As it turned out, the two Chicago officers are young African-Americans–a woman in Haggerty’s case, a man in Russ’s. But in the highly charged post-Louima world, being black is no protection against charges of racism. Infuriated protesters, the majority of them black, have held daily rallies inside city hall. At public hearings, they’ve accused the police of “urban cleansing.” Even an official of the city’s African American Police League, which says it includes 1,500 officers, has charged that some black officers are cruel pawns of the white power structure, and actually mistreat black citizens more than white cops do. (Chicago’s force is 26 percent black, 12 percent Latino.)
This accusation deeply troubled Hillard. He knew that human error, not racism, was most likely the cause of the shootings. But he has been sucked into a political vortex that is testing his calm and steady leadership style. He has tried to be low-key, but his exasperation showed through in an interview with NEWSWEEK. “When the officers in the shootings didn’t turn out to be white, the critics still played the race card,” he said. “The message was, these officers aren’t black enough!”
It’s been a tense three weeks for Hillard, the nation’s highest-ranking black cop. At times he felt as if he himself were on trial. “You are a poor excuse for a black man,” a black woman told him at one public meeting. The son of a Tennessee railroad cook who rose to become Chicago’s first black chief of detectives, Hillard was seen as a healer when he took over the department last year. His choice of a black public defender to head the office that probes complaints against police sent a firm message that he wouldn’t tolerate misconduct.
In the days after the shootings, Hillard tried to live up to that promise and quell growing fury in the black community. One day after the second shooting, he gathered top aides to review police radio tapes. His first–and most crucial–decision was to choose candor over silence, a stark contrast to the way big-city police chiefs often deal with hot-button cases. “Something went very terribly wrong in both these incidents,” he admitted during a TV taping. “Mistakes were made.”
Meeting with church leaders and executives of black radio stations, he asked for calm–and for time to investigate both cases. But he was in a no-win situation. Privately, he sent police commanders in street clothes to extend his condolences to the families of both victims. He also quietly dispatched a minister to ask if they wanted him to attend the funerals. Both declined. The result? Hillard was blasted by the activists for not showing up. Through back channels, he also encouraged the officers in both cases to talk with counselors.
What’s missing from the Haggerty and Russ cases is evidence that race played any role at all. The crucial issues may be inexperience and bad judgment: the four officers present when Haggerty died have, together, barely seven years on the force. But those nuances often get lost in the shouting. Listening to one tirade, Hillard couldn’t help thinking, “You don’t want a thorough, impartial and just investigation. You want these officers’ heads.” He’s also faced surreal juxtapositions. Last week, before he sat through a seven-hour denunciation of his officers as racist oppressors, Hillard attended a South Side meeting where residents begged police to find the black men who have raped and killed several African-American women.
Hillard knew from the start that the two cases were complex. In the LaTanya Haggerty case, Hillard’s team suspected that the officers disobeyed orders to break off a car chase minutes before the young woman was shot. Haggerty was riding with a man who allegedly sped away from police after a traffic stop. When officers caught up with the vehicle, the man got out but Haggerty did not. What happened next isn’t clear, but it’s possible that the officer who shot Haggerty mistook her cell phone for a pistol.
And it wasn’t clear why officers in the Bobby Russ case didn’t wait him out from a safe distance. Russ had allegedly raced away from an officer who spotted him driving erratically. Police gave this account: after a chase in which Russ sideswiped a squad car, he refused orders to show his hands and exit his car. An officer then broke a tinted passenger window behind Russ and pointed his gun inside. Russ grabbed the weapon with both hands. It fired, sending a bullet through Russ’s heart.
A total of seven officers face possible discipline in the two cases; prosecutors are weighing criminal charges. The officers’ lawyer says they acted properly. Attorneys for the victims’ families have already filed lawsuits and disputed the police accounts. Hillard will draft reforms, including a review of police procedures by law professors. He’s also ordered his top brass to re-educate officers about the use of deadly force–and the need to respect every citizen.
Often, when street confrontations escalate, it’s hard to guess who’ll wind up dead. Three floors below Hillard’s office, a glass case holds the stars of 416 Chicago officers killed in the line of duty. He carries in his pocket the funeral cards of the three officers who died on his watch–two of them shot by motorists. Since the recent deaths, Hillard has given his own two children the anxious warning that many African-American parents stress. If you’re stopped, cooperate. If you’re mistreated, wait until later to complain. His son, Dana, 19, argued that police officers need more training. Hillard answered that all of us–police and citizens–should get training for these tense moments. But he didn’t need to teach his son one already obvious lesson: when something goes wrong between police and citizens, it isn’t always a matter of black and white.
