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Robert Rialmo’s Lawsuit An Act Of Gall

Robert Rialmo’s Lawsuit An Act Of Gall

First he killed him. Now he’s suing him.

I have no idea whether Robert Rialmo, the Chicago police officer who shot 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier to death the day after Christmas, was justified in doing so. Certainly, the sequence of events Rialmo describes seems to suggest he was within bounds when he opened fire.

According to Rialmo, Bettie Jones, a 55-year-old grandmother, had just let him into the apartment building where he had been called to quell a domestic disturbance when LeGrier, a college sophomore with a history of emotional problems, charged down the stairs wielding a baseball bat. As Rialmo tells it, LeGrier ignored repeated orders to drop the bat and twice swung at the officer’s head, missing him by just inches. That, says Rialmo, is when he opened fire.

If that is, indeed, how it happened, then it would seem Rialmo had no choice.

If.

Unfortunately, as cellphone and dashcam videos have too frequently shown us in recent years, there can be a vast gulf between what a police officer says and what the truth actually is. There is no video here, but there is an autopsy report which indicates that of the six shots that struck LeGrier, one was in his back and another in his behind, which would seem to indicate that at some point during the barrage at least, he was not facing Rialmo. Not incidentally, one of Rialmo’s shots passed through LeGrier and fatally struck Jones, who was behind him.

It is a body of evidence that is, at best, open to interpretation. But about Rialmo’s decision to sue LeGrier’s estate, it’s a lot easier to reach a hard conclusion: Rialmo should be ashamed of himself.

The suit is ostensibly a counterclaim to the wrongful death suits filed by the Jones and LeGrier families against the city. Rialmo is seeking up to $10 million for his “pain and suffering…” But this is less a lawsuit than it is an act of gall, a product of the kind of petulance, pettiness and spite we have seen too often in recent years from too many police officers.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe most of the people who get into that profession do so for honorable reasons. In fact, I think that in the field of public service, cops are among the greatest — and last — true believers.

But I also believe that when a police officer meets legitimate inquiries about use of force by engaging in a work slowdown as has happened in New York and Baltimore, or by turning his back on the mayor at a police funeral as happened in New York, or by acting with blatant thuggishness toward protesters as happened in Ferguson, Mo., or by suing the family of the teenager he killed, as is happening now in Chicago, what is expressed is not public service, but public contempt.

Rialmo, after all, must know that, even in the very unlikely event he should prevail, he will not collect $10 million from the estate of a dead college sophomore. So obviously, he is doing this not as a means of enrichment, nor as a salve for his “pain and suffering,” but rather, as a brushback pitch, a middle digit salute, and a message.

How dare we question him? How dare we hold him to account?

As noted above, it’s a message that has grown drearily familiar. Perhaps it is time for a message in response:

The police cannot be above the law they enforce. The police must be answerable to the people they serve. I get that that’s unpleasant, but it’s also critical. Effective policing requires that an officer project authority and trustworthiness. Every lie and compromise of justice undermines that. And every act of petulant gall just makes other officers’ work that much more difficult.

So Rialmo has done his profession no favors here. When you project contempt toward the public, what do you expect the public to give you in return?

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

Photo: Robert Rialmo, the Chicago police officer who shot 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier to death the day after Christmas. Robert Rialmo/Facebook

Chicago Police Trained To Not Shoot Innocent People, But It Still Happens

Chicago Police Trained To Not Shoot Innocent People, But It Still Happens

By Jeremy Gorner and Annie Sweeney, Chicago Tribune (TNS)

CHICAGO — In their training, Chicago police officers are presented with scenarios in which they’re confronted by dangerous individuals while other people are nearby. The goal is to eliminate the threat while keeping bystanders safe.

Yet over the years, innocent victims have been shot by police, most recently last weekend when an officer shot and killed Bettie Jones, a 55-year-old mother of five. Interim police Superintendent John Escalante quickly acknowledged the shooting was an accidental misfire by an officer aiming at a 19-year-old student who police said had a baseball bat and was being combative.

The fatal shooting of Jones and the student, Quintonio LeGrier, has come under especially intense scrutiny in light of the federal civil rights investigation prompted by the release last month of a dashboard camera video showing Officer Jason Van Dyke firing 16 shots at Laquan McDonald.

The department’s training figures to be one component of the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation. One longtime Chicago officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said firearms training includes teaching officers to assess their surroundings, taking into account whether people are nearby.

But they must balance everything against the threat they try to stop.

“You assess the situation and respond accordingly, but what the bottom line is if it is your life or someone else’s life is in danger, that takes precedence over everything,” the officer said.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the department does not keep track of innocent bystanders shot by police officers.

In the split-second that life-or-death decisions must be made, mistakes clearly happen. In 2010, an officer on the West Side accidentally shot a fellow cop while aiming at a man carrying what turned out to be a paintball gun.

Some situations might seem an obvious call — a report of a gunman at a crowded downtown festival, for example, would dictate not firing a gun.

Yet one of the most infamous examples of a police officer taking an innocent life was the 2012 killing of Rekia Boyd, who was mistakenly shot in the head when off-duty Detective Dante Servin fired into a group of people outside his West Side home.

Servin fired from his car at a man he claimed was pointing a weapon toward him after the officer told the man and his friends to keep the noise down. Servin struck and wounded his intended target, Antonio Cross, early morning March 21, 2012, but also hit Boyd, who was standing a few feet away.

Servin’s actions led to rare criminal charges against a Chicago police officer in the death of a civilian. He was acquitted in a trial that turned largely on legal questions of whether the off-duty officer fired his weapon intentionally or was reckless. But the department’s internal investigation into his actions focused on whether he violated Chicago police policy that morning, including firing into a crowd.

Servin has maintained he feared for his life that night. And, according to the Independent Police Review Authority documents, he said he did not believe anyone else was in harm’s way when he fired his weapon. In the end, the IPRA concluded that though Servin “could reasonably believe” there was a “threat to his or her safety,” he should not have fired.

“However the same officer would also reasonably identify the inherent danger that could result in firing his or her weapon at a subject in close proximity to innocent bystanders,” an IPRA investigator said in a report. “The level of care and concern expected of an officer with similar training and experience, in a similar circumstance, makes Detective Servin’s use of deadly force objectively unreasonable, and therefore in violation of policy.”

IPRA recommended in September that Servin be fired, a move that was backed by former Superintendent Garry McCarthy shortly before McCarthy was fired by Mayor Rahm Emanuel amid the McDonald video fallout. The matter is now before the nine-member mayoral-appointed Chicago Police Board.

According to the Chicago police general orders, officers are not allowed to fire into crowds, fire warning shots or fire into buildings or through doors, windows or other openings when the person being targeted isn’t visible. They’re also prohibited from shooting people trying to kill themselves or fire at a moving vehicle when the vehicle is the only weapon being used against the cop.

David Klinger, an expert on police use of force, said officers being trained for shootings must take into account people standing behind the person they’re targeting, as well as others to the side or in front of the suspect. Klinger said officers must practice what he calls “subject discrimination,” getting an idea of who is the likely innocent bystander and who is the likely suspect when pulling up to a scene.

Ultimately, training and experience come into play, the longtime Chicago officer said. “When the stress level goes up, normally performance goes down unless you have been in pressure situations before, and you are able to still perform with a clear head and see things,” he said.

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(c)2015 Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Protesters demonstrate at City Hall in Chicago, Illinois, United States, December 31, 2015. REUTERS/Alex Wroblewski