Cops under fire for posing with antler-wearing crackhead

Amuse us!
Post Reply
Reinhard

Cops under fire for posing with antler-wearing crackhead

Post by Reinhard » Wed May 27, 2015 4:36 pm

Image
Former Chicago cops Timothy McDermott and Jerome Finnigan pose with a drug suspect

Two disgraced Chicago cops posed like hunters next to a suspect dressed in antlers in a shocking photograph.

Former officers Timothy McDermott and Jerome Finnigan held rifles over a man as though celebrating an animal capture, according to the image obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times. Finnigan held the unidentified man's head as his eyes rolled backwards and his tongue stuck out.

Cook County Judge Thomas Allen unsealed the picture in March, more than a decade after it was snapped in a West Side police station sometime between 1999 and 2003, the paper reported Wednesday.
The picture led the police board to fire McDermott in a vote just last year, after the city handed the photo over to federal investigators in 2013.
"Appearing to treat an African-American man not as a human being but as a hunted animal is disgraceful and shocks the conscience," the board said.

Finnigan has been off the force since he was indicted of leading a ring of cops in stealing from drug suspects in 2006. He pleaded guilty to hiring a hit man to kill a fellow officer in 2011. Months later, Finnigan was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his crimes.

The picture was taken after Finnigan and McDermott arrested the pictured man for possessing "20 bags of weed," Finnigan told federal investigators. The man gave the detectives the rifles for the "spur of the moment" picture, Finnigan said.

The detectives let the man go without arresting him because he did not have a serious criminal record, a law enforcement source told the Sun-Times.
Internal Affairs said it could not identify the man in the picture, nor who served as the photographer. The Sun-Times could not find out whether the pictured man was coerced or not.
In an interview with an Internal Affairs officer in June 2013, McDermott said Finnigan called him over for the photo, according to court records.

"I am embarrassed by my participation in this photograph," McDermott said. "I made a mistake as a young, impressionable police officer who was trying to fit in."
The picture was unsealed as McDermott is appealing the board's decision to fire him in court. He has been working as a truck driver.
Attorneys for the police department and McDermott had asked to keep the photo under wraps to protect the man's identity, they said. Allen denied their request.

Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said the picture "is disgusting, and the despicable actions of these two former officers have no place in our police department or in our society."
"I will not tolerate this kind of behavior, and that is why neither of these officers work for CPD today. I fired one of the officers and would have fired the other if he hadn't already been fired by the time I found out about the picture."
Image
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel
Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the Sun-Times that the picture "does not represent the values of the city." He said he plans to shake up the police board, of which four members out of nine voted to retain McDermott.
"Good riddance," Emanuel said of McDermott's dismissal. "You don't belong in the police department. Our whole idea of the police department is to serve and protect."

McDermott and Finnigan had worked together since 1999 in the department's Special Operations Section. It which was disbanded in 2007, when Finnigan and others were convicted in a scandal that rocked the police department.
During his career, McDermott earned 74 department awards and was also accused of misconduct in four federal lawsuits, the paper reported.

In one case, McDermott and other officers were sued allegedly planting a gun on a man, Courthouse News reported in 2013.
In 2010, an exonerated woman claimed in a different lawsuit that McDermott and other cops arrested her without probable cause and then lied about the search.
The police department's reputation has been marred by recent accusations of police misconduct and corruption.
The city issued $5.5 million in reparations to victims allegedly tortured by former Commander Jon Burge and his associates this month.

In February, the Guardian reported that the department runs a "black site" where they detain people illegally and abuse them.
The same month, two officers filed a lawsuit, claiming the department fostered corruption with a code of silence, NBC Chicago reported.

At McDermott's police board hearing in August, a number of officers stuck up for McDermott, the stepson of an influential former deputy superintendent, Thomas Byrne.
McDermott is "a very hard-working policeman, the type of policeman I wanted working for us and his character was impeccable," former superintendent Phil Cline said at the time.

McDermott's attorney argued the man in the antlers may have posed voluntarily.

"What's to say this individual wasn't performing at a Christmas pageant in the district and was dressed as a reindeer and had taken the reindeer suit off?" Daniel Herbert told the board. "I don't mean to make preposterous arguments, but the charges in this case, they warrant that."
But McDermott deserved to be fired for the "degrading and humiliating" picture that discredited the department, said Patrick Polk. an attorney for the city.
"Our residents deserve better than this, as do the thousands of good men and women in this department," McCarthy said.


http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.2237326

Post Reply