City fights back against CPD officer in LeGrier shooting case

City lawyers want a judge to dismiss a lawsuit that claims that poor training by the Chicago Police Department and bad information from police dispatchers led Officer Robert Rialmo to fatally shoot 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier and LeGrier’s unarmed neighbor, Bettie Jones.

With a multimillion-dollar lawsuit on the line, it’s not unusual that the city would dispute those attacks on the department, which has come under national scrutiny for its handling of police shootings and other misconduct.

What is rare is the source of the accusations: a counter-suit filed against the city by Rialmo.

Rialmo and the city both were named in a lawsuit filed in January by the families of LeGrier and Jones. But Rialmo quickly broke with the city — another rare move for a cop facing a lawsuit for on-duty conduct — and hired bombastic lawyer Joel Brodsky, best known for leading the defense team in Bolingbrook cop Drew Peterson’s murder trial.

In April, Rialmo filed a counter-suit against LeGrier’s estate, which Brodsky said furthered the split with city lawyers. In June, Rialmo terminated city lawyers entirely, Brodsky said, and filed a cross-suit against the city — his co-defendant — claiming he wasn’t trained and equipped by CPD to deal with mentally ill people. Rialmo also claims city lawyers pressured him to drop his counter-claim against LeGrier and have stuck him on desk duty in retaliation.

City attorneys this week filed motions to dismiss Rialmo’s cross-suit.

“We believe that Officer Rialmo’s counter-claims are baseless,” spokesman Bill McCaffrey said in a statement. “Among other things, there is no legal basis for the claims of retaliation and Illinois law provides absolute immunity for his other counter claims.”

The discord among the co-defendants is surprising to lawyers for the two families. Bill Foutris, who represents LeGrier’s family, said Rialmo’s pleadings largely back up the case against the city and police.

“It’s unprecedented for a police officer to say, in these sort of proceedings, that he was not trained to deal with, really, any situation,” Foutris said. “That’s one of the things I expected because of how this unfolded, but to have a police officer come out and say it explicitly, it’s shocking … it validates what we’ve been saying from the beginning.”

Brodsky said Friday that Rialmo sought him out for advice shortly after the shooting, concerned about the atmosphere surrounding his case — the first fatal police shooting in the city to come after the mass protests that flared after the release of video of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by CPD officer Jason Van Dyke. Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder the same day the video was made public.

Rialmo wanted to “get the story out,” and filing a counter-claim seeking damages from LeGrier’s estate was the best way to put his version on the record, said Brodsky, who is working on contingency, and was not retained by the Fraternal Order of Police.

“The other lawyers (for the city) were telling him to drop the counterclaim, and they were being very aggressive,” Brodsky said Friday. “I tell you, it kind of p—-d him off, like ‘Who are you guys?’”

“The more I looked at it, the more I realized the real reason for Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones’ death is the mayor,” Brodsky said. “He’s the one who shut down all the mental health clinics for poor people … there’s no money in the (police) training budget, but he’s got a billion dollars for the Lucas Museum?

“We’re putting the blame where it belongs.”