Cook County State's Attorney Race a Referendum on Police Accountability
1. March 2016
PDF EDITION
Vol. 1 No. 2
CHICAGOREPORTER.COM
Anita Alvarez
and the ghost of
Laquan McDonald
The dashcam video of the teenager being
fatally shot is an image haunting the race
for Cook County State’s Attorney. Page 4
2. PUBLISHER’S NOTE
2 THE CHICAGO REPORTER | March 2016
As we caught the train re-
cently, a neighbor asked me,
“Whatever happened to that
police video?”
“Which police video?” I asked.
Yes, it’s come to this. There are
enough videos of police officers abus-
ing someone that you have to ask which
one. My neighbor wasn’t referring to the
Laquan McDonald video, which was re-
leased just before Thanksgiving, but one
that aired nearly a year ago.
The dashcam video of 17-year-old
McDonald being pumped with 16 bul-
lets and the subsequent cover-up of his
death by police officers brought Chicago
to a near standstill because of protests,
laid bare the depth of police corruption
and sent the brass packing. Yet to this
day, the two main targets of protesters
– Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and
Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Al-
varez – are standing their ground.
On March 15, the people will render
a verdict at the ballot box in the case
against Alvarez.
The race for state’s attorney is one of
the most-watched contests in the Dem-
ocratic primary election, writes Deborah
L. Shelton, the Reporter’s managing edi-
tor. For good reason. A wounded Alva-
rez has two challengers in the primary,
Kim Foxx and Donna More. The win-
ner on March 15 will likely determine
the winner in November. The public an-
ger over the McDonald case and that of
Rekia Boyd, an innocent young woman
who was shot in the back of the head
by an off-duty police officer, fuel their
campaigns, especially Foxx’s.
The race has become a referendum on
police accountability and why Alvarez
waited until the release of the McDonald
video to charge his killer, Officer Jason
Van Dyke, as well as how she botched the
prosecution of Dante Servin, who killed
Boyd. Given the difficulty of prosecut-
ing cops, Alvarez sought help from the
U.S. Attorney’s office, which delayed the
charges against Van Dyke. Many Chi-
cagoans are still seething over the fact
that the officers who corroborated Van
Dyke’s story that McDonald lunged at
him with a knife have not been pros-
ecuted. In the Boyd case, Alvarez says
she brought the charges she thought she
could prosecute.
The State’s Attorney’s race is being
watched beyond Cook County. Con-
tributors from across the country have
poured hundreds of thousands of dollars
into the contest. Prosecutors, the local
officials who can bring criminal charges,
are no longer getting a pass when they
fail to charge cops who abuse the badge.
Prosecutors from Cleveland to New York
City are in the crosshairs of civil rights
activists organizing to end police vio-
lence. And if Alvarez loses, her defeat
could be a warning to other prosecutors
who are entangled in their own police
scandals.
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s race is being watched across
the country. The Democratic primary will likely decide the winner
in the contest. By Susan Smith Richardson
For Alvarez, a verdict
at the ballot box
Susan Smith Richardson,
Editor & Publisher
Opinions expressed by the
editor and publisher are her own.
We welcome emails at
tcr@chicagoreporter.com or
letters at 111 W. Jackson Blvd.,
Suite 820, Chicago, IL, 60604.
Please include your name and a
phone number.
3. CHICAGOREPORTER.COM | THE CHICAGO REPORTER 3
Charlene Carruthers, national di-
rector of the Black Youth Project 100,
which has pressed for police account-
ability in the deaths of Boyd and Mc-
Donald, told Shelton:“It really goes back
to the amount of power this office holds
over all of our lives. We have a very clear
self-interest to hold whoever takes on
the state’s attorney role accountable to
all of us.”
Prosecutors have cozy relationships
with law enforcement. Part of it is how
cases are made. They rely on police offi-
cers to investigate cases. But when a po-
lice officer is seen on video shooting a
17- year- old as the teen walks away and
prosecutors are slow to press charges,
public faith in the system is justifiably
shaken.
Activists in Chicago and nationwide
are smart enough to know that the po-
lice and City Hall aren’t the only insti-
tutions at fault. The State’s Attorney’s
office is now a target of their efforts for
change. The struggle has come to the
ballot box.
