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| WELL, SOME MORE THAN OTHRS |
Three years ago the Illinois News Broadcasters Association reported that it had written Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez Monday that it “strongly protests” efforts by Alvarez to force Northwestern University’s Innocence Project to give up notes, off-the-record interviews, grades and even e-mails related to the project.
“The students are working as investigative journalists,” said INBA President Melissa Hahn at the time, who added they clearly should be covered under the Illinois Reporter’s Privilege Act, which offers a broad definition of reporters, news mediums and sources.
“Journalism is too important to our society to be invaded and inspected by law enforcement and prosecutors,” she wrote in the letter to Alvarez. “So the act should apply to these students.”
Three months ago Rachael Perrotta, a member of the Campaign to Free the NATO 5, asked. "Why has Alvarez re-indicted economic justice activists, such as Danny Johnson, on trumped up charges while the police officer who killed Rekia Boyd is still free? Why is Alvarez blowing so much public money on NATO-related court cases, when she has yet to pursue internal prosecutions related to the Jon Burge torture cases?" Another member of the group, Pat Hunt, added, "According to official statics cited by the People's Hearing on Police Violence, from 2009 to 2011, there have been 55 deaths committed by the Chicago Police Department. 94% of these deaths are non-white. It's easy for Alvarez and the CPD to pat themselves on the back for brutalizing peaceful protestors, but when it comes to confronting the structural racism of Chicago law enforcement they are silent and useless."
Or why did Ms. Alvarez push for the conviction of Sebastian Senakiewicz, who is now in boot camp for a crime that didn't really happen. Senakiewicz, as Freedom Watch reports, "... never made a bomb. He was never found with any explosive-making materials; authorities thoroughly searched his house. The Polish immigrant did, however, tell a boastful lie that has landed him a stint at boot camp. Just days before the Chicago NATO summit last May, Senakiewicz drunkenly told undercover agents that he had two homemade explosives hidden in his Chicago residence in a hollowed-out Harry Potter book. A search of his home found the bombs to be as fictitious as the boy wizard — there weren’t even any Harry Potter books at the address. However, did I mention the twenty four year old is a described as an anarchist.
One of Senakiewicz’ attorneys, Jeff Frank, criticized Cook County’s treatment of his client (known to friends as “Sabi”). “Honestly, how serious was this case? Does this rise to the level of what this statute was designed for? No. Sabi is guilty of imprudent language. That’s hardly grounds to extract a guilty plea for a serious felony, but that’s how Ms. Alvarez has chosen to spend the taxpayers resources,” he said.
In November, African-American elected officials launched a short-lived effort to derail Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’ re-election. The Sun Times reported Ald. Howard Brookins was "...unhappy with Alvarez for targeting Northwestern University journalism students; for failing to convict a police officer for drunk driving in a crash that killed two people; and for handing off an investigation of how her office handled a case involving former Mayor Richard Daley’s nephew. And he accused her of being unresponsive to African-American elected officials."
Other committeemen joining him echoed those complaints.
You get the drift. I could go on, but it would get old and it is getting late.
Fast forward to today and the Prosecutor is still busy persecuting everyone but the police.
The following is from ENews Park Forest.
Victims Of Police Crimes Demand That Alvarez Either Make Radical Changes In Her Department Or Resign
CHICAGO--(ENEWSPF)--December 12, 2012. Victims of crimes committed by Chicago Police, and their family members, 27 in all, have demanded that Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez either adopt major reforms to her department of resign. In an open letter to Alvarez they cite 15 instances of cases of police crimes, including murder, torture, and the refusal of Alvarez to acknowledge serious problems in her office.
They will deliver an “an open letter charging State's Attorney Anita Alvarez with being a persecutor of the people instead of a prosecutor for the people” to her office at 69 W. Washington, Suite 3200, today at 3:00 pm.
The measures urged by the letter’s signers include that her office investigate and prosecute the police officers who murdered Flint Farmer, Rekia Boyd, Dakota Bright, and many other people and that she drop all opposition to evidentiary hearings for all people who were convicted on the basis of confessions or testimony extracted by police through torture.
“If you are unwilling to implement these proposals, we urge you to resign and call for a special election for a new State's Attorney,” the signers say.
The letter was put together by the Organizing Committee to Stop Police Crimes of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. The complete letter is follows.
