Justice denied to RonnieMan

TOP OFFICIALS in Chicago colluded this week to deny justice to another victim of Chicago's murderous police. Ronald "RonnieMan" Johnson was 25 years old and a father to five young children when officer George Hernandez shot him twice in the back in October 2014, killing him.

His mother, Dorothy Holmes, has pushed tirelessly for Hernandez to face prosecution. Two weeks after a judge's order compelled city officials to release dash-cam video of the execution of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, they were also forced to release footage showing Johnson's murder.

In an hour-long press conference on December 7, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez built a case to blame Johnson for his own death before finally sharing the horrifying images of the last moments of his life. Within hours, evidence contradicting the victim-blaming account began to surface in local news.

Alvarez said that Johnson was in the backseat of a car on the evening of October 12, 2014, when shots were fired at vehicle. She told assembled reporters that another passenger heard Johnson cock a gun and later testified that he'd seen Johnson holding a gun.

That witness was the only civilian whose statements were included alongside police statements in the "Independent" Police Review Authority (IPRA) investigation into the killing, despite the fact that the video shows several other bystanders in close proximity to the murder.

But the witness came forward the morning of Alvarez's press conference to admit that he'd made up the story detectives made clear they wanted to hear. "It was a lie that I thought it was a gun," he said. "I made up hearing--I made up the gun. The detectives let me know that the situation was a situation in which they knew where they were going to go. My testimony was to say, to give, testimony...to that."

ALVAREZ EVOKED IPRA's integrity to justify her decision not to press any criminal charges in Ronald Johnson's murder. But during the 13 months that passed between Johnson's death and the press conference, IPRA supervisor Lorenzo Davis was fired--because, he says, he refused in three cases to change his findings of police misconduct.

Davis, a former cop, wouldn't specify the cases, but he accused his successor, Scott Ando, of requesting the cover-ups and terminating Davis when he wouldn't comply. Ando resigned after just three months as the head of IPRA the day before Alvarez announced her decision not to charge officer Hernandez.

Most of the police cruisers at the scene of Johnson's murder reportedly didn't have their dash cams recording during the murder. None recorded audio. But Alvarez related the claims officers made later that as they chased Johnson, they shouted for him to drop the gun they believed he was holding.

Footage of half a dozen uniformed officers chasing Johnson through an intersection clearly conveys a terrifying scenario for Johnson, but it doesn't appear to confirm the state's attorney's claim that Johnson can be seen holding a gun.

Special FBI lab units reportedly analyzed a still that Alvarez highlighted for the press, but the grainy image must require a racist imagination in order to reveal the presence of anything at all in Johnson's left hand.

As Johnson moves out of the dash cam's view, Hernandez, having just arrived on the scene, gets out of an unmarked police car and immediately fires five bullets at Johnson's back. One bullet struck Johnson's leg, and another must have crossed through his falling body, entering his back and exiting through his head.

Yet police claim that Johnson somehow still gripped the gun they "found" in his hand when he fell to his death just footsteps into Washington Park.

Attorney Michael Oppenheimer, who has been working with Holmes to see charges filed against Hernandez, had already called out this impossible claim to local media in the days before the city agreed to release the video. Alvarez addressed Oppenheimer's accusation that the gun had in fact been planted on Johnson's body after his death with indignation, mentioning that a police crime lab had linked the gun to an earlier shooting.

She must have hoped the connection to an unspecified other crime would help cast a shadow over Johnson's character. She went on to talk about another unrelated incident in which an armed suspect fleeing police had managed to turn around and shoot, wounding an officer.

Alvarez couldn't claim Hernandez knew about Johnson's alleged criminal past or the other officer's wounding, nor does her role as prosecutor require her to volunteer potential defense claims for Hernandez, the person she was supposed to try to build a case against. Instead, Alvarez acted as Johnson's prosecutor, laying out reasons she couldn't possibly hold anyone else responsible for his murder.

CHICAGO'S POLITICAL establishment faces an embarrassing crisis of legitimacy. The official response to Johnson's murder mirrors much of what happened after Laquan McDonald was killed just a week later. Fraternal Order of Police spokesman Pat Camden rushed to release a statement claiming the victim was armed and police acted in fear for their lives, which local papers dutifully printed without question.

The mayor's office fought the release of any video evidence. Lawyers encouraged Holmes to take whatever settlement money the city offered and give up on any criminal charges, though in her case, Holmes refused to be intimidated and joined the Black Lives Matter movement.

As calls for Anita Alvarez and Rahm Emanuel to step down echo not only among protesters, but local pastors and state politicians, they and their subordinates have apparently calculated that they can't afford two unmistakably similar cases of police murder and coordinated cover-up to drag their way through the courts and press at the same time.

But Johnson's family isn't giving up. They joined protesters the night of Alvarez's press conference at the Washington Park entrance where RonnieMan was killed, and other protests throughout the week. On December 12, Holmes told another small gathering directed at Emanuel's and Alvarez's complicity in her son's murder and denial of justice, "You all put on DOC suits, because you covered up both of those murders."

Johnson's family holds out hope that the federal Department of Justice will consider pressing charges against Hernandez, since city officials failed to. They marked the second passing of RonnieMan's birthday since his murder by holding a second annual toy drive in his name, with donations going to the elementary school he attended.

They want the real RonnieMan, who loved his family and friends, to be lifted up in the midst of the lies and slander his memory has suffered.