Frank Chapman, a longtime activist
for increased civilian oversight of the
Police Department, told Shelton the
mistrust between the public and the
police, City Hall and Alvarez’s office is
palpable.
“The mood is total mistrust and dis-
gust with the present system, total dis-
trust of the police. Disgust with Rahm
Emanuel because he has not shown any
leadership on this issue. Total disgust
with Anita Alvarez,” said Chapman, ed-
ucation director and field organizer for
the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and
Political Repression.
“They don’t want to see a changing of
chairs on the Titanic. They want to see
new prosecutors, new judges, a new su-
perintendent of police, new members of
the Independent Police Review Author-
ity, new members of the Police Board.
They want system change and … to have
a voice, because it’s clear to them that
right now they do not have a voice.”
On March 15, voters will decide Al-
varez’s fate.
Protesters stage a sit-in in response to police violence in front of Trump Tower on November 25, 2015. Photo by Max Herman
“The mood is
total mistrust and
disgust with the
present system,
total distrust of
the police. Disgust
with Rahm Emanuel
because he has
not shown any
leadership on this
issue. Total disgust
with Anita Alvarez.”
—Frank Chapman, activist
n
4. COVER STORY Anita Alvarez and the ghost of Laquan McDonald
4 THE CHICAGO REPORTER | March 2016
A protest sign questions how Cook County State’s
Attorney Anita Alvarez handled the prosecution
of the police officer who killed teenager Laquan
McDonald. Photo by Stacey Rupolo.
5. CHICAGOREPORTER.COM | THE CHICAGO REPORTER 5
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s
race could be a referendum on police
accountability that sends a message to
prosecutors across the nation. On March
15, incumbent Anita Alvarez faces the fight
of her career as two challengers tap into
public anger over how her office handles
officer-involved shootings.
By Deborah L. Shelton
The
people
v. Anita
Alvarez
6. 6 THE CHICAGO REPORTER | March 2016
M
artinez Sutton flipped on the TV after a morning
bike ride. He was drawn to breaking news about a
double shooting near Chicago’s Douglas Park. One
of the victims was a 22-year-old woman, the same age as his
younger sister.
He dialed her cell phone and, when she didn’t pick up, left
a message: “Hey, baby girl, hit me up. Let me know you’re OK,
all right? Love you, bye.”
Rekia Boyd never returned the call.
About 90 minutes later, two detectives knocked on the
front door of the family’s modest brick home in south subur-
ban Dolton and handed Sutton the phone number of Mt. Sinai
Hospital’s emergency room. Boyd—the born jokester, life of
the party, self-described godmother to everybody’s children—
was the female shooting victim in the news reports blaring
from the family’s TV. She had been shot once in the back of
her head.
Sutton waited a few minutes to call his mother’s cell
phone, knowing she was driving in rush-hour traffic. When he
reached her, he blurted out the horrific news: Rekia had been
shot in the head and was hospitalized at Mt. Sinai. He would
call back when he got to the hospital. Angela Helton rushed to
the ER not knowing if her daughter was alive.
When Helton was allowed to approach Rekia’s bed, she
could see it was hopeless.
“I just turned and walked out of the room,” she said, her
voice barely above a whisper. “She was gone.” The next day,
Helton felt compelled to visit the shooting scene—an alley
near the shooter’s home. She saw her daughter’s brain tissue
splattered on the ground next to her lip gloss.
The shooter was Dante Servin, an off-duty police detec-
tive. Servin fatally shot Boyd when he fired into a crowd five
times over his left shoulder from inside his Mercedes sedan.
Almost four years later, he still is employed by the Chicago
Police Department.
C
ook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez is the elect-
ed official responsible for prosecuting police-miscon-
duct cases. Alvarez came under fire for waiting almost
two years to charge Servin, the first Chicago cop in almost
20 years to be prosecuted for the fatal shooting of a civilian.
And when she did, a judge threw the case out, saying she’d
mishandled it. More recently, Alvarez was criticized for wait-
ing 13 months to charge the police officer who killed teenager
Laquan McDonald.
These cases haunt her reelection campaign as she tries for
a third term as head of the second-largest prosecutor’s office
in the country.
