The photo shows two white Chicago Police officers posing with an unidentified black man. The officers — Timothy McDermott and Jerome Finnigan — are holding rifles as the black man lies on the floor with a dazed look on his face and with antlers on his head as if he were a prized, big buck finally hunted down.
Finnegan is smiling and grabbing the right antler, while McDermott is holding up the man’s head as if it were his trophy.
The photo was taken in a police station on the West Side of Chicago sometime between 1999 and 2003. The Chicago Police Department successfully kept it hidden from the public until a judge refused to keep it under seal and the Chicago Sun-Times pulled a copy from a court filing.
Finnigan is a notoriously dirty ex-cop who was a member of the police department’s elite Special Operations Section (SOS) until 2006, when he was charged with leading a gang of fellow officers who robbed suspects, illegally invaded homes and stole thousands of dollars in cash. He’s now serving 12 years in federal prison.
In a 2012 interview with Playboy, Finnigan admitted the SOS beat and tortured multiple suspects, and described shutting down an internal affairs investigation by appealing to one of his comrades in blue who worked in the Internal Affairs Division.
The Sun-Times reports that federal authorities gave the photo to Chicago Police in 2013, after Finnigan’s prosecution. As a result, a police board last year voted to fire McDermott — but only by a 5-4 margin.
After the Guardian disclosed this year how Chicago police kept their detention and torture at the Homan Square facility off the books, police told me no suspect is detained without proper paperwork. But it’s not at all surprising to find out that Finnigan and McDermott filed no arrest report the night the photograph was taken.
As for the man in the photo, he has no name. The police claimed he was dealing drugs, but there is no reason to believe them. Ultimately, whether the man was a drug dealer or not is irrelevant.
He was a human being, dehumanized by other men who swore to protect and serve the public good. And if the police, who have a monopoly on sanctioned violence, view a segment of the population as not quite human, then they will do anything to those people.
Against this backdrop, the deer photo — so reminiscent of the “trophy” pictures taken by the torturers at Abu Ghraib — has a direct relationship to the way police treat black communities.
The anti-black sickness that infects America’s police departments will not be solved by body cameras or any other ornament of reform. A more profound, national rejection is called for.
(This post is from our blog: Unofficial Sources.)
Photo: Cook County Illinois Court/Chicago Sun-Times
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
Contact the author:
Latest Stories
Voices
Never Apologize
James Comey, Zohran Mamdani, and the lost art of doubling down.
Voices
Graham Platner Handed Centrist Dems a Bruising Defeat in Maine
After throwing their support behind Gov. Janet Mills, party leaders are left doing an about-face on the insurgent candidate.
Musk Warns of Killer AI — While He and the Rest of Silicon Valley Cash In on AI That Kills
In his lawsuit against OpenAI, Elon Musk evoked a “Terminator” scenario. He said nothing about the people AI is already killing.