By Jeremy Gorner, Annie Sweeney and William Lee
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — The city released dashboard camera video on Friday of the arrest of a man who died in police custody last summer as authorities announced two Chicago police officers had been placed on desk duty while the incident is investigated.
The video, captured by a police vehicle at the scene, shows an officer briefly placing his shoe on the neck of a prone Heriberto Godinez as he and a second officer tried to restrain the man in the Brighton Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office found that Godinez had died of cocaine and alcohol poisoning, with physical stress from his being restrained listed as “a significant contributing factor.”
The FBI, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and the Independent Police Review Authority, which investigates police misconduct, all confirmed that they are each investigating Godinez’s death.
Sally Daly, a spokeswoman for State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, said the office has hired an independent expert to review the findings of the medical examiner.
A lawyer for Godinez’s older sister, who filed a lawsuit seeking the video’s release, questioned the autopsy results, saying Godinez had a small amount of cocaine and alcohol in his system at the time of his death.
“We have significant evidence of injury around his spine, around his neck,” Jeffrey Granich said at an evening news conference at his Monadnock Building law offices. "... We feel that this video shows an attack upon a citizen of Chicago that led to his death.”
The family now plans to file a federal civil rights lawsuit and has hired renowned forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden.
“The police should be ashamed of themselves,” Godinez’s sister, Janet, said through tears. “They treated my brother worse than an animal ... They were standing on his neck while my brother was handcuffed behind his back.”
Weeks ago, Godinez’s sister filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court to try to force the city to release the footage. Granich blasted the city for fighting the release of the video for months before releasing it to the news media without notifying Godinez’s sister or letting her view a copy first.
“We cannot imagine the lack of decency in people making this decision,” Granich said.
But Bill McCaffrey, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department, said the family’s lawyer was told Monday that the video would be released this week.
Police, responding to calls of a disturbance in the area, arrested Godinez July 20 after finding him in a garage in the 3000 block of West Pershing Road, authorities said at the time. Officers thought Godinez might have been mentally ill and took him into custody after the owners of the property said they did not know him.
Godinez began sweating heavily and his breathing became labored, so officers called for assistance, but by the time paramedics arrived, Godinez was unresponsive, officials said at the time.
Anthony Guglielmi, the chief police spokesman, said Friday that the department moved against the two officers after Superintendent Eddie Johnson, confirmed Wednesday by the City Council, was briefed on this and a number of other use-of-force cases. After reviewing the video evidence, Johnson ordered that both officers be placed on paid administrative duties, Guglielmi said. In the meantime, both will undergo additional training, he said.
City attorneys had refused to release the video, claiming they were exempt in part because of the ongoing IPRA investigation, according to filings in the family’s lawsuit. That led Godinez’s lawyers to point out that the city’s reasoning ran counter to last November’s ruling by a Cook County judge who ordered the release of the now-infamous police dash cam video of the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. In that ruling, Judge Franklin Valderrama, citing state FOIA law, said that the Police Department could not withhold footage in its possession that was subject to an investigation by another agency.
“Why would you be doing this same thing all over again?” Torreya Hamilton, also an attorney for Godinez’s family, wrote in response to an email last month from a city lawyer.
Matthew Topic, the attorney who led the fight for the release of the McDonald video, said the city’s insistence that the IPRA probe forced it to hold onto the Godinez video showed how difficult it will be to bring true transparency to police work in Chicago.
“It very much is a culture of secrecy that attempts to avoid scrutiny into potential police misconduct,” said Topic, of the Loevy & Loevy law firm.
Copyright 2016 the Chicago Tribune