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posted by on Monday January 23 2017, @08:59AM   Printer-friendly

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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  • (Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday January 23 2017, @08:47PM

    by meustrus (4961) on Monday January 23 2017, @08:47PM (#457794)

    If there was likely to be ANY law enforcement angle to the case when it comes to trial they would have never went for murder one since the odds of a conviction would be zero.

    That's what really surprised me in the summary. Cops don't get real charges for their crimes, so this is pretty unusual.

    It's pretty sad though that you assume the story is "100% propaganda" because of impossible details like this. Not unfounded. Just sad.

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  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Monday January 23 2017, @10:54PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Monday January 23 2017, @10:54PM (#457840)

    Not really. If it was a law enforcement action it would be all but impossible to prove premeditation. No jury is going to convict a cop of that, it is so hard to prove premeditation in the best of cases and add in a cop trying to make an arrest and forget it. So the fact they are going for the full murder in the 1st says a lot. It means they think they can prove he intended to kill the guy before the encounter began. Maybe the guy was boning his GF, we probably won't know any details until the trial.

    And I assume the story is propaganda because it is in World Socialist. Duh. If you can't spot the Yellow Journalism they practice I probably can't help ya. Go read any other account and compare, even the Chicago Tribune wasn't that bad.

    Then add in the fact it is posted here at all, that it is even a national story. getting any coverage beyond the local media market How many murders happen every year? And this is Chicago. This is a guy murders guy, promptly gets arrested and is going to be a prison bitch for the rest of his days story, i.e. entirely dog bites man except for the fact the murderer is a cop in his day job and thus fits the Narrative. The word for that is propaganda. q.e.d.