Correction: February 2, 2016
An earlier version of this story included a quote attributed to a Chicago-based activist named Jasson Perez. It read, “If people thought the Ferguson municipality was corrupt, wait until they see Chicago.” Perez told The Intercept that he had never been interviewed by our reporter.
The Intercept could not confirm whether or not the reporter spoke with Percy Coleman, who was misidentified as a former Chicago Housing Authority police chief; he was actually a Chicago Housing Authority community police commander. Coleman said he spoke to a number of reporters at the time this story was published. He does not specifically recall being interviewed by our reporter, but he requested some changes to the wording of his quotes, which have been made.
The problems with this story reflect a pattern of misattributed quotes that The Intercept uncovered in stories written by Juan Thompson, a former staff reporter. The rest of the quotes were confirmed. We apologize to our readers.
ON MONDAY, AMID PUBLIC OUTCRY in Chicago over police brutality and the announcement of a Justice Department probe into officers’ use of force, city officials released two more videos showing the killing or mistreatment of black men by law enforcement.
The latest footage, from 2012, shows officers in a Chicago jail using a Taser against 38-year-old Philip Coleman, then dragging his limp body out of his cell and down the hallway. Coleman later died in police custody.
According to Coleman’s father, Percy, his son experienced a mental health crisis when he visited his parents’ home on Chicago’s Far South Side in December 2012. Coleman, a graduate of the University of Chicago, was seeking his parents’ advice, his father said. Percy confirmed reports in the Chicago Tribune that the younger Coleman was “upset about losing out on a job opportunity and mounting financial pressure,” and “prayed together for hours” with his mother before he “suddenly snapped.”
Coleman reportedly attacked his mother, who went to neighbors who helped her call the police. “He was dealing with a lot of demons,” Percy said, “and on that night he attacked his mother.” The mother, Lena, declined to comment. “She’s still shook up about it all,” Percy said.
When officers arrived, they transported Coleman to a jail in the city’s Calumet District. “I was expecting the police to help him, not kill him,” said Percy, himself a former Chicago Housing Authority community police commander.
The newly released video shows Coleman alone on a bed in jail cell. Six officers enter, and a conversation ensues. Coleman appears to stand, and then is shocked with a Taser and overcome by officers, who pull his body across the floor out of the cell. Police claimed Coleman was being combative, but the footage challenges that assertion.
Coleman was taken to the hospital, where he was shocked again, officers claimed, because he was threatening and they feared for their physical safety. Coleman died at the hospital later that night.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, “The Cook County medical examiner’s office determined he died accidentally after the hospital gave him a sedative.” But as the Tribune noted, “An autopsy showed that Coleman had experienced severe trauma, including more than 50 bruises and scrapes on his body from the top of his head to his lower legs.”
Philip Coleman
The video Coleman’s treatment, released late in the day on Monday, has intensified scrutiny of the city’s handling of excessive violence by police. Since the release in late November of dashcam footage showing the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, shot 16 times by police officer Jason Van Dyke, activists have staged persistent demonstrations to call attention to what they see as a uniquely corrupt political and law enforcement establishment.
The Justice Department investigation announced Monday will examine the Chicago Police Department’s use of deadly force, allegations of racism against the department, and procedures for police accountability. Chicago’s embattled mayor, Rahm Emanuel, who initially opposed the federal inquiry, now says he welcomes it.
Last week, Emanuel fired Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who served for four years as the windy city’s top cop, and on Sunday, the head of Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority resigned. Many see the changes as an effort to stem public criticism of the city’s management of police killing cases, especially in the run-up to Emanuel’s reelection.
Laquan McDonald
In the video, Officer Van Dyke, who was on the scene for less than 30 seconds before he began firing, can be seen unloading his pistol in McDonald’s body. Officers claimed that McDonald, who was carrying a knife, had lunged in a threatening manner, but the video shows no such thing.
Just hours before the McDonald video was released, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder. It was the first time in over three decades that a Chicago police officer had received such a charge for an act carried out while on duty.
“It isn’t a matter of tension between poor black people and police,” said Veronica Morris-Moore, an activist and organizer with the community group Fearless Leading by the Youth, or FLY. “It’s that slave patrol legacy of brutality and terror that defines the relationship between modern day cops and black communities.”
