By Angela Rozas
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — Chicago police may soon have a new cop to honor as its first officer slain in the line of duty.
In an about-face from previous police administrations, Supt. Jody Weis has applied to add Constable James Quinn to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, saying he was killed in the line of duty in 1853. He was fatally beaten.
If approved Friday by a committee of the Washington-based memorial foundation, Quinn would bypass Casper Lauer, stabbed to death in 1854, as the first officer killed in Chicago.
Previous superintendents decided that the constable did not meet the criteria to be classified as an on-the-job death, rankling at least one city official and a former Drug Enforcement Administration officer, who have crusaded for years to include the officer.
Police officials have long debated the circumstances of Quinn’s death. Opponents believe that he died during a drunken fight in The Sands, a shantytown of brothels and saloons that is now the Streeterville neighborhood. Supporters insisted that the officer went to the area to arrest a thief and that unreliable witnesses concocted the fight.
In 2007 the Chicago History Museum conducted an 11-month investigation into the officer’s death at the urging of the City Council, led by Ald. Edward Burke (14th). Historians determined that he indeed died in the line of duty.
Weis said Thursday that the department’s Honored Star Committee, made up of senior department staff, recommended Quinn be added to the national memorial. Weis said he decided that there was enough evidence, even if not definitive, that Quinn was killed in the line of duty.
“No one will ever probably know exactly what happened” 150 years ago, Weis said. “It was definitely the preponderance of the evidence that convinced me that it was an in-the-line-of-duty death.”
“I’m just elated,” said Rick Barrett, the former DEA agent who has petitioned the Police Department for years to consider Quinn’s death for the honor. “We never gave up the fight because we truly believe in ‘never forget.’”
Copyright 2009 Chicago Tribune