Last March, LG was arrested for Possession of a Controlled Substance with Intent to Deliver. Chicago Police Officers detained Mr. G in front of a friend’s house on the west side of the city. Mr. G asked the police officers why he was being arrested and they replied “you know what you did.”
We were able to get LG out on bail and began our usual preparations. We subpoenaed the police reports and went to the scene of the alleged offense. We took some photos and measurements. The official police documents claimed that Mr. G was “walking back and forth on Augusta Ave. acting suspiciously”. When he was approached for a field interview he supposedly fled. While running, the suspect pitched a large amount of narcotics onto a garage roof. The pursuing officers recovered the drugs and radioed out a description of the offender. All units began to search the area. The report said that Mr. G. was detained after being spotted 2 blocks away from where the suspect ran.
As usual, it became clear that something was amiss. The description of the area in the police reports didn’t match the actual scene. The officer failed to indicate in her report that Mr. G. was first observed more than an hour after the offender’s description was originally broadcast. We knew this because we had the actual dispatch recordings. She also failed to indicate that the original suspect was wearing a white cap at the time he was first observed. Our pre-trial investigation uncovered all this and more.
Luckily for Mr. G, the truth came out at trial. Although the officer testified that she was SURE that Mr. G. was the person she observed that night, the court found that there was a reasonable doubt. FINDING OF NOT GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS
