"Good" Chicago Cop Fired for Posing with a Black Man in Antlers...

stringer bell · May 2015

http://www.mediaite.com/online/chicago-cop-fired-for-posing-with-black-suspect-in-antlers/

http://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/7/71/587596/judge-wont-seal-photo-cpd-cops-posing-african-american-man-antlers

Tuesday night a judge ordered the release of a photo that got a Chicago police officer fired last year, depicting officers Timothy McDermott and Jerome Finnigan posing with rifles over an unidentified black suspect, who was made to wear antlers:

Per the Chicago Sun-Times, the photo was believed to be taken sometime between 1999 and 2003. Since then, Finnigan was jailed for 12 years for leading a team of rogue cops on a crime spree. The photo was turned over the Chicago Police Department, which began an investigation.

“Appearing to treat an African-American man not as a human being but as a hunted animal is disgraceful and shocks the conscience,” the department’s board wrote after voting 5-4 to fire McDermott.

Superintendent Garry McCarthy said the photo:

“is disgusting, and the despicable actions of these two former officers have no place in our police department or in our society. As the superintendent of this department, and as a resident of our city, I will not tolerate this kind of behavior, and that is why neither of these officers works for CPD today. I fired one of the officers and would have fired the other if he hadn’t already been fired by the time I found out about the picture. Our residents deserve better than this, as do the thousands of good men and women in this department.”

McDermott said he remembered no details about the photo, but did remember that the suspect had been arrested for drugs, and that the two officers had let him go.

“I am embarrassed by my participation in this photograph,” McDermott said. “I made a mistake as a young, impressionable police officer who was trying to fit in.”

I'm sure these two pigs were one of the few bad apples in the pig department.. I bet the rest of the Chicago PD are all "good" cops.. Who don't have any kind of racist bones in their bodies.. And they would never anything blatantly racist towards black folks...

D. Morgan · May 2015

Who the ? are the 4 people who voted not fire this muthafucka is what I want to know?

stringer bell · May 2015

http://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/7/71/587596/judge-wont-seal-photo-cpd-cops-posing-african-american-man-antlers

Believed to have been taken in a West Side police station between 1999 and 2003, the Polaroid photo was given to the city by the feds in 2013 and resulted in McDermott, a clout-heavy cop, being fired last year by the police board in a 5-to-4 vote. The four dissenters said McDermott should only have been suspended. But a majority of the board wrote that “appearing to treat an African-American man not as a human being but as a hunted animal is disgraceful and shocks the conscience.”

McDermott’s attorney, Daniel Herbert, said he has advised his client not to talk to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Herbert said McDermott hired him privately. Herbert said he does not know whether the Fraternal Order of Police will cover the legal expenses of McDermott’s appeal. The president of the FOP could not be reached for comment.

The department’s recommendation to fire McDermott went before the police board in August. Herbert had argued that other officers have received slaps on the wrist for participating in photos deemed embarrassing to the department.

A cop who posed in front of the Southwest Airlines jet that ran off a runway at Midway Airport, struck a vehicle and killed a child in 2005 received a one-day suspension after the photo made the rounds on the Internet. And a police commander who took a photo of a handcuffed protester as he knelt before a line of cops in riot gear received a reprimand after that image hit the Internet.

But the police board’s hearing officer would not consider those cases because the police department handled them internally without involving the board. She said she could compare McDermott’s case only with other police board cases.

In his closing arguments at the police board hearing, Herbert emphasized the lack of information about where and when the photo was taken — and the mystery surrounding the African-American man’s identity.

“What’s to say this individual wasn’t performing at a Christmas pageant in the district and was dressed as a reindeer and had taken the reindeer suit off? Again, I don’t mean to make preposterous arguments, but the charges in this case, they warrant that,” he said.

Herbert also compared the photo to an episode of “Seinfeld” in which Jerry is wrongly accused of picking his nose.

Herbert said there was strong evidence in the photo that the African-American man was a “willing participant” and was not coerced to pose with antlers. He even questioned whether the guns were really broomsticks carved to look like weapons.

Phil Cline, the former police superintendent, spoke on behalf of McDermott, who had earned 74 department awards during his career. He called McDermott a “very hard-working policeman, the type of policeman I wanted working for us and his character was impeccable.”

McDermott is the stepson of former Chicago Police Deputy Supt. Thomas Byrne, who also spoke glowingly of him during the police board hearing. Byrne was a powerful figure within former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration and later went on to run the Department of Streets and Sanitation for Daley.