Since the release of a dashcam video in November showing
an officer pumping 16 bullets into McDonald, protests against
police violence have rocked Chicago. Mayor Rahm Emanuel
fired the police chief; the head of the agency that investi-
Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez announces that Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke will be charged with first degree murder in the
shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald during a news conference at Cook County Circuit Court on Nov. 24. Photo by Max Herman.
COVER STORY Anita Alvarez and the ghost of Laquan McDonald
7. gates the worst cases of police misconduct has resigned; and
a federal civil-rights investigation of the Chicago PD has been
launched. Activists are calling on Emanuel to resign, but a
special anger is reserved for Alvarez, who alone has the power
to prosecute police officers.
On March 15, the public will decide her fate: Alvarez is be-
ing challenged by former prosecutors Kimberly Foxx and Don-
na More in the Democratic primary.
A defeat for Alvarez, the incumbent, could be a warning to
prosecutors across the country that they too will be held ac-
countable for police violence.
“It really goes back to the amount of power this office holds
over all of our lives,” said Charlene Carruthers, national direc-
tor of the Black Youth Project 100, which has pressed for po-
lice accountability in the deaths of Boyd and McDonald. “We
have a very clear self-interest to hold whoever takes on the
state’s attorney role accountable to all of us.”
Many young African-American activists see the police
shootings of black youth as their generation’s lynchings—an-
other form of state-sanctioned violence. Tensions between
African Americans and the police go back decades. The shoot-
ings occur almost exclusively in Chicago’s poor neighbor-
hoods and communities of color.
According to an unpublished study of 259 officer-involved
shootings in Chicago between 2006 and 2014, 95 percent
of the victims were people of color. While less than a third
of Chicago’s population is black, 81 percent of victims were
African Americans, according to the study by Georgia State
University law professor Nirej Sekhon, based on data from
the Independent Police Review Authority, which investigates
police shootings. The study found that almost 90 percent of
the shootings took place in census tracts where minorities
outnumbered whites. Of those, 73 percent occurred in tracts
where blacks made up at least 90 percent of the population.
The tracts in which the shootings took place are among the
poorest in the city.
Last year, Chicago became the first city in the United States
to establish a $5.5 million reparations fund to compensate
victims of police torture. Over 100 men, mostly black, were
beaten, burned, suffocated, and electrocuted into making false
confessions by former police commander Jon Burge and the
officers under his command.
More recently, Chicago police are alleged to have taken sus-
pects to a secret interrogation center where they were treated
harshly without being charged with crimes. The journalist
who uncovered the center referred to it as a “black site” akin
to American military interrogation sites around the world.
Simmering discontent boiled over this winter, with the
release of the police dashcam video capturing the killing of
17-year-old McDonald. Officer Jason Van Dyke was charged
with first-degree murder in November, the same day the
video was released. McDonald is seen veering away from of-
ficers before dropping to the street, his lifeless body still being
pumped with bullets. The graphic images contrasted sharply
with police claims that McDonald lunged at Van Dyke with a
knife and continued to advance even after he was shot.
And Rekia Boyd? Boyd had been socializing with friends
in the park when she and her companion, Antonio Cross, and
two others decided to head to a nearby store to get cigarettes
and snacks. They were walking down an alley when they en-
countered an off-duty Servin, driving the wrong way. Servin
told investigators he fired at the group after quarreling with
Cross about noise in the park; thinking Cross had a gun, he in-
sisted, he took aim. Servin’s firearm was unregistered. Cross,
who was shot alongside his friend Rekia, was unarmed; his cell
phone was later recovered at the scene.
Prosecutor Alvarez’s office then charged Cross with aggra-
vated assault, naming the officer as the victim. Those charg-
es were later dismissed without explanation. Dante Servin
walked away a free man.
“You have a straight line all the way through, for like 45
years, of state’s attorneys who were enforcers of the police
culture—who in every instance where the police were put on
the carpet for something, they defended the police,” said Flint
Taylor, whose People’s Law Office specializes in civil rights,
police violence, and death-penalty cases.
He pointed to the police torture that took place for years
under Jon Burge. Neither Burge nor the officers under his
command faced criminal charges, although Burge served four
and a half years in federal prison for lying about it.
“You could not have the police code of silence, you could
not have that kind of racist police activity, if the state’s attor-
neys didn’t facilitate that,” Taylor said.
