Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Wednesday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

“The attorneys for the families of two men suing an ex-Chicago cop and the City of Chicago are asking for severe legal sanctions after city attorneys produced a critical disciplinary report against the former cop well into the trial and years after it was requested,” the Sun-Times reports.
Here we go again. Just nine days ago:

“A federal judge has ordered the city of Chicago to pay $62,500 for withholding records in a wrongful death lawsuit, marking the eighth time Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration has been sanctioned for failing to turn over potential evidence in a police misconduct case,” the Tribune reports.
“The city agreed to the amount this month after U.S. District Judge Joan Gottschall upheld an earlier ruling that the city acted in ‘bad faith’ when it ignored a court order and made little effort to provide documents to the lawyer for the family of Divonte Young, 20, who was shot and killed by an officer five years ago.”


Back to the current-day Sun-Times:
“Attorneys for the men’s families insist the report ‘establishes the Code of Silence is alive and well in the Chicago Police Department and has been since the infancy of [the defendant’s] employment as a police officer in 1992.’ A spokesman for the city’s law department did not immediately comment, but city attorneys have apparently said the report fell through the cracks during a transition to a new computer system.
“‘This is like, the damning report, and it comes up out of nowhere,’ U.S. District Judge Virginia Kendall said Tuesday. ‘It’s really a mess.'”
Again.
“The city’s extremely late turnover of the disciplinary records raises serious questions about how the trial can proceed. It also provides another example of city attorneys failing to provide records to opposing attorneys in police misconduct cases – something that’s the city has been criticized or sanctioned for by judges.”
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“Kendall said she’ll instruct the jury that they can ‘make the inference that the city intentionally withheld’ all three documents do to a code of silence,” the Tribune reports.
Certainly, then, we can make that inference too.
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The rest of the case doesn’t look good for the city or Chicago Police Department either.
“In reading through the file, Kendall said she was struck by the fact that Frugoli’s story about the incident changed over time, including sworn statements before the Police Board that she said were clearly ’embellished.’
“She noted that ‘cookie-cutter’ police reports documenting the incident appeared to be cleaned up to shield Frugoli and other officers from further allegations of wrongdoing. Among the alterations, she said, were edit marks inserting language that Frugoli was ‘escorted’ to the police station after his arrest, rather than the initial statements that he’d driven himself.”
I highly recommend you go read the rest if you haven’t been following this story.
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New on today’s Beachwood . . .
The End Of Elusion For PokerStars
How the online gaming company used the offshore world to cater to U.S. players.
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Russian Dopes
The ban on Russia from competing at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea is not unprecedented, but it is unique: it is directly linked to the country’s lack of sporting integrity.
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ChicagoGram


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ChicagoTube
The Future Of Mexican Food In Chicago.

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BeachBook
Taking A Second Look At The Learn-To-Code Craze.

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Media Organizations Support Jamie Kalven’s Fight To Protect His Sources In The Laquan McDonald Case.

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TweetWood
A sampling.


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For his upcoming campaign, in which he’s unopposed.


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The Beachwood Tronc Line: O’Rahma.

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Posted on December 6, 2017