The Chicago Police Department has an extensive and troubling legacy of violence. Over the last five years, Chicago officers have fatally shot 70 people, more than any other big-city police department in the U.S., according to the Better Government Association, a watchdog group in Illinois. “The Chicago victims were nearly all male,” wrote the BGA’s Andrew Schroedter. “Most were black. More than half of the killings occurred in six South Side police districts.”
Earlier this year, an investigation by The Guardian uncovered a so-called black site, Homan Square, where police tortured multiple black Chicagoans. And in May, Chicago became the first city in the country to create a reparations fund for victims of police torture, earmarking $5.5 million for victims of former police commander Jon Burge, who ran a gang within the department that inflicted tactics including electrocuting the testicles of men in custody, and cutting off their oxygen flow with plastic bags.
Considering the overwhelming record of abuse, many protestors remain dissatisfied with the dismissal of a few figures within the law enforcement apparatus, and are pushing for the resignation of Alvarez, the city’s top prosecutor.
Ronald Johnson
Alvarez has been defensive of police conduct in the past. During a cringeworthy 2012 interview on 60 Minutes — the segment was titled “Chicago: The false confession capital” — Alvarez stood by police in two infamous cases in which black men were coerced into giving false testimony and convicted of crimes they didn’t commit.
In one case, Chicago prosecutors charged five black men, known as the Dixmoor Five, for the sexual assault and murder of a young girl. In 2011, a DNA test confirmed that semen on the victim matched a separate man — a convicted rapist. The men were eventually freed and received a $40 million settlement, the largest in Illinois history. But on 60 Minutes, Alvarez seemed convinced of their guilt; when asked to account for the DNA evidence, she implied that necrophilia might be one explanation. “It’s possible. We have seen cases like that,” Alvarez said.
Along with protestors, some political figures have joined in questioning Alvarez’s ability to hold law enforcement accountable.
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Commissioner Jesus Garcia, and U.S. Congressman Luis Gutierrez — who recently endorsed Alvarez for reelection — have all turned against her. Preckwinkle and Garcia explicitly called for her resignation, while Gutierrez withdrew his support.
In a letter to Alvarez obtained by the Sun-Times, Gutierrez wrote, “Laquan McDonald deserved justice: not last week, but 13 months ago. You failed in this regard. The delay was inexcusable. I am not calling for your resignation. An election will be held soon enough. I will not be voting for you next March.”
Morris-Moore, the FLY activist and organizer — who successfully fought for an adult hospital trauma center on Chicago’s majority black South Side, which has the city’s highest homicide rates — is seeking an even more groundbreaking overhaul.
“Rahm Emanuel,” Morris-Moore said, “continues to privatize public mental health services, public education, and more significant resources for black communities, all while dishing out millions in police-related settlements and consistently increasing the police budget that currently makes up 40 percent of the city’s budget.”
“That is why black lives matter,” Morris-Moore said. “Because black people deserve policies and decision-making that respect our dignity and humanity.”
When your own President authorises the use of torture and extra-judicial killing and a former President lauds the likes of Dick Cheney, what hope is there for anyone in the world, let alone poor black kids in America?
Your contempt for the equality of justice and the law comes from the very top.
Interesting what JS says below. Americans put all sorts of people on untouchable pedestals – celebrities, sportsmen, politicians, religious leaders, the wealthy, the successful, the “pillars of the community”, financiers, stock market traders, judges, attorneys, the police, the military…
Who is left? The faceless poor folk is all. The great masses whose toils faciliatate these peoples’ charmed lives, yet earn their utter contempt.
Killing a Muslim in Somalia with a drone is no different than tazering a kid to death from the South Side and Alvarez covering for the police is no different from Bush lauding Cheney.
They are all lies and violence to assert domination.
And it can’t be racism, as your Prez is half-black. That’s what they tell me, anyway. America’s not racist. Never.
Rein in your President, your Elitism and your Rule of Money and you might start getting somewhere.
This can’t be a new person every time. Whoever you are, namechanger, you are ever a windbag.
Consider the idiocy of your advice. Let me paraphrase, if that is possible: Doing anything about Chicago specifically is pointless, see, because you actually need to do everything about everything, starting with your president, or actually any president, because Bush & Cheney, but also droning isn’t any different, and besides, what about the faceless poor folk, and then there are all the Americans on pedestals, and it’s all the same thing caused by the same cause.
Okay, got it boss. Let’s not focus on specifics, people, let’s not focus at all, let’s just sort of generally spazz in a 114 directions simultaneously. That’ll fix it.
There’s no doubt that black people are disproportionally the victims of police atrocities in America but until the media report the times when whites are the victims then nothing will ever change. The Washington Post’s Radley Balko’s archives are replete with examples of police abuse of white people but much of the maintream media doesn’t report on these cases because they don’t have an easy racial angle.
The truth is most white people don’t seem to care if blacks are brutalized and killed by police. They have had the police on an unapproachable pedestal for so long that to even question them is a huge taboo. Although the story is racism it’s more than just racism; the story is an out of control institution that the courts, politicians and general public absolutely refuse to rein in. Until equality under the rule of law applies to police too then nothing will change and until abuses against white people are given publicity police will stay on their pedestal.
Right on. But might I add, it goes beyond black, all people of color are lumped in the same bucket. For instance, here in Loudoun county, VA, a suburb of Washington DC, we had an incident in which a mentally deranged Latina was accosted and shot dead by three Loudoun county sheriff’s deputies, and our Commonwealth Attorney (DA), Jim Plowman, rubber stamped Sheriff Michael Chapman’s report that the deputies shot her because she was attacking them and they were in fear for their lives.
Can you imagine that? Three young, healthy men, ostensibly trained in self defense, so terrorized by a woman holding a pair of scissors that they have no recourse but to shoot her multiple times, each shot aimed not to disable but to kill? What cowards they are!
This scene plays out over and over across the US, and the only time there is ever any immediate action is like the situation recently in Louisiana where two black cops killed a young white boy.
“The truth is most white people don’t seem to care if blacks are brutalized and killed by police.”
The objective facts just don’t support this claim. Again, there has been a sustained collaborative effort between white and black leadership inthis country to address this issue through the collection of data that is essential to developing effective modes of redress. You are simply reflecting the racially divisive bias of BlackLivesMatter leadership by echoing their statistically unsubstantiated claims.
I’m speaking of my own observations and not claiming any scientific basis. Not most but everybody I know is conservative and mostly Baptists. They always find a way to excuse the police whenever a black person killed by the police is in the news.
I think if the majority of white people (not a few leaders) cared then they would be outraged and want the police reined in. I also think that if the press reported it when cops beat or kill white people like they do when they have an easy racial angle then conservative white people would demand change.
Also it doesn’t help that foxnews and other right wing media are still pushing their phony war on police:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/09/10/once-again-there-is-no-war-on-cops-and-those-who-claim-otherwise-are-playing-a-dangerous-game/
Fair enough. I am not attempting to discount anybody’s “personal observations.” However, it is difficult to measure the significance of any opinion that is solely based on personal observation in context to a national debate. Much has been written lately about police violence that has been specifically directed at blacks. However, there is an argument to be made that whites are statistically more likely to be killed by police:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/21/police-kill-more-whites-than-blacks-but-minority-d/?page=all
The utter lack of reference to a police related death of a single white person by Juan Thompson speaks far more directly to the subject of race-specific concern for ones own!
I agree, they have to start covering the abuse of and deaths of white people. If they insist on holding on to the old stereotype that only blacks can be victims and the whole thing is only about white racism rather than a corrupt cult like police culture than nothing will ever change.
Juan, Thank you for shining the light on the corruption in Chicago. It’s really fun watching the cockroaches run. Your major local papers are bought and paid for but independent journalism has scored a major victory.
Juan,
Thank you for your continuous coverage of the corruption of Rahm Emanuel and his ilk in Chicago, since your local papers in Chicago appear cowardly.
My name is Lee Mulcahy &I live in “Chicago South” (Aspen). I’m an artist and general contractor & am battling Rahm’s friends here in Colorado in court.
After I passed out a union living wage flyer on company property on Dec 30, 2010, billionaire Lester Crown’s Aspen Skiing suspended my 15 year employment and banned me from all company property, including leased public lands on the same day. (Besides nearly half of Aspen, the Crown family’s significant holdings include your local paper via their investments in JP Morgan Chase and war profiteer General Dynamics.)