The Cook County State’s Attorney oversees one of the
largest prosecutor offices in the nation, second only to Los
Angeles County. It employs more than 1,500 personnel,
including almost 900 attorneys, and has a broad scope of
responsibility, including:
ƒƒ Prosecuting all misdemeanor and felony crimes
committed in Cook County
ƒƒ Serving as legal counsel for Cook County government, its
officeholders and employees
ƒƒ Handling cases involving juveniles and civil actions
against parents and guardians who abuse or neglect their
children
ƒƒ Providing a full range of legal services for all county
agencies, and representing the county’s interests in
actions brought to collect monies owed for taxes and fees
ƒƒ Handling complex criminal and public corruption
cases, including auto theft, gang crimes, government
and financial crimes, organized crime, cold cases and
professional standards
ƒƒ Initiating civil and criminal lawsuits to protect individuals
and the general public interest, including consumer fraud
and crimes against seniors and people with disabilities
ƒƒ Being in charge of child support enforcement, labor and
employment, torts and civil rights, industrial claims,
revenue recovery, municipal litigation, transactions,
health law and real estate taxation
ƒƒ Employing more than 120 sworn officers who provide
investigative and logistical support in the preparation
and presentation of cases and also assist local law
enforcement efforts
ƒƒ Providing paralegals, law clerks, law librarians and court
reporters
ƒƒ Overseeing narcotics courtrooms and drug treatment
programs
ƒƒ Managing victim assistance and community justice
programs
Duties of the Cook County
State’s Attorney at a glance
CHICAGOREPORTER.COM | THE CHICAGO REPORTER 7
8. COVER STORY Anita Alvarez and the ghost of Laquan McDonald
8 THE CHICAGO REPORTER | March 2016
A
nita Alvarez grew up in Pilsen, a largely Mexican-
American neighborhood in Chicago. Neither of her
parents, a waiter and a seamstress, had a high-school
education. Alvarez cites their emphasis on education and her
own Type A personality for fueling her rise. Her initial ca-
reer goal was to become a probation officer or a cop. Later she
would aim even higher: She made history when she was elect-
ed state’s attorney in 2008, the first female and first Hispanic
person to hold the office.
Alvarez’s trim figure casts a big shadow. Projecting author-
ity, she has a no-nonsense style. On the campaign stump, she
often offers detailed, rambling explanations that can come off
as condescending.
“I’m in a position where, no matter what decision I make,
someone will be unhappy. That’s the nature of the job,”Alvarez
said in a phone interview. But she counts among her successes
creating the county’s first felony diversion prosecution pro-
gram for nonviolent offenders in 2011; expanding the number
of alternative prosecution programs from eight to more than
30; and drafting the Illinois Street Gang RICO Act, passed into
law in 2012.
“She’s responsible for creating some very effective and
efficient…pretrial diversion programs [as well as] a convic-
tion-integrity unit,” said Bob Clifford, one of Alvarez’s big-
gest donors, whose law firm specializes in personal-injury and
medical-malpractice cases. “She’s been a tireless advocate for
effective gun legislation, and she’s the only candidate prepared
to address the epidemic of violent gun crime in Cook County.”
Alvarez says “keeping all of our communities safe” is her
No. 1 priority, which includes going after the perpetrators of
violent crime, particularly gun crime. “I speak on behalf of
people who have been traumatized, [crime] victims and peo-
ple who have lost a family member [to violence]—that’s who
I’m there for,” she said.
But for victims of gun violence perpetrated by police, the
response seems to have been different. “Her office has taken
positions that are consistently contrary to the circumstances
of [the] poor and people of color,” says Jesús “Chuy” Garcia, a
Cook County commissioner and former candidate for may-
or. About a week after the McDonald video came out, Garcia
called on Alvarez to step down. Six of the city’s Latino alder-
man joined in his call for Alvarez’s removal. In February, Garcia
endorsed Foxx. The City Council’s Black Caucus also blasted
Alvarez, saying in a statement that“people of color in Chicago
know that there is more than one Laquan McDonald. While
the facts may differ from case to case, there are many whose
rights have been violated because their lives were deemed to
not matter.”
After the video was released, hundreds of marchers spilled
into the streets, shutting down parts of downtown. Alvarez’s
name began to appear on protest signs and T-shirts.
