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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The World Socialist Web Site reports:

On [January 18], a Chicago police officer was arrested and charged with first degree murder for the fatal shooting of an unarmed man at the beginning of the year.

The officer, Lowell Houser, 57, shot Jose Nieves, 38, following an argument on the morning of January 2 in Hermosa, a working class neighborhood on the city's Northwest Side.

The charges against Houser come just days after the release of a damning report on Chicago police conduct by the US Department of Justice, which carried out a 13-month investigation of the Chicago Police Department (CPD). The report catalogued systematic violence and lawlessness on the part of the CPD, and concluded, in its restrained language, that the department engaged in "a pattern or practice of force in violation of the Constitution."

[...] Houser is the second Chicago cop to be charged with murder in little over a year. The previous, Jason Van Dyke, was charged with first-degree murder on November 24, 2015, for the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald over a year earlier, in October 2014.

[Continues...]

More from the Chicago Tribune:

Prosecutors had sought to keep Officer Lowell Houser in custody, citing a state statute that calls for mandatory no-bail for a defendant who personally fires a gun in a fatal shooting and faces a possible life sentence.

But Judge Donald Panarese Jr., without giving any explanation for his reasoning, released Houser on electronic monitors and without having to post any cash bail. The judge also gave him the option to be rid of the electronic monitoring if he posted $15,000 cash.

Lawyers with years of experience at the Leighton Criminal Court Building who have no connection to the case could not recall a similar bail being set in the many hundreds of murder cases handled in bond court in recent years.

The DOJ report mentioned above can be found here.

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