A Chicago police commander has been acquitted of shoving his gun down a suspect’s throat and pressing a stun gun to his groin.
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A Cook County judge has found a police officer not guilty after he was accused of shoving his gun down a suspect’s throat.
The latest on the trial of a Chicago police commander accused of shoving his gun down a suspect’s throat (all times local). He failed to pick Evans out of several photo lineups, and he changed his story that Evans held his pistol in his left hand after prosecutors advised him that the commander wore his holster on his right hip. The agency also ignored requests to submit Evans’ DNA to state labs, and one employee admitted she wrote a report for Evans’ case 15 months after she conducted an unrecorded interview. Both Williams and Evans are black.
“This case underscores the reality that it is extremely hard to convince judges or juries in Cook County and around the country to convict police officers of misconduct in the line of duty, despite the fact that this victim made an immediate outcry and we had DNA evidence to support our case”, she said in a statement.
Evans was accused of jamming his gun down the throat of a low-level drug dealer and threatening him in an effort to get information about a recent shooting, the Sun-Times reported.
Evans did not testify in the three-day bench trial.
Prosecutors alleged that Evans tackled Williams and stuck his gun in Williams’ mouth while demanding to know where he had put a gun he believed he had seen Williams holding. But his attorneys said Evans confronted Williams in the January 2013 incident after he saw Williams holding a blue steel handgun as he stood near a bus stop on the city’s South Side.
Judge Diane Cannon on Monday found Cmdr.
Cannon acknowledged the timing of her verdict, which arrived as Chicago is facing national scrutiny over its policing, telling the courtroom: “This is not a good time to try a case like this”.
A Chicago police commander has been acquitted of all charges for allegedly shoving a gun in a suspect’s mouth two years ago.
Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, whose resignation protesters have been clamoring for, issued a statement defending her decision to charge Evans.
Evans is a highly-decorated Chicago police officer who has also been the subject of more than four dozen citizen complaints in his 28 years of service. Williams testified that he hadn’t been carrying a gun and that Evans must have mistaken a cellphone he had been holding as a weapon.
Evans’ attorneys questioned Williams’ credibility and the reliability of the DNA evidence. A gun was never found on the scene and the charge was later dropped.
The judge also interrupted Freeman’s argument to tell her to stop claiming that police never bring charges for gun offenses if no weapon was recovered, saying it wasn’t true and she didn’t want to give the public a false impression of the law.
Evans’ attorneys have argued that the DNA from the exterior of the gun could have come from incidental contact with Williams.
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Morask slammed Williams’ testimony last week – claiming Williams has “five million reasons to lie”, referencing a pending civil suit Williams’ attorneys filed against the city that seeks $5 million in damages.