Some see parallels between Alvarez and former state’s at-
torney Edward Hanrahan. The rising star saw his promising
political career crash after Fred Hampton and Mark Clark died
in a hail of bullets during a 1969 raid he oversaw on Black Pan-
ther Party headquarters. Hanrahan was defeated in his next
election in 1972 after losing the support of black voters.
“You’ve got a state’s attorney who has enraged substantial
portions of the community, particularly in the black areas, but
all over,” said Don Rose, who ran political campaigns in the
After the resignation of Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy in December, protesters call for the removal of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook
County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. Photo by Stacey Rupolo.
9. CHICAGOREPORTER.COM | THE CHICAGO REPORTER 9
1960s and ’70s, mostly for independents. “It’s mainly based
on one episode, although there have been complaints about
her handling of a number of cases over the years.”
Like Hanrahan, Alvarez initially had the support of the
Cook County Democratic Party and then lost it. When she
first ran in 2008, Alvarez won the party’s endorsement. After
initially voting to take a neutral stance in the 2016 election,
the party reversed its decision in January to support Foxx.
In the past, Alvarez had the backing of powerful Chicago
Democrats Michael Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House of
Representatives and chairman of the Democratic Party of Il-
linois, and Alderman Ed Burke, known as the “dean” of the
Chicago City Council, who has held his office for almost five
decades. But neither camp has made an official endorsement
this time around.
“There have been almost no police convicted of malfea-
sance or abuse, although there are plenty of cases that lead us
to think there is police abuse,”said Dick Simpson, professor of
political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
M
embers of Boyd’s family say they were reassured in
meetings with Alvarez and assistant state’s attor-
neys assigned to the case that Servin would answer
for his actions in fatally shooting Rekia.
“They really had me believing they were on my side,” Hel-
ton said.
The family became suspicious when they arrived at the
courthouse in April to hear a routine motion in the case. They
took note of the extra police and security guards and the pres-
ence of police dogs for the first time. But nothing could pre-
pare them emotionally for the decision.
The Cook County judge threw out the charges against
Servin, four felony counts including involuntary manslaugh-
ter, reckless conduct, and reckless discharge of a firearm. The
state had not proved recklessness, the judge said: Servin had
acted with intent. Servin’s actions warranted a murder charge.
The state’s attorney, the judge said, had undercharged Dante
Servin. With this announcement, the courtroom erupted into
chaos. Enraged, Sutton cursed Servin and the judge and was
escorted by relatives out of the courtroom after being threat-
ened with arrest. Many people think Alvarez mischarged
Servin on purpose.
Alvarez said, “The charges I brought were charges I felt I
could prove.”
Boyd’s family feels betrayed and say they still don’t fully
understand what happened in court that day. It was a scandal-
ous miscarriage of justice, Helton says, and she blames Alvarez.
Her opinion of the state’s attorney today?
“You don’t want to know—you definitely don’t want to
know,” Helton said, shaking her head angrily, tears rolling
down her cheeks. “You don’t want to know. Believe me, you
don’t want to know.”
A
t a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day event held in a his-
toric black church, Alvarez told a multiracial crowd of
about 1,500, representing about 90 Chicago-area con-
gregations, that she was opposed to appointing a special pros-
ecutor to investigate police shootings. She was booed.
“Let us pray that God transforms your heart and bends
your mind toward justice,”the moderator, the Rev. Eddie Knox
Jr., said as he led a group prayer for a visibly angry Alvarez.
The event was sponsored by the Community Renewal Society,
the publisher of The Chicago Reporter.
Despite the obvious unhappiness with Alvarez’s tenure, her
challengers can’t count on riding a wave of discontent into
Anita Alvarez opposes the
appointment of a special
prosecutor to investigate officer-
involved shootings, except under
unusual circumstances.
“When it comes to a special prosecutor,
the law is very clear. There has to be a
legal conflict within the State’s Attorney’s office in order to
take the case away; so it’s not as easy as people think it is. I
have charged 96 police officers [for a range of crimes]. I’m
not afraid to charge police officers and I will continue to do
it. Any police officer who commits a crime should be held
accountable. I have been doing it and I will continue to do it
and there’s no need to bring in a special prosecutor.”
Kim Foxx supports the
appointment of a special
prosecutor to investigate all
officer-involved shootings.
