A Cook County judge is expected to hand down a verdict Thursday for two Chicago police officers charged with shooting an unarmed man last summer in Pilsen.
Sgt. Christopher Liakopoulos, 44, and Officer Ruben Reynoso, 43, both with the department’s Major Accident Unit, were on their way to conduct a training session shortly before 7 a.m. on July 22 last year when a group of men walking down 18th Street caught their attention and they stopped to investigate.
Moments after reversing their unmarked squad car near Morgan Street, both officers fired their guns through an open passenger window of their car, striking Miguel Medina twice.
The officers then exchanged gunfire with a juvenile in the group who had started to run away during the initial stop.
Both officers claimed they had been fired on first.
Surveillance video of the shooting contradicted the officers’ statements and State’s Attorney Kim Foxx announced two months later that her office would charge both officers with aggravated battery, aggravated assault and official misconduct.
In closing arguments Wednesday before Judge Lawrence Flood, defense attorney James McKay said the charges were the result of “a political agenda that flies in the face of law enforcement.”
He said he was sorry for the two young prosecutors “tasked to walk this dog of a case” that he said never should have made it into a criminal courtroom.
McKay and co-counsel Tim Grace repeatedly referred to Medina as a “gangbanger” and “a liar,” and the juvenile in the group as a “cockroach.”
Both were on a “two-day bender” of partying with alcohol and marijuana, and had been flashing a gun on social media immediately before the shooting, the defense said.
Grace said video of Medina and the juvenile standing near the officers’ car showed they were about to commit “a coordinated ambush of the officers, a surprise attack,” even though the juvenile appeared to turn and run away before the first shots were fired by the officers.
The video also showed Medina raising one hand in the air to wave at the officers while holding a bottle of wine and a cellphone.
McKay asked the judge to overlook the fact that both officers claimed they were fired upon first in their official reports.
“What do you think these men are feeling when these stupid reports are filled out?” McKay yelled theatrically in the courtroom, calling the reports “garbage.”
But none of that matters, both defense attorneys contended, stressing the law allowed the officers to use deadly force if they reasonably felt threatened, without being judged with the benefit of hindsight.
“They do not have to wait until they are fired upon,” Grace said.
But prosecutors noted that neither officer had seen social media videos showing the gun or the partying. “You don’t get to go back and justify an unjustified shooting by saying at least police shot a bad guy,” Assistant State’s Attorney Tom Fryska argued.
If the officers were so concerned that Medina was an armed threat, the prosecutors asked, why didn’t the surveillance video show either of them approaching Medina afterward to search for the weapon.
They knew “he didn’t have one,” Fryska said.
Medina testified on the first day of the trial last week, but both officers declined to take the stand in their defense.
Prosecutors put on a single witness Wednesday, a man whose apartment on 18th Street overlooked the scene of the shooting and who was enjoying a morning cup of coffee when the gunfire broke out.
The witness said he rendered aid to Medina before paramedics arrived, using skills he had learned at a wilderness medicine class he took through an employer.
On cross-examination, McKay asked the witness if he had told detectives that “you hate what the police stand for.”
“Correct,” the man replied.
The judge would not allow him to answer a follow-up question from prosecutors about his negative encounters with police that led him to that opinion.
The defense called a city employee who was operating a street sweeper on 18th Street when the shooting happened.
The employee said he had seen Medina, who was wearing a white hoodie, holding a gun before the shooting. But he couldn’t recall, when pressed by prosecutors, on why he had given a different description of the person holding the gun to detectives the day after the shooting “when his memory was fresh.”
The judge said he expected to give his ruling after 1 p.m. Thursday.
