From Hanrahan to Daley to Alvarez,
Protecting Killer Cops is a Chicago Prosecutorial Tradition
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
If there's any justice the political career of Cook County States
Attorney Anita Alvarez will end with the November 2016 election. But we
should remember that Chicagoans threw Cook County States Attorney Edward
V. Hanrahan out of office over the 1969 assassination of Fred Hampton,
and not much else changed. It will apparently take more than running
candidates in elections to overthrow the Chicago tradition of
prosecutors enabling and abetting its killer cops.
From Hanrahan to Daley to Alvarez, Protecting Killer Cops is a Chicago Prosecutorial Tradition
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
The city of Chicago yesterday released a video it had held for 400
days of a police officer apparently murdering a young man with a knife
walking away from him. Police announced that the officer, who'd been on
paid leave that entire 400 days, would be suspended without pay. Cook
County States Attorney Anita Alvarez's office, which had “investigated”
the case that entire time finally announced that Officer Van Dyke would
be charged with first degree murder.
Upon viewing the video, as hundreds of thousands of people have by
now, the obvious questions are why the Cook County States Attorney took
13 months, instead of 13 days or 13 hours or 13 minutes to come up with
that murder indictment? Unfortunately this easy and obvious question has
an easy and obvious answer. Anita Alvarez is the same states attorney
who deliberately sabotaged the case against the killer cop who shot
Rekia Boyd by charging him with manslaughter instead of murder, a charge
which the judge was forced to dismiss, neatly immunizing the killer cop
from further prosecution.
States Attorney Alvarez is part of a long tradition of Chicago
prosecutors who aid, abet and sometimes hire and directly supervise
killer cops to do what they do. Before Richard M. Daley was mayor for
twenty years he was the county's top prosecutor who accepted and carried
to court all the cases built upon the torture of innocent black men by
Chicago Police commander John Burge. And when we talk about infamous
Cook County States Attorneys nobody should forget that the 1969 murder
of Chicago Illinois Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was executed by a
squad of Chicago cops (except for the lead sergeant, whose identity and
affiliation are unclear) under the direct supervision of the states
attorney's office.
Alvarez comes up for re-election in November 2016, and people are
pointing to a rival in the Democratic primary election as the one to
vote for. Should a tidal wave of public indignation ends the political
career of Anita Alvarez next year it will be a kind of justice, but only
of a very limited sort.
Edward V. Hanrahan was thrown out of office by a tidal wave of public
disgust over the assassination of Fred Hampton. His political career
was over, but not much else changed. And now, just as then there are a
lot of things that need changing in Chicago.
The city just had a reform candidate for mayor who barely seemed to
notice the Chicago Police black site at Homan Square, an issue that
should have been a rallying point for black Chicago around his campaign.
That same reform candidate kicked off his campaign and stump speech
with a pledge to hire a thousand more Chicago cops, in a city which
already has one of the highest police-to-civilian ratios in the country,
and which clearly protects its corrupt and brutal cops from any
accountability to civilians. And let's not talk about Chicago's media,
which, when the Homan Square story broke in a British paper, spent its
reporters time trying to debunk instead of investigating it.
The enabling of killer cops is a tradition in Chicago, as it is
around the country. Anita Alvarez can and should be swept from office
next November. But it will take a lot of elections, and a lot more than
just elections to change the system that brought us Hanrahan, Daley, and
now Alvarez.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web at www.blackagendareport.com.
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report,
and a Chicagoan now living in exile near Marietta GA. He's a member of
the state committee of the GA Green Party and can be reached via email
at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Submitted by Bruce A. Dixon on
Labels: Chicago, Killer Cops, Protecting
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