“You have to have a close relationship
with the people who are bringing the
evidence forward because you’re work-
ing together to build a case. In a perfect
scenario… there’s a checks and balance to it. But the
relationship [between the police and the State’s Attorney’s
office] is still an intimate [one]. … Having an independent
prosecutor gives us the ability to have transparency around
the process, engenders trust of the system from the public
and takes the strain of the relationship out of your hands.”
Donna More opposes the
appointment of a special
prosecutor to investigate officer-
involved shootings and would
create a special unit within the
office to handle those cases.
“I believe in my independence to make
decisions about whether to charge or not to charge a police
officer because I am not beholden to anyone who is going
to suggest or tell me what I do. … You take a select number
of trained felony prosecutors, and say to them, I want
you to be in this unit. You’re not going back into a felony
courtroom, this is where you’re going to be. So you aren’t
going to have daily contact with police officers in terms of
working with them on your cases. … This group’s chain of
command is direct report to me, the state’s attorney.”
office. Both lack name recognition, and neither has run for of-
fice before. Between the end of August 2015 and the begin-
ning of February 2016, Alvarez raised over $700,000 for her
campaign. Foxx took in over $626,000, and More brought in
almost $500,000, half of which came out of her own pockets.
In an early February poll, Alvarez still held a slim lead, while
many voters remained undecided.
Kim Foxx, who would become the first African-American
state’s attorney if elected, has a backstory that is compelling
to many black voters. Raised by a single mother, she grew up
in the Cabrini-Green public-housing complex. Foxx describes
hiding in a bathtub as a child when shots rang out in her vio-
lent neighborhood. And she talks openly about being sexually
10. COVER STORY Anita Alvarez and the ghost of Laquan McDonald
10 THE CHICAGO REPORTER | March 2016
abused as a child and being homeless for a time. After earning
her law degree, she became a public guardian for minors in the
Cook County court system and spent 12 years as an assistant
Cook County state’s attorney.
Foxx said she left Alvarez’s office because “we were driving
policies that weren’t about justice. It was about convictions;
it was about easy wins.… The collateral effects of the victories
were causing more harm than good.” Foxx went to work as the
chief of staff for Cook County Board President Toni Preck-
winkle, one of Alvarez’s harshest critics.
Candidate Donna More, who is white, grew up in north sub-
urban Evanston, the home of Northwestern University. Now
the managing partner of the law firm Fox Rothschild’s Chicago
office, she has worked as an assistant Cook County state’s at-
torney, an assistant US attorney for the Northern District of
Illinois, and as general counsel to the Illinois Gaming Board.
“I believe you can use your position as a bully pulpit,” More
says—and, like Foxx, she has argued that the state’s attorney
could do more preventative work.
But the Democratic candidates still have to convince a
skeptical public that they care.
They faced off at a forum on the city’s largely black South
Side sponsored by the National Panhellenic Council of Chi-
cago, an organization of black fraternities and sororities repre-
senting a coveted demographic. Alvarez told the packed room
of 450 that she shared their outrage over McDonald’s violent
death but had legitimate reasons for delaying charges.“As I’ve
said, I have four children,” she told them.“I have a 17-year-old
son. I, too, was appalled at what I saw.” But her long, in-the-
weeds description of the obstacles to prosecuting police of-
ficers prompted the moderator to ask her to wrap it up.
Foxx countered that Alvarez would not have acted at all if
not for the video. “The frustration that we are hearing, and
that I am feeling,” Foxx continued, tapping her heart, “is
no matter how many explanations we get…if we know that
[any other citizen] was gonna be charged with murder, they
wouldn’t get another hour on the street.”
Voices rose in agreement. “Not a single one!” someone ex-
claimed.“Not a minute!”
I
n mid-January, about 100 people crowded into Casa Puer-
torriqueña, a community organization and social club in
Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, where about 20
percent of the residents are Puerto Rican. The group said they
stand in unity with African Americans and want to remind La-
tinos that their votes matter. A poster taped on a podium had
Alvarez’s name scrawled in bold black letters with a crimson
X slashed across it. A sign over a table in a corner announced:
Registro de Votantes. “We understand that we can’t just pro-
test and march and yell,” said Pastor Eddie Colon of Latinos
for Justice. “Because if we don’t come out and vote on March
15, nothing is going to change, and it’s going to be business as
usual on March 16.”
In recent weeks, activists have intensified their pressure on
Alvarez, disrupting campaign events and, in at least one case,
forcing her to leave.
While activists would like to see Alvarez ousted, they know
that simply removing her won’t end police violence. Car-
ruthers of BYP 100 is pushing for investigations of possible
cover-ups. “Anita Alvarez is part of a system that is set up to
State’s Attorney candidate Kim Foxx answers questions at the Faith in Action Assembly on Martin Luther King Day, while Anita Alvarez looks on.
Opposite page: Martinez Sutton speaks to the Chicago Police Board in November. Photos by Max Herman and Stacey Rupolo.
11. CHICAGOREPORTER.COM | THE CHICAGO REPORTER 11
favor the presumed innocence of police officers over the value
of the lives that they take,” Carruthers said.
Complicating cop prosecutions is the unshakeable fact that
no matter who becomes the state’s attorney, police and DAs
work in a close partnership. This relationship raises questions
about conflict of interest when an officer is under investiga-
tion. Some experts argue that police officers are usually af-
forded the benefit of doubt—something the average citizen
doesn’t get—and the bar for prosecution is higher.
That’s not to say a local prosecutor can never be fair, says
Craig Futterman, director of the Civil Rights and Police Ac-
countability Project of the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic at the Uni-
versity of Chicago. “But we have to start with acknowledging
the reality that there are real conflicts of interest when local
prosecutors are working as a team and rely almost exclusively
on the work and cooperation of the police to stay in office and
win cases.”
Prosecutors have to overcome jurors’ perception of cops as
the good guys, says University of Pittsburgh law professor Da-
vid A. Harris. Officers also have a legal right to use force while
carrying out their duties. Proving this force was excessive can
be a challenge, especially when officers claim to have acted in
self-defense.
“You put all that together with the inclination to shy away
from these cases because they are all on the same team,” Har-
ris adds,“and you can see why very few [charges] get brought.”
Christopher Whitt, associate professor in the department
of political science at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illi-
nois, said that now, though,“we’re seeing activists bringing up
the names of prosecutors and elected officials as opposed to
simply being angry. They are directing the anger, and directing
it in a very politically savvy way. I think that’s the way to get
changes in actual policies and practices.”
B
oyd’s family received a $4.5 million settlement from
the city in 2013 after bringing a civil lawsuit, but Hel-
ton would have preferred Dante Servin’s conviction for
what she calls an execution. She blames Alvarez and city offi-
cials for not holding anyone accountable.“They knew from the
beginning they weren’t going to charge [Servin] for a crime,”
the mother of six says. She’s convinced that the Chicago po-
lice tampered with evidence and attempted a cover-up. With
the charges against Servin dismissed, she hopes at the very
least that he’ll be fired.
Sutton, a master’s student who works part-time, attends
Chicago Police Board hearings and he urges the group to fire
Servin, often with tears streaming down his face. “The pain
in my heart is just overwhelming,” Sutton said as he sat next
to his grieving mother, at times wrapping his arm around her.
“I’m just looking for this officer to get his due. I just want to
see the justice system work.”
A
red headband pulls Helton’s long braids away from
her downcast face. Her matching hoodie displays her
daughter’s portrait on the front. In the photo, Boyd
wears an uncharacteristically somber expression. “They took
my life,” the lettering reads.“But not my voice.”
On the back, it says simply: “I am Rekia Boyd.”
Martinez wears a black T-shirt under his dark hoodie that
says the same thing, but his photo shows Rekia smiling so
hard her eyes are squinting. A cascade of orange autumn leaves
swirl around her. “That was her,” says Sutton, looking down
at the image on his chest. “You describe Rekia, that’s her—
she was always laughing like that.” The picture was etched on
Boyd’s black onyx gravestone. Helton has been unable to bring
herself to visit it.
As the fourth anniversary of Boyd’s death approaches on
March 21, Helton says her daughter cannot rest in peace while
Servin keeps his job and his freedom. “She’ll be at rest,” she
said,“when he goes to jail.”
— Maya Dukmasova contributed to this story
This article was produced in collaboration with The Nation, America’s
oldest weekly magazine.
“The pain in
my heart is just
overwhelming. I’m
just looking for
this officer to get
his due. I just want
to see the justice
system work.”
—Martinez Sutton
