Alvarez: Cop won’t be charged in Ronald Johnson killing

SHARE Alvarez: Cop won’t be charged in Ronald Johnson killing

A video aired publicly for the first time Monday showed a foot pursuit that ended in the muzzle flashes of Chicago Police Officer George Hernandez’s gun as he shot Ronald Johnson in the back as Johnson tried to run into Washington Park on the South Side.

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez played the video during a news conference — including a freeze frame blown up and enhanced by an FBI forensics team that she said appears to show a gun in Johnson’s hand — to help explain why she decided not to charge Hernandez with a crime.

Afterward, the attorney for Ronald Johnson’s family, who have a federal civil rights suit pending against the city, expressed disappointment at Alvarez’ decision, and disputed the state’s attorney’s account of factors she said led her to it, maintaining there was no justification for shooting the man in the back as he ran away.

“I submit that there’s an object in his hand,” Alvarez said.

“Even though Mr. Johnson was running away from Hernandez and other officers, he was running toward a police vehicle containing two other responding officers, and unknown members of the public inside that park,” she said. “Furthermore, Johnson could have easily turned around and quickly fired at the officers pursuing him or even fired as he ran.”

To bolster her position, Alvarez also played a video from an entirely separate case that showed a gunman fleeing a police officer on foot who suddenly “stretches his hand back while continuing to run forward and shoots the officer who is behind him,” Alvarez said. “It is a chilling depiction of how quickly an officer can be struck down.”

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Alvarez said the single frame from the video showed a gun in Johnson’s hand as he ran, dismissing the family’s accusation that it was planted.

The 9-mm pistol that police recovered at the scene had Johnson’s DNA on it, Alvarez said. And a state police crime lab linked the gun to a shooting that occurred Sept. 25, 2013, at 5637 S. Green in which no arrest had been made and no weapon was recovered.

In addition, a bullet matching the type that came from the loaded gun was found in the vehicle that Johnson had been traveling in moments before the shooting took place.

Ronald Johnson, 25, pictured in June 2014. | Dorothy Holmes photo via AP

Ronald Johnson, 25, pictured in June 2014. | Dorothy Holmes photo via AP

At a press conference with Johnson’s mother, Dorothy Holmes, attorney Michael Oppenheimer said the shadowy, enhanced image in no way was a gun, and assailed Alvarez for relying on the ineffective Independent Police Review Authority to investigate the Oct .12, 2014 incident, and her office never having interviewed Hernandez or other witnesses who have given depositions he says supports the Johnson family’s case.

“You would think we are doing a trial today,” said Oppenheimer, who said now that the Justice Department is investigating the Chicago Police Department he is asking for a full civil rights investigation in the Johnson case, or that a federal prosecutor be appointed to look at it.

“I would have hoped that Anita Alvarez would do the right thing by charging Officer Hernandez. Dorothy and her family are requesting that she reconsider, but that’s probably not going to happen. She’s made up her mind, after conducting no investigation and relying on the joke, IPRA,” he said.

According to Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Lynn McCarthy, Johnson had just left a party at an apartment building at 53rd Street and King Drive at about 12:30 a.m. and gotten into a car with three other people when a gunman opened fire on the vehicle. No one was injured, but the rear window of the car was shattered, McCarthy said.

The driver of the car later told police he drove around for a couple minutes — during which time he heard a gun being cocked behind him from where Johnson was sitting in the back seat — before returning to the spot at 53rd and King where the car was damaged by gunfire.

However, Oppenheimer revealed that in a deposition taken from the driver, the driver admitted never having heard a gun being cocked, and to having been coached by detectives on what to tell investigators.

“From Witness A’s deposition: ‘The idea of a gun wasn’t really a thing until they presented the idea to me. . . . I made up hearing a gun. Detectives let me know that the situation was a situation in which they knew where they were going to go, and my testimony was to say, to give testimony basically in agreement to that,’ ” Oppenheimer read.