Being American and an Eagle Scout, I sued them regarding the ban from public lands. (The forest service backed them). After they tried to get a restraining order on me and had me charged with trespassing for serving the lawsuit (both dismissed) —-it’s still in court due to their endless lawyering-and we have a hearing on Friday.
Recently, I learned the City of Aspen is trying to throw me out of my house.
I desperately need your and/or Glenn Greenwald’s sunshine on this corruption. My local government here in Aspen is a tool of elite war profiteering fascists.
Sincerely,
Lee Mulcahy 970 429 8797 or http://www.leemulcahy.com
Isn’t it Alvarez who has blocked a rehearing for the then 14 year old who was sentenced to life imprisonment — despite a US Supreme Court decision that such sentences for teens are unconstitutional?
Until she, Emanuel and two-third of the Chicago police force are kicked out, the Windy City will deserve the sobriquet “Gitmo North.”
You’re right on Alvarez.
It is easy to blame the police, and I am not in any way attempting to excuse their despicable behavior, but the problem is much larger than that. It started long ago (http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html?pagewanted=all) and is the fault of many, including the psychiatrists, lawyers and politicians. The sad fact is, that there are few opportunities to get humane and effective treatment unless you are rich. There is no 911 department for dealing with mentally ill people, and the police are trained to treat everyone with equal levels of violence.
If we are going to stop the police reign of terror against the mentally ill and handicapped, we must not only do a far better job of selecting and training our police, but also undertake a comprehensive reform of the mental health system.
It civilized countries, people are not shot or tazed to death simply for being aggressive, and mentally ill or handicapped people have opportunities for humane treatment. I guess this story is just another way of documenting the fact that the US is not a civilized country.
The important part of this case comes down to whether we have confidence in the medical examiner. There have been historical reasons not to. What reforms are people working on to try to give the public more confidence in their honesty and independence?
Yes Mr. Thompson it is horrific that the Chicago Police murdered Percy Coleman, Laquan Macdonald, and Ronald Johnson. But couldn’t you put a little more emphasis on the Homan Square (Guantanamo in the heart of America) since it was a place where more than 7,000 Chicagoans “disappeared”? Since part of the title of your article is “… PRESSURE BUILDS ON CHICAGO OFFICIALS”.
Clearly, there is a current case to be made that arrest related and custodial deaths of blacks are statistical disproportionate to that of whites. But let put things into historical perspective. In 1968, blacks were 8 times more likely to die by means of “legal Intervention involving Guns.” By the turn of the century, that number had steadily decline to a rough ratio of 2 to 1 where it has remained fairly constant. Clearly, there is a current case to be made that arrest related and custodial deaths of blacks are statistical disproportionate to that of whites. But let put things into historical perspective. In 1968, blacks were 8 times more likely die by means of “legal Intervention involving Guns.” By the turn of the century, that number had steadily decline to a rough ratio of 2 to 1 where it has remained fairly constant. These numbers reflect the deaths of black and white men, ages 15-34, for deaths due to legal intervention, by county income (highest) quintile. The rate of reported deaths for whites across the measured range of income spectrum remained fairly constant during that same period of time. Yet, what conclusions can be drawn from the data? According to Harvard Health:
http://harvardpublichealthreview.org/190/
In once again making the specious claim that the self-described race- and gender-specific political posture of BLM is driven by the all-encompassing concern that “black people deserve policies and decision-making that respect(s) our dignity and humanity,” the author has conveniently chosen to exclude critical historical data which strongly indicates that five decades of sustained, collaborative political action by radical-centrists has dramatically reduced the very institutional discrimination and violence to which he currently points in justifying the allegedly unique niche that BLM since its inception in 2012. In the effort to conflate its postmodern gender politics with that of the Black Liberation Movement, the group provides a “Herstory” on its website that excoriates the presence of “hetero-patriarchy and anti-Black racism within [the Black Liberation Movement] movement” by making the claim that “it’s killing us and it’s killing our potential to build power for transformative social change.” The use of the term “our” in this instance is intended as a narrow reference to the race-specific, postmodern gender politics of its black gay founders:
It appears that you have distorted the data. Figure 1 of the article linked to in your post clearly shows that the ratio of black to white deaths has been essentially constant (no statistically significant variation) since the early 1980s. Thus the progress has not been steady, but rather stagnant.
