In a stunning move, a judge has granted a “directed verdict” which was motioned by the defense in the trial involving Chicago police officer Dante Servin. This means that the judge found Servin not guilty of the charges against him without the defense even having to put on any witnesses, evidence, etc.
Servin was charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless conduct and reckless discharge of a firearm. The judge stated:
?It would be improper to allow the trial to continue given the total failure to prove recklessness, which was key to all three charges.”
He went on to say that the officer intentionally discharged his firearm. So, we are supposed to believe that Servin meant to kill Rekia and that he was justified in doing so? Well, I don’t.
Rekia Boyd was 22 years old when she was shot and killed by Servin back in 2012. He called 911 to report loudness near his home. After midnight, he left his house allegedly to get food when he got into an argument with a group of young people. He ended up shooting at them from his car, hitting Ms. Boyd who would die the next day. Servin was off-duty at the time, and the gun he used was unregistered. Servin’s defense said he thought one of Boyd’s friends had a gun.
This story is the same old story that we hear over and over. These scripts seem to be reused regardless of what actually happened: “They had a gun,” “They charged at me,” “They reached in their waistband.” These stories are always told to us by police and given as excuses for taking someone’s life. We need a higher burden of proof to deem murder justifiable. Rekia was never found to have a gun or to be of any threat to this officer. Her killing was completely unnecessary and Servin should be in jail.
What is disheartening is how many of us have no faith in the justice system at all. We have seen two recent indictments of officers, which is a good first step, but we need these killers IN JAIL. So many have got off for killing (mostly black and brown people) and business goes on as usual.
If I killed someone over the reasons given by many cops and their defense teams, I would still, more than likely, end up in prison. This hierarchy placing cops at the top and allowing them impunity has to end. We cannot keep burying people at the hands of cops. These cowardly, idiotic accounts of what happened and why their killing was necessary, is a joke to their profession and to our nation’s ideal of what is right and wrong. There are REAL cases of self defense out there and these stories make a mockery of the entire idea behind justifiable harm and killings. If you can use any excuse to say that killing someone was absolutely necessary, then your job really isn’t even that dangerous to begin with.
Chicago, like many areas and cities, has huge disparities in how blacks are policed and targeted. Chicago’s population is about 30 percent African-American, yet 80 percent of people shot by the police are black. We continue to see racism (overt and implicit) play a huge role in police killings. We see this in who is targeted, how quickly and easily cops fire their guns at them, and how the killers so often get off with their crimes. This is just one more reminder of how far we have to go to ensuring a truly fair and equal justice system and society as a whole.
