Questions raised over the U.S. Department of Justice’s role in Chicago’s ‘code of silence’
A year ago this week, a bombshell dropped on the city of Chicago when officials, under a court order, released a damning video that showed teenager Laquan McDonald being gunned down by a Chicago police officer on the city’s South Side.
Many questions remain. As advocates have pushed for and won concessions dealing with a host of long-simmering issues — civilian oversight and new accountability mechanisms among them — the city’s so-called “code of silence” remains a particular lingering sore given the backdrop of the McDonald video and a host of unanswered questions. First, the city’s clean-up act is being led by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose alleged contribution to the cover-up after the shooting isn’t known. Secondly, it isn’t clear whether officials at all levels of government may have been involved — including U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon’s office.
Lori Lightfoot, head of the civilian oversight Chicago Police Board and a former U.S. Justice Department official, raised that specter Monday at a panel discussion hosted by the Better Government Association. Responding to a question about City Hall’s role in the McDonald investigation, Lightfoot wondered what happened after evidence was passed on to the U.S. attorney’s office just days after McDonald was shot and killed on Oct. 20, 2014.
She described what happened after the McDonald shooting this way: the Independent Police Review Authority had reviewed the evidence — including the damning video — and passed it on to state Attorney General Anita Alvarez. Alvarez, who was recently ousted by voters over her handling of the case, then forwarded it to the federal Department of Justice through area U.S. Attorney Fardon.
“What happened with the U.S. attorney’s office?” Lightfoot asked on Monday. “… the US attorney’s office didn’t do its job. (U.S. Attorney) Zach Fardon — he’s the only one that knows the answer.”
In September, Fardon said in an interview with WTTW that a federal prosecution in the McDonald case was essentially put off to defer to the state charges. Only state prosecutors, not the federal government, can bring murder charges, he said.
“There is a state law, a double jeopardy law that can stop the state from prosecuting if we, the feds, go first. Rather than risk jamming up a state case… we will defer and wait. Lots of moving parts there,” Fardon told WTTW.
Did Justice officials sit on the video? Did it push Alvarez, when federal officials received the video and other evidence from her office, to bring charges?
U.S. Justice officials sent out a press release in April 2015 that they were working on a joint investigation with Cook County officials on the case.
Alvarez had said that she, in fact, was moving forward together with federal officials on criminal charges but had not had enough time to complete the investigation. She charged officer Jason Van Dyke with murder shortly after the video was released under immense pressure.
Here’s what Alvarez told WTTW in September:
“This case obviously from the minute it came in, I’m a mother, I reacted as everyone else does. I don’t apologize for working with the FBI or the United States attorney. I think what I’ve learned is that despite the fact I know all the work we were doing with this all the work the FBI did all the work the U.S. attorney did, the public didn’t know. I could have done a better job of reminding the public … this was being taken seriously, it was taken seriously from day one. As a prosecutor we’re bound by rules and rules of ethics and there’s evidence we’re not supposed to be talking about. The public felt they were not informed, and if there’s a lesson to be learned for me that’s exactly what it is.”
The McDonald video, journalist Jamie Kalven noted at the BGA panel discussion, depicts the dichotomy of good policing versus bad, a reminder of how the code of silence infects an entire organization. In the beginning of the recording, two police officers approach McDonald with care and concern as he wields a small pocket blade and was out of sorts, high on PCP.
“They respond as we wanted them to respond,” Kalven said at the panel. “They are, in fact, walking him to his death.”
The officers who had responded with professionalism — keeping the teen away from others and realizing that he was a low risk in a mostly deserted area — would see that painstaking care trampled by a barrage of 16 shots fired by police officer Jason Van Dyke as McDonald moved away.
As with all things, there is context here—which raises questions about DOJ spanning decades. In a recent series for The Intercept, Kalven outlined the issues relating to the federal government’s role in what he described as a rein of terror over poor Chicago communities by former police Sgt. Ronald Watts. The longtime commander was implicated as a major player in the South Side drug trade and had a form of retribution came to be known as a “Watts Special” — he would kill those who snitched or didn’t pay his “tax,” according to Kalven’s reporting.
“The boys call him Thirsty Bird,” an informant told two police officers who were sidelined and punished after seeking to investigate Watts, according to Kalven’s piece. “You have to pay taxes to sell dope. Watts ain’t nothing nice. You come up missing if you go up against Watts.”
Kalven asks this in the final part of the series:
One set of questions relates to the criminal careers of Watts and his alleged co-conspirators. For the better part of those careers, they were under investigation by internal affairs and the FBI, as well as other law enforcement agencies (the Drug Enforcement Administration, the State’s Attorney’s Office). How is it that all there is to show for those multi-target investigations over more than a decade are the convictions of Watts and Mohammed on a single count of stealing government funds in the amount of $5,200? Was this an instance of investigation-as-cover-up? Was the prosecution the capstone of a massive cover-up, designed not to secure information about Watts’s crimes and co-conspirators but to buy his silence? The DOJ team has the means to answer these questions.
It seems that there is more than one question for Justice officials. I have sent this post to DOJ’s media relations department and will post any answer I receive.
Update: DOJ spokesman Joseph Fitzpatrick declined to comment.
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