Moreover there may be racial bias in the very selection criterion used in the study: “Deaths due to legal intervention”. How many times have we seen police shoot unarmed people of color, or choke them to death, or taze them to death, only to have the legal justice system avert its eyes? In light of what we have seen, and are seeing more of, it would be foolish to assume that the data used in the study are not tainted. Best to consign the Harvard study to the ash bin, where it clearly belongs.
It appears that you have distorted the data. Figure 1 of the article linked to in your post clearly shows that the ratio of black to white deaths has been essentially constant (no statistically significant variation) since the early 1980s.
The calculated ratio of black to white deaths is listed in the table 1:
1975: 7.56
1985: 4.48
1995: 3.37
2005: 2.57
These numbers roughly reveal a reduction in the ratio of black to white deaths from roughly 5 to 2.5 between the years of 1980 and 2000.
Your second point is well taken. However, I would be more inclined to believe that there may be racial bias in the reporting of criterion from various law enforcement agencies, or the officers who were involved in the incidents themselves. The author’s of the study report: “Given documented greater under-reporting of black vs. white homicides by police officers, the results also likely underestimate the black vs. white excess.
This having been said, the trend derived from the reported data clearly supports the claim that there has been an undeniable decrease in the ratio of black vs. white deaths by means of “legal Intervention involving Guns of police officers” since the collection of data began. To garner the misconception that there has been a lack of political will to address this issue, and that institutional violence against blacks is at an all time high, is just pure self-serving nonsense. BlackLivesMatter claims to have come into existence in direct response to specific instances of police violence; it further claims that there has been a perceived lack of political will from the “hetero-patriarchal leadership of the Black Liberation Movement, and their “white” radical-centric counterparts, to effectively address these issues. BlackLivesMatters leadership is intentionally nurturing the misconception that institutional violence against blacks is at an all time high in service to their own racially divisive agenda.
One last note for your consideration: The data collected does not reflect the race of the police officers that were directly involved in the reported in those incidents. Thus, the alleged racial disparity in the ratio might significantly change absent the inclusion of data acquired from non-white law enforcement officers.
To be precise Mr. McDonald and Mr. Johnson were not in policy custody at they time they were shot and killed.
So to be accurate you might be accused of “racially provocative behavior” for reporting on the killings of black men by police without providing equal time to reporting on killings of white men by police.
@ Juan
I’m sure that the usual suspects will be around directly to accuse you of “racially provocative behavior” in even reporting on the stories of these killings of black men while in police custody. Particularly in light of the fact you aren’t simultaneously reporting on the deaths of white men in policy custody (the “whataboutery ethical truism of journalism” that if you don’t write about all injustices simultaneously you’re not “objective”). Apparently, in the minds of some, that makes you both a racist and racist shit stirrer with an agenda incapable of engaging in journalism.
You take that with your unwillingness to allow another grown man who you don’t know to refer to you as “boy” and my guess is that makes you, in their minds, the second coming of the illicit love child of Louis Farrakhan and Huey Newton.
Rahm Emanuel and Anita Alvarez are criminals and need to fucking resign.
Congress Still Limits Health Research On Gun Violence
by Alison Kodjak
Updated December 8, 20156:48 PM ET
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/12/08/458952821/congress-still-limits-health-research-on-gun-violence
“Krieger wants to see the same type of data on deaths that involve law enforcement. “We have an official mystery in the United States as to the number of people who are killed by the police,” she says.
“Police departments sometimes resist reporting the data to the Justice Department, so official information is spotty. “Why are these only being treated as police data?” Krieger asks. “These are mortality records. We in public health count dead people. It’s one of the things we do. And we count them in order to understand how to prevent preventable deaths.”
“Krieger says that for now the best source of information on gun deaths is a website created by the British newspaper The Guardian. “It’s shocking that we in the U.S. have to turn to a U.K. newspaper’s website to get timely reporting about who is being killed by the police. We have better a public health system than that.””