not.”
Hanna, 45, died Nov. 13, a week after the encounter with police who responded to a call that he was beating a pregnant woman. His death sparked outrage in the community, unleashed a wave of other brutality claims against police and led to the retirement of the police chief. But Lake County prosecutors declined to charge the seven officers involved in Hanna’s arrest, saying they acted “reasonably and appropriately.”
Lake County’s coroner ruled that Hanna died of multiple factors, including chronic cocaine abuse, high blood pressure, kidney problems, sickle cell trait and physical restraint and Taser shocks.
The federal inquiry will determine whether a more formal investigation is warranted, said Randall Samborn, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago.
Mayor Leon Rockingham Jr. said he welcomed the inquiry.
“Hopefully, whatever conclusion they come to will bring some resolution and possibly calm the community,” he said.
Since the conclusion of a state police investigation and the prosecutors’ ruling last month, additional evidence has become public, including police recordings from the scene in which an anguished Hanna can be heard pleading, “Put me down, please, I was down,” while an officer tells him, “You are OK … relax.”
Attorneys for Hanna’s family, who have sued the city over his death, said the recordings show Hanna was cooperative, still conscious and understandable after being arrested, though he was barely conscious and unintelligible by the time he was carried out of his apartment on a stretcher.
In January, Rockingham hired Robert Johnson, a retired Illinois State Police regional commander, to investigate whether officers violated department policy in the Hanna case, as well as claims of excessive police force in five other cases.
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The mayor would not comment on the significance of the recordings but said Johnson in the last week re-interviewed the officers involved to ask them about the recordings, which were not addressed in the state police report.
Rockingham said he hoped the city’s internal report, with whatever disciplinary action that interim Police Chief James Jackson may recommend, would be out in the next week.
As for the march and protest, Rockingham said, “I respect Mr. (Jesse) Jackson trying to make sure everything is done properly. Hopefully, it will be a peaceful march.”
Robert McCoppin is a staff reporter; Susan Berger is a freelance reporter.