off duty chicago cop cleared in 22 year old, unarmed womans death

the judge in the case appears to had his mind already made up. the woman was standing with a bunch of friends in a park and they were loud. the off duty cop fired into the group, from his car when he "thought" he saw a gun pointed in is direction. turns out that gun was a cell phone and no weapon was ever found at the scene the woman was hit twice, once in the hand and the fatal wound in the back of the head. i am deliberately leaving race out of this for a reason. even though the woman and her friends were black and the cop and judge are white. what i am at is that he was off duty and fired randomly into a crowd from his car.

www.huffingtonpost.com...

a reply to: blackthorne
I guess since they got the 4.5 mil the cop gets to walk?

Sad day when some people can kill cause of what they thought and get away with it.

Damn cell phone looking guns, the guy probably took the orange tip off of it.

a reply to: blackthorne

What happened is that a man performed a drive-by shooting and killed somebody. His occupations should not come into consideration.

Do soldiers get to shoot people when they are on leave?

I'm sure that if a civilian shot somebody and used the "cellphone-looked-like-a-gun" defense, that person would get life in prison.

originally posted by: Snarl
a reply to: blackthorne

Sounds like the guy was a good shot. Hit the same woman 'twice' from his car? Not always an easy thing to do.

LOL I hate people being loud and obnoxious in public. Guns are loud.

No. He shot into a crowd and hit two different people. She wasn't even the one with the cellphone. That guy just got shot in the hand. She was just standing near him. She could have been anybody.

a reply to: Cuervo

Especially if you pick the fight.

He bothered them, then shoot them over the reaction.

I sense a deal here involving that civil case

a reply to: blackthorne

DISARM THE POLICE

Better 10 police die than 1 innocent

a reply to: Cuervo

very good observation. yes he did do a drive by shooting basically. he did not even need to put up a defense. they just said "no defense" and the judge said, "not guilty"!

wrong!

originally posted by: Cuervo

originally posted by: Snarl
a reply to: blackthorne

Sounds like the guy was a good shot. Hit the same woman 'twice' from his car? Not always an easy thing to do.

LOL I hate people being loud and obnoxious in public. Guns are loud.

No. He shot into a crowd and hit two different people. She wasn't even the one with the cellphone. That guy just got shot in the hand. She was just standing near him. She could have been anybody.

"He shot his gun for no reason, and that girl lost her life," Cross said after the hearing. "I've been to jail. Be a man, accept responsibility."

Still LOL. He fired five shots. Did he fire from a car or while he was taking out the trash?

cops have to be armed cause thats what you,ve chose , everyone else wasn,t then he wouldn,t have had to open fire on something he thot was a threat.

simple answer is if every cop doesn,t think someone is carrying then there is no need to shoot.

right to bear arms comes with cops rite to shoot when they feel threatend,can,t have it both ways.

feel for cops in america cause if one had restraint then they woud still get slated for not opening fire on someone who mite turn out to be a real threat.

way yous are going you won,t have any cops to blame.

So the cop was hallucinating a gun in a crowd and starts shooting.......hmmmm...what kind of meds does this cop take on a regular basis ?

originally posted by: sparky31
cops have to be armed cause thats what you,ve chose , everyone else wasn,t then he wouldn,t have had to open fire on something he thot was a threat.

simple answer is if every cop doesn,t think someone is carrying then there is no need to shoot.

right to bear arms comes with cops rite to shoot when they feel threatend,can,t have it both ways.

feel for cops in america cause if one had restraint then they woud still get slated for not opening fire on someone who mite turn out to be a real threat.

way yous are going you won,t have any cops to blame.

This is why a disarmed police force in America would never work. Police officers also have their 2nd amendment rights so that will never happen.

I think it should be disassociated from police work, however, and not being a part of expected procedure. If a cop shoots somebody, he would have to do so with his or her personal firearm and be held to the exact same court standards that everybody else is.

The problem isn't that we are all armed; it's that only some of us are routinely held accountable for our actions with our arms.

If you fear for your life from a cell phone when you could have just driven away you are in the wrong line of work, when you mistake a cell phone for a gun you are F-ing stupid and are on the wrong job. Next police will be shooting people because they thought he was going to commit suicide with that cell phone that looks like a gun up to his ear. ....cops get stupider every day.

Good thing it wasn't a group of kids eating Pop Tarts! HE would have ginned down the entire crowd, and got off on the defense, "they looked like guns, they must have chewed them into the shape of the gun!"

Drive-by shooting...plain and simple. This should be blasted from every news organization with a backbone.....wait, there are none of those.

A silly question. Where was the jury? Should't a murder charge warranted a jury trial? Obviously the fix was in since there was no jury.

Apparently black lives really don't matter.

Here's another article on this:
Anger follows acquittal in rare trial of Chicago cop

Judge Dennis Porter ruled that prosecutors failed to prove that Dante Servin acted recklessly, saying that Illinois courts have consistently held that anytime an individual points a gun at an intended victim and shoots, it is an intentional act, not a reckless one. He all but said prosecutors should have charged Servin with murder, not involuntary manslaughter.

Servin cannot be retried on a murder charge because of double-jeopardy protections, according to his attorney, Darren O'Brien.

Fantastic. Well, if someone's guilty as hell and you want to protect them (like this cop), all you have to do is have the D.A. charge with something that the judge can then dismiss on a technicality.

originally posted by: JHumm
If you fear for your life from a cell phone when you could have just driven away you are in the wrong line of work, when you mistake a cell phone for a gun you are F-ing stupid and are on the wrong job. Next police will be shooting people because they thought he was going to commit suicide with that cell phone that looks like a gun up to his ear. ....cops get stupider every day.

He is deranged:

"Any reasonable person, any police officer especially, would've reacted in the exact same manner that I reacted," he said. "And I'm glad to be alive. I saved my life that night. I'm glad that I'm not a police death statistic. Antonio Cross is a would-be cop killer, and that's all I have to say."

He still thinks the cellphone was a gun.

Oh, and the cop's attorney is this guy:

The prosecutor who declined to charge former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s nephew in the killing of David Koschman — and apparently “threw away” the case file — has left the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.

a reply to: blackthorne
Heh,I'm not surprised.Cops literally have a license to kill with out the fear of prosecution..

a reply to: Greven

The isn't it possible that the surviving (injured) victim can now charge him with "assault with intent to murder"?