Court records show McDermott was a defendant in four federal lawsuits accusing him and other officers of misconduct while he was assigned to the Special Operations Section and later, when he was a detective.

The city paid settlements in three of the cases and a jury awarded damages in a fourth case — with a total payout of $162,000. The city also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, records show.

But the lawsuits did not come up at McDermott’s police board hearing.

MasterJayN100 · May 2015

the evil of this world smh

gh0st · May 2015

maaaaan I have to interact with too many CAC's today @ work i cant afford to be giving them the blatant "I'm fittinta slap the ? out of you face" I can't process this ? today. "broomsticks carved to look like weapons" W.T.F!!
yo I'm out holla at ya'll tomorrow

oh and
FTP!!!!!

D. Morgan · May 2015

gh0st wrote: »

maaaaan I have to interact with too many CAC's today @ work i cant afford to be giving them the blatant "I'm fittinta slap the ? out of you face" I can't process this ? today. "broomsticks carved to look like weapons" W.T.F!!
yo I'm out holla at ya'll tomorrow

oh and
FTP!!!!!

The bold has taken on a whole new meaning now after I have read the C(B)hris Brown fake gang banging on instagram thread.

FTP = Fruit Town Piru all of a sudden. ? is crazy!

nex gin · May 2015

D. Morgan wrote: »

Who the ? are the 4 people who voted not fire this muthafucka nigguh who agreed to pose for that picture is what I want to know?

fixed

The Lonious Monk · May 2015

stringer bell wrote: »

http://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/7/71/587596/judge-wont-seal-photo-cpd-cops-posing-african-american-man-antlers

Believed to have been taken in a West Side police station between 1999 and 2003, the Polaroid photo was given to the city by the feds in 2013 and resulted in McDermott, a clout-heavy cop, being fired last year by the police board in a 5-to-4 vote. The four dissenters said McDermott should only have been suspended. But a majority of the board wrote that “appearing to treat an African-American man not as a human being but as a hunted animal is disgraceful and shocks the conscience.”

McDermott’s attorney, Daniel Herbert, said he has advised his client not to talk to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Herbert said McDermott hired him privately. Herbert said he does not know whether the Fraternal Order of Police will cover the legal expenses of McDermott’s appeal. The president of the FOP could not be reached for comment.

The department’s recommendation to fire McDermott went before the police board in August. Herbert had argued that other officers have received slaps on the wrist for participating in photos deemed embarrassing to the department.

A cop who posed in front of the Southwest Airlines jet that ran off a runway at Midway Airport, struck a vehicle and killed a child in 2005 received a one-day suspension after the photo made the rounds on the Internet. And a police commander who took a photo of a handcuffed protester as he knelt before a line of cops in riot gear received a reprimand after that image hit the Internet.

But the police board’s hearing officer would not consider those cases because the police department handled them internally without involving the board. She said she could compare McDermott’s case only with other police board cases.

In his closing arguments at the police board hearing, Herbert emphasized the lack of information about where and when the photo was taken — and the mystery surrounding the African-American man’s identity.

“What’s to say this individual wasn’t performing at a Christmas pageant in the district and was dressed as a reindeer and had taken the reindeer suit off? Again, I don’t mean to make preposterous arguments, but the charges in this case, they warrant that,” he said.

Herbert also compared the photo to an episode of “Seinfeld” in which Jerry is wrongly accused of picking his nose.

Herbert said there was strong evidence in the photo that the African-American man was a “willing participant” and was not coerced to pose with antlers. He even questioned whether the guns were really broomsticks carved to look like weapons.

Phil Cline, the former police superintendent, spoke on behalf of McDermott, who had earned 74 department awards during his career. He called McDermott a “very hard-working policeman, the type of policeman I wanted working for us and his character was impeccable.”

McDermott is the stepson of former Chicago Police Deputy Supt. Thomas Byrne, who also spoke glowingly of him during the police board hearing. Byrne was a powerful figure within former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration and later went on to run the Department of Streets and Sanitation for Daley.

Court records show McDermott was a defendant in four federal lawsuits accusing him and other officers of misconduct while he was assigned to the Special Operations Section and later, when he was a detective.

The city paid settlements in three of the cases and a jury awarded damages in a fourth case — with a total payout of $162,000. The city also paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, records show.

But the lawsuits did not come up at McDermott’s police board hearing.

Where did they get that attorney from? He must have been on the kid's side because there is no way he could have thought that ? argument he made would have helped the kid.