The Chicago Tribune reports:
Late last year, Judge William Hooks heard the kind of case that occurs at Cook County's main courthouse every day and that, in most instances, ends with a guilty verdict and the defendant headed off to prison. This time, though, the case came to a different conclusion.
At the center was a veteran Chicago police narcotics officer who testified that he and his partner had abandoned an undercover drug surveillance to stop a minivan for failing to signal for a right turn — and discovered about 2 1/2 pounds of cocaine in the vehicle.
Lawyers for the two men arrested in the case said the story did not ring true and asked the judge to throw out the charges before trial. There was no way, they said, that officers from a specialized narcotics unit would break away from their surveillance for a traffic stop.
Hooks agreed.
There's more:
The notion that police officers provide false or incredible testimony with impunity is borne out by a handful of statistics. Over four years, from February 2012 to February 2016, 11 Chicago police officers had disciplinary charges brought against them for writing a false report or making a false statement. None of the cases, though, was for false testimony in court, according to police disciplinary records.
"We judges sit and listen to this stuff all the time," said retired Cook County Judge Marcus Salone, who spent 18 years on the bench at the Leighton Criminal Court Building at 26th Street and California Avenue and another two years as an Illinois Appellate Court judge before he retired in 2012. "But we don't do enough about it. That's a fact."
An article , well worth your time.
