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Vol. 79/No. 36 October 12, 2015
Fire Chicago cop who killed
Rekia Boyd, protesters say
BY JOHN HAWKINS
CHICAGO — For the fifth time in as many months, protesters gathered
outside police headquarters here where the Chicago Police Board was
meeting Sept. 17 to demand the firing of Dante Servin, the police
detective who shot and killed 22-year-old Rekia Boyd in March 2012.
Servin, who was off duty, got into a verbal altercation with a group of
youths near his home and one of the young men allegedly walked toward
the detective’s vehicle holding a cellphone. Servin pulled his gun and
fired five shots, killing Boyd.
Servin was stripped of his police powers in November 2013 and charged
with involuntary manslaughter, reckless discharge of a firearm and
reckless conduct. However, he walked out of the courtroom a free man
April 20 after Associate Judge Dennis Porter dismissed the charges.
The day before the demonstration the City of Chicago Independent Police
Review Authority, established in 2007 to investigate allegations of
police misconduct, recommended that Servin be fired.
Some 100 demonstrators cheered as Angela Helton, Boyd’s mother; Martinez
Sutton, Boyd’s brother; and other members of her family made their way
through the crowd to attend the meeting. While the majority of
protesters were African-American a significant number were Latino, Asian
or Caucasian. More than 20 fast-food workers wearing “Fight for 15”
T-shirts joined the protest.
“I’m here to support Rekia Boyd’s family,” Adriana Sanchez, a Fight for
$15 activist and worker at McDonald’s in downtown Chicago, told the
Militant. “The whole system of policing does not treat working people
with respect,” she said, describing her own experiences with cop
harassment.
“I came out today to help make sure Servin gets fired,” said Dorothy
Holmes. Her son Ronald “Ronnieman” Johnson was gunned down by a Chicago
cop last October. “I also want to make people aware of what happened to
my son and demand that the Chicago Police Department release the
dash-cam video of the shooting, which shows he was shot in the back.”
For the past five months three organizations of mostly African-American
youth involved in the fight against police brutality here — Black Lives
Matter Chicago, Black Youth Project 100 Chicago chapter, and We Charge
Genocide — have organized demonstrations inside and outside Chicago
Police Board meetings to demand the firing of Servin and to draw
attention to police killings of Black women.
Scott Ando, chief administrator of the Independent Police Review
Authority, told the board there were three reasons to fire Servin — for
firing his weapon into a crowd in violation of the Police Department’s
deadly force guidelines, for failing to qualify with the weapon he was
carrying and using at the time, and for making contradictory statements
during the police investigation.
Protesters demand cop be fired
When the floor was opened to the public, several people demanded Servin
be fired, among them Mark Clements, a leader of the successful fight to
prosecute and convict former police commander Jon Burge, who had
organized a gang of cops who engaged in torture and frame-ups on
Chicago’s South and West sides in the 1970s and ’80s. Tortured into
confessing to a crime he did not commit, Clements spent 28 years behind
bars.
“It’s not only Servin who should be fired,” Clements told the board.
“There are still more than 100 people, mostly African-American men, who
were framed for crimes they did not commit, based on false confessions
elicited through torture by Burge and his subordinates. And some of
those subordinates, like detectives Kenneth Boudreau and James O’Brien,
are still on the police force.”
“I live in the Douglas Park neighborhood four blocks from where Dante
Servin lives,” said Frank Bergh, a Caucasian who is a member of Standing
Up for Racial Justice. “I’m here to ask you to fire him. I don’t feel
safe as long as someone like Servin remains on the force.”
“I’m kind of uneasy about [Police Superintendent Garry] McCarthy making
the right decision,” said Sutton. “He said Servin should never have been
charged, that the shooting was justified. That’s been one of the hardest
things to live with — that this public official is saying that it’s
right for my sister to have died.
“Not only Servin should be fired. The cops who killed Ronald Johnson,
Rashad McIntosh, Laquan McDonald and Dakota Bright need to go too,”
Sutton said, referring to other victims of police brutality here.
“This is not just a Black thing. It’s not just Black people who are
concerned about this,” Sutton told the board. “Look at who’s here. This
is about all of us.”
At a rally outside, Sutton thanked all present for their support. “When
we get tired and overwhelmed,” he said, “you all pick us up. When I feel
like I’m on empty, you are my fuel.”
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