Decades Later, Victims Of Chicago Police Torture Paid Reparations

Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he has confidence in the head of Chicago’s law department following the resignation of a top city attorney who was accused of hiding evidence in a fatal police shooting lawsuit. The video prompted protests and led to a civil rights investigation of the entire department by the U.S. Department of Justice. Thousands of emails released last week showed close communication between Emanuel’s office, the police and the organization that investigates the police in the aftermath of deadly force incidents.

Changes are coming to the agency that acts as a Chicago Police Department watchdog.

A top city of Chicago lawyer stepped down after a federal judge accused him of hiding evidence in a fatal police shooting, the latest allegation of wrongdoing amid ongoing scrutiny of how the city deals with such cases. “Attorneys who might be tempted to bury late-surfacing information need to know that, if discovered, any verdict they win will be forfeit and their clients will pay the price”, U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang wrote in his 72-page decision.

Mayor Emanuel’s office was not available for comment on the bill.

Despite the judge’s finding, Emanuel said he does not believe the Law Department is part of a culture of cover-ups on police shootings.

“There is zero tolerance for not only violating the public trust, but your professional standards and there will be no place for that”, Emanuel said.

Paying reparations “is a moral compunction and a moral reckoning to right a wrong”, Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the newspaper.

The officer, Jason Van Dyke, was charged with murder for the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, 17.

Over the last 44 years, over 100 men have come forward accusing Jon Burge, a former Chicago Police Department detective and commander, and his officers of beatings, “shocking them on their lips and genitals with a cattle prod, staging mock executions, and suffocating them to elicit false confessions”, according to Vice News. “I mean – if you’ve got 10,000 people marching down Michigan Avenue, that’s a lot of pressure”, he said.

Chicago police shot Darius Pinex in 2011, saying the vehicle he was in matched another auto wanted in a shooting.

However, court records would later prove cops lied and weren’t even listening to the alleged dispatch call before stopping Pinex.

Marsh first said he had learned about the recording that day, then later said it had been the week before trial. Chang asked Marsh why he didn’t disclose the existence of the recording as soon as he found out about it from a police sergeant, the attorney allegedly backpedaled and said it didn’t cross his mind that this might have been helpful to the plaintiffs.

“He said the attorney for the city had intentionally hidden evidence, which is very troubling”, Steve Greenberg, the attorney for Pinex’s family, told CNN affiliate WBBM. Marsh resigned on Monday. The judge harshly criticized Marsh in a scathing opinion. Emanuel said Tuesday Jan. 5, 2015, that chief counsel Patton is handling “all the pieces” when it comes to any possible review of cases.