By Steve Rhodes
The most ubiquitous headline in the wake of the Koschman report’s release on Tuesday seems to have been variations on the theme that “Daley, Family Did Not Try To Influence Koschman Case.”
At least in that last example, from the Tribune, the second paragraph noted that “[Special prosecutor Dan] Webb’s exhaustive examination of the April 2004 death of David Koschman found that the involvement of Daley’s nephew, Richard ‘R.J.’ Vanecko, colored the initial investigation and a later probe by Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors.”
And the third paragraph noted that “There was evidence of city officials closely monitoring the progress of the investigation even as Koschman lay comatose in a hospital and – seven years later – scrambling to exercise damage control when the Chicago Sun-Times started asking questions.”
In other words, what the report really shows is that the very reason the Koschman case was bungled almost beyond belief was because of R.J. Vanecko’s family – the Daleys.
“What’s very clear as you read this report is that no phone call needed to be made,” Koschman lawyer Locke Bowman told reporters after the report’s release. “Very early on, the Chicago Police Department, whether by intuition or by experience of the realities of life in Cook County and the city of Chicago, got the message that this was no ordinary case.”
An examination of the report – and I’m only halfway through it – bears out Bowman’s sentiment, and makes mincemeat of the notion that Daley didn’t influence the case. He may not have made a phone call – did he ever “make the phone call” while presiding over a City Hall where corruption was encoded in its very DNA? – but he (and his family) created a culture that, in the least, made it very clear that protecting the Daleys was Job 1 in this town, and anyone who violated that premise would face their wrath.
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Posted on February 5, 2014