Anita Alvarez
Cook County State’s Attorney
69 W. Washington Suite 3200
Chicago IL 60602-3174
December 12, 2012
We, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and our task force, designated the Organizing Committee to Stop Police Crimes, in this open letter and/or communiqué to the Cook County State's Attorney do hereby make the following charges and demands:
We Charge That:
1. You were elected to be the peoples prosecutor but you have earned a reputation as "prosecutor and persecutor of the people," instead of doing the job you are sworn to perform as the prosecutor on behalf of the people. You have zealously harassed, persecuted and prosecuted African American and Latino men and women and innocent peace activists. Yet you have done nothing to bring to justice the Chicago Police executioners of innocent Black men and women and have rebuffed their families.
2. You appeared on national television (“60 Minutes,” December 9, 2012, http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50136707n) and proclaimed that men who have been exonerated of heinous crimes are still guilty in your opinion, even though you personally admit your office did not examine the evidence. You have spun most outrageous theories of how “it could happen” that those proven innocent could still be guilty.
3. You have done nothing to bring to justice the murderer of Rekia Boyd, an off-duty police officer Dante Servin. Boyd was an innocent bystander and was killed on March 22, 2012 when Servin shot at Antonio Cross, who was also unarmed and innocent of any wrongdoing.
4. You have done nothing to bring to justice Police Officer Gildardo Sierra, the murderer of Flint Farmer. Sierra was video recorded shooting the unarmed Farmer three times in the back as he lay face down and wounded on the ground. You have told news media the FBI is looking into the case; why aren’t you? Murder is a state crime.
5. You have done nothing to prosecute the police who killed Dakota Bright, Marquise Sampson, and countless other young African Americans.
6. You twice prosecuted and then imprisoned former police officer Howard Morgan, whom police tried to kill shooting him 28 times, for attempted murder, when the only material non-police evidence clearly established he was a victim of attempted murder by the police and a jury found that he had not fired a gun at anyone.
7. You have done nothing to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the Area Two Lockup "suicides" of Develt Bradford and Melvin Woods shortly after midnight, when the constant video surveillance cameras were mysteriously turned off.
8. You resisted prosecuting Richard J. Vanecko in the 2004 murder of David Koschman and participated in the cover-up of the crime because Vanecko was a nephew of your former boss, Richard M. Daley.
9. You have done nothing to prosecute the detectives who brutally beat Greg Malandrucco and Matthew Clark almost three years ago and the other officers who attempted to cover up the assault. You have refused to release the names of these officers or their duty status.
10. You have tolerated and encouraged the use of police agents provocateur who fomented violence and sought to entrap 5 innocent activists protesting the NATO military organization in Chicago last summer.
11. You have tolerated and even cooperated with reckless endangerment of youth when police have colluded with known criminal elements. Police car videos have documented that police pick up and drop off young Black men in neighborhoods of rival gangs, deliberately placing their lives in danger. You have not investigated these links between some police officers and organized criminal elements that terrorize Black and Latino communities.
12. You have done nothing to begin to unwind the convictions of over 100 men who were tortured by Chicago Police into making false confessions, seeking their release from prison and their exoneration.
13. You have prosecuted Chris Drew and Tiawanda Moore for recording public activities of police officers, and when the law was declared unconstitutional by the U. S. District Court you appealed all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court, which repudiated you.
14. You have unquestioningly prosecuted and defended the conviction of Black and Latino men and women arrested and framed up by corrupt police for serious crimes using perjured testimony and confessions you knew to be false and at variance with known facts and material evidence,
15. You continue a decades long tradition of cover-up of racism, sexism, and corruption in your office going back to the tenure of Richard M. Daley as State's Attorney starting in 1981.
We Demand That You:
1. Investigate and prosecute the police officers who murdered Flint Farmer, Rekia Boyd, Dakota Bright, and many other people.
2. Release Brian Jacob Church, Jared Chase, Brent Betterly, and Mark Neiweem on Personal recognizance bonds and drop their prosecution. Immediately vacate the sentence on Sebastian 'Sabi' Senakiewicz and release him. The terrorism charges against these men, the NATO 5, are absurd and are part of an FBI-local police conspiracy to suppress legal protests against U. S. foreign and military policy.
3. Drop all opposition to evidentiary hearings for all people who were convicted on the basis of confessions or testimony repudiated at trial claiming they were made only in response to tortured and coercion.
4. Create an independent "conviction integrity unit" to re-open all cases in which police officers associated with convicted torture ring leader Jon Burge were involved.
5. Put your political influence and weight behind the demand that the State Legislature restore and expand funding for the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission.
If you are unwilling to implement these proposals, we urge you to resign and call for a special election for a new State's Attorney.
We look forward to hearing your response.
Sincerely yours,
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