A Cook County judge on Thursday acquitted two Chicago police officers accused of shooting an unarmed man last summer in Pilsen and then lying about how it happened.
Judge Lawrence Flood ruled Sgt. Christopher Liakopoulos, 44, and Officer Ruben Reynoso, 43, were within their rights to protect themselves when they opened fire, wounding Miguel Medina twice on July 22 of last year.
“The officers were not the aggressors,” Flood said in his ruling from his bench on the fifth floor of the Leighton Criminal Courthouse. “It’s Medina and [a juvenile] who approached [the officers’] vehicle.”
The audience in the gallery of the courtroom, packed with supporters, officers and police union officials, erupted in applause at the verdict and had to be quieted by a courtroom deputy.
Neither Medina, who testified at the trial, nor his family appeared to be present for the verdict.
Attorney Gregory Kulis, who represents Medina in a federal lawsuit over the shooting, called the judge’s decision “disappointing ... but not surprising.”
“You have a judge who’s ex-law enforcement, pro-police and is retiring this week,” Kulis said. “I believe a jury may have found different.”
Both officers declined to take the stand in their defense, he noted.
“Their attorneys argued that they perceived a threat but they didn’t have the guts to say that on the stand,” Kulis said, adding that both officers will have to sit for depositions for the federal suit.
The officers, both with the Major Accidents Unit at the time, were on their way to conduct a police training session when they saw Medina and a group of people walking on 18th Street and decided to investigate.
They reversed their unmarked car and, within moments, both officers opened fire at Medina, who had raised one hand as he approached the car. Medina testified he was only showing he wasn’t a threat to them, though he held a bottle of wine and a cellphone.
The officers then exchanged gunfire with a juvenile in the group who had started to run away. Both officers falsely claimed they had been fired on first.
But surveillance video contradicted the officers’ statements, and State’s Attorney Kim Foxx announced two months later that her office would charge both officers with aggravated battery, aggravated assault and official misconduct.
“They didn’t lie. Misstatements happen all the time,” John Catanzara, head of the Chicago police union, said after the verdict. He called on the city to give officers more time before making an initial statement, saying it would give officers “time to decompress and process what you went through.”
As the officers’ supporters left the courthouse, a man shouted, “Kim Foxx” and flashed two thumbs down to a row of television cameras.
Defense attorneys questioned why anyone would want to be a police officer in the city, citing the danger of the job and the lack of support. But they said both officers hoped to be reinstated in their jobs after being placed placed on unpaid leave while facing the charges.
Tim Grace, an attorney for Liakopoulos, questioned Foxx’s decision to charge the officers but not the juvenile who exchanged fire with the officers while running away.
But Foxx said after the verdict that the officers’ false statements to prosecutors hurt her ability to charge the juvenile.
“The officers who were charged here today gave untruthful statements to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office — the witnesses who would have been able to provide that information to allow us to charge that ... gave testimony to our office which was not factual,” Foxx said.
She told reporters the officers were charged “because we believe we need to hold those accountable who go against the law — even police officers.”
Defense attorneys spent much of their closing statements Wednesday disparaging Medina for actions that occurred as much as a day before the shooting. They referred to him as a “gangbanger,” despite his assertion that he wasn’t involved in a gangs.
The juvenile in the group was a “cockroach,” Grace said.
They spent less time arguing justification for the traffic stop and provided few specifics for why the officers felt endangered. Instead, they repeatedly mentioned that Medina and his group had been partying for two days, drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, while filming themselves brandishing a Smith & Wesson handgun.
The judge acknowledged in his ruling that neither officer could have known that at the time they decided to conduct the stop. But the group’s “dress and actions” — including wearing hoodies and face masks — made it reasonable for police to stop and investigate.
He said Medina looked “like a gangbanger.”
Foxx bristled at the judge’s remarks. “There are victims that wear suits and ties and there are victims that wear hoodies and baseball caps,” she said. “The people who live in neighborhoods who dress maybe in the way we would not like them to dress are no more inherently dangerous or inherently suspicious.”
The judge said he also felt it was reasonable for the officers to be concerned for their safety because Medina was holding a “dark object.” He also said he didn’t find Medina a credible witness, noting that a bottle of beer Medina said he purchased along with the bottle of wine at the liquor store was never recovered.
During the trial, prosecutors disputed that the officers had felt threatened by Medina and that they knew he wasn’t armed. After a wounded Medina fell to the ground, neither officer approached to search for a weapon because they knew “he didn’t have one,” Assistant State’s Attorney Tom Fryska noted in his closing.
Neither officer waited for assistance from other officers in the district, the prosecutors also noted.
Grace told the judge that if they hadn’t stopped or had called a beat car to help, Liakopoulos and Reynoso would have been “branded cowards” or accused of “dereliction of duty.”
But Assistant State’s Attorney Alyssa Janicki replied, “I don’t think the only two options were to get into a shootout or ignore it.”
