Civil Rights attorney Locke Bowman recently accused Attorney General Lisa Madigan of trying to “dump” 5 cases connected to former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge. Bowman, a lawyer with the Roderick MacArthur Justice Center who represents the torture victims as well as advocates opposing the transfers, said the cases were transferred to Madigan’s office by a court order six years ago.

Interviewed in February, Bowman said the cases involve men were convicted with evidence generated by Burge and officers under his command. Burge, who was fired in 1991 and is currently under federal indictment on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, is accused of having directed torture of numerous suspects in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
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Some Chicago police officers in early January 2009 denounced their own union’s efforts to fund former police Commander Jon Burge’s legal defense.

In December 2008, the Grand Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) union board voted to fund the 60-year-old Burge’s defense on federal perjury and obstruction of justice charges for which he was indicted in October 2008.
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There have been numerous suits in the world of Chicago public housing. Some hang around like old suits in a thrift shop, and some new ones are tailor made just for the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and the Chicago Police Department (CPD) by the residents of public housing.

The suits that I’m talking about are not clothes but lawsuits. But these suits are clinging to CHA all the same. Class action lawsuits are what I’m talking about – many of them are being hung out there to air dry, while some of them were considered form fitting.

In some cases, they were tailor made for the residents, and the residents won. Or did they?
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Public housing residents of the Stateway Gardens complex recently scored a slam-dunk victory over the Chicago Police Department in a one-half million dollar over illegal police searches at a basketball game in February 2001.

The Lawsuit
On Feb. 4, 2003, in the case of Williams v. Brown, the City of Chicago and attorneys representing residents of Stateway Gardens entered into a written agreement to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department. The attorneys for the residents from the Edwin F. Mandel Legal Aid Clinic of the University of Chicago Law School settled with the city for the amount of roughly $500,000.
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Altgeld Gardens residents won a $10.5 million dollar Class Action lawsuit settlement regarding environmental contamination with Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) this past summer.

But unlike most class action lawsuit winners, these residents won’t be receiving their money in the form of a check, according to the attorney who represented the residents in the case. Instead, CHA will keep the money and award the plaintiffs credit toward their rent, according to Cheryl Johnson, President of the People for Community Recovery (PCR) of Altgeld Gardens, and Kim Johnson, Assistant Press Secretary with CHA.
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“Girl X Settles With CHA for $3 million.” That’s the way the headlines appeared in the April 18 daily newspapers and how the story was announced on several television and radio news stations.

The settlement was the result of a lawsuit filed on behalf of 15-year-old Toya Currie. Currie was given the title ‘Girl X’ after her attack at 1121 N Larrabee in CHA’s Cabrini-Green public housing development in January 1997. Currie was nine years old at the time of the attack.

Another, possibly unauthorized Cabrini-Green resident, Patrick Sykes, was convicted of the assault and sentenced to 120 years in prison this past July. Read more »

Remembering Eric

In the lawsuit, the Morse family attorneys charged the CHA and the companies responsible for Eric’s death because they failed to secure the vacant 14th floor apartment from where Eric was dropped by two other boys. Morse was seeking an unspecified amount of money.
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The month started with me covering the case of Jonathan Tolliver. The jurors had come to a deadlock on the first trial and I covered the retrial.

Tolliver was on trial for the death of Police Officer Michael Ceriale. Ceriale and his partner, Joseph Ferenzi, were staking out a Robert Taylor Homes building on an undercover drug sting Aug. 15, 1998 when Ceriale was shot and killed.

First there was a new set of jurors to be picked. This took two days. Two jurors asked to be excused, one because he said he had a history of mental problems. Read more »

There are a number of cases currently in the courts that involve Chicago police officers who are being accused of corrupt involvement with street gang members.