“Anita Alvarez stood right up there with her 25-minute infomercial, well played out, well financed, well produced, to continue the cover-up,” he said.

Tapes of 911 calls from residents in the area who reported gunfire that night were played at the state’s attorney’s press conference, and several maps of the scene displayed on a video monitor. It was in the moments after Johnson knocked down the officer that several police cars converged on the scene and officers began to chase Johnson, who, they reported, was holding a gun, McCarthy said.

In the video, Johnson can be seen turning a corner and heading south on King Drive, where he briefly got into a struggle with a police officer that occurred out of range of the camera, McCarthy reported. Johnson knocked the officer down and began running east toward Washington Park, where he re-enters the camera frame.

It was at this point when Hernandez exits the back seat of an unmarked squad car that pulled up to the scene and, during a foot chase that lasted two seconds, fired five shots at Johnson’s back, hitting him twice.

Asked why — with multiple police cars at the scene — there was only one video recording of the shooting, Alvarez said that unmarked squad cars aren’t equipped with dashboard video cameras, and that another marked squad car at the scene didn’t have it’s lights and sirens activated, which automatically turns on the video camera.

Alvarez could not explain why the video lacked sound, a problem that has occurred “time and time again,” she said.

The police department, she said, will “have to address it, and they’re going to have to fix it, because we would prefer to have the audio.”

Alvarez blamed the length of time it took her office to determine not to charge Hernandez on the slow pace at which the Independent Police Review Authority — which investigates police shootings —conducted its probe and handed over evidence to her office.

To make her point, Investigators at the authority, she said, were told by her office of two people the Johnson family suggested should be interviewed in April, and they finally got around to conducting the interviews two weeks ago.

“I’m not hiding anything and these videos are going to eventually be released so I thought it was appropriate to be transparent and show you exactly what we looked at, what we considered, what we did before announcing any decision on this case,” Alvarez said.

“The general public, and the average citizen doesn’t understand the use of force model, they don’t understand the relevant case law,” Alvarez said. “And so I think we have to educate the public in how officers are trained, what they can do, what they can’t do and when it’s appropriate,” said Alvarez after reading the state statute regulating use of force.

Unlike the case of Laquan McDonald, who was also shot by a Chicago Police officer in October of last year, the FBI, after seeing video of the shooting that was handed over by her office, declined to investigate — leaving the task to the Independent Police Review Authority, Alvarez said.

Oppenheimer ridiculed Alvarez’ dismissal of the police statement in the aftermath, now proved false by the video, that Johnson turned and pointed a gun at Hernandez, who feared for his life. He also charged some original notes from Hernandez and other officers recounting what they saw at the scene that night have not been turned over by the city, which maintains those notes were never taken or are missing. And he charged officers were allowed to view dash-cam video from the incident before writing reports.

“Unlike the Laquan McDonald case, where officers did not know that there was a video, every last one of them sat there and watched the video, and then they gave their statements,” Oppenheimer said. ”The head of IPRA has just resigned and/or been fired, and the state’s attorney says, ‘I relied on an IPRA investigation. That is a joke. It is an absolute joke, and it is an affront to Dorothy Holmes, to Ronald Johnson, and it is an affront to the people of Cook County and the city of Chicago.”

Alvarez stipulated her office too has issues with the Independent Police Review Authority.

“I do have some concerns [about the authority] because I personally would like to get information much sooner,” Alvarez said. “I would personally liked to have wrapped this case up — whatever decision we’re going to make — much earlier.”

Alvarez said the fact that Mayor Rahm Emanuel said last Thursday that the video would be released this week did not effect her decision to air the video.

Asked if the recent release of the Laquan McDonald video created pressure that lead her to release the Johnson video, Alvarez sidestepped, saying “we as prosecutors are changing the way we do things because of the fact that we have communities and we have a public that wants to know and now we have evidence like this that we didn’t have before.”

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