The Chicago Police Murder of Darius Pinex

Five Years of Lies, Cover-up and Murder—How Long Will This Continue to Go On?

January 12, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On a dark, freezing night in January 2011 in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, Darius Pinex and his passenger were pulled over by police in a “high-risk” traffic stop. The police beamed blinding lights into the windshield, the cop’s vehicle blocked Pinex’s car, and out sprang two cops with masks on and guns drawn, fingers on the trigger. Within minutes, Raoul Mosqueda and Gildardo Sierra had fired a hail of bullets. Sierra alone fired eight shots into the vehicle. Darius Pinex—father of three, brother to six, and a beloved son and grandson died at the scene—a fatal gunshot wound to the head. He was 27. The state’s attorney ruled this murder a “justifiable homicide.” The “Independent” Police Review Board did nothing.

How many times have we seen this... an unarmed Black or Latino person minding their own business gunned down for no reason—like they did to Darius Pinex? How many times have we heard the fabricated stories of the pigs... and then seen the video as we did with Eric Garner in New York, Laquan McDonald in Chicago, or Walter Scott in South Carolina? How many times have we seen the prosecutors let these murdering, brutalizing pigs go free and justify it with the racist excuse that they feared for their lives, as they have just done after murdering 12-year-old Tamir Rice? Time and time again, the people are criminalized and demonized by this white supremacist system and this demonization is then invoked to justify cold-blooded terror and murder.

In the case of Darius Pinex, some truth is reaching the light of day.

Determined to fight for justice, Gloria Pinex, Darius’s mother, filed a federal civil lawsuit against her son’s murderers for wrongful death. Gloria had to sit in the same courtroom with these pigs as the attorney for the city of Chicago—acting to defend not just the two cops but the police and the city government as a whole—blamed Pinex for his own death. Because of a slip-up in the testimony of a police dispatcher, the cops’ lies about why they had stopped Pinex began to come apart during the trial. But even then, the judge would not direct a finding in favor of the Pinex family, and the jury allowed the murdering pigs to go unpunished last March. Now, the federal judge has overturned that outrageous jury verdict.

In a scathing 72-page ruling issued on January 4, Judge Edmond Chang cited Jordan Marsh, the lead Chicago city attorney defending the murdering cops, for intentionally concealing crucial evidence before and during the trial and for intentionally misleading the court about his reasons for doing so. The judge ordered a new trial in the civil suit against Sierra and Mosqueda and ordered the city and Marsh to pay the almost $500,000 attorney fees to the legal team that represents the Pinex family.

The judge’s ruling came in a time of coast-to-coast, border-to-border resistance to police terror, at times breaking out into rebellion like the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 after the police murder of Mike Brown, or the uprising in Baltimore last year after the murder of Freddie Gray. There are defiant protests like the mass disruption of holiday shopping and air travel in Minneapolis. And millions and millions are being challenged to confront, and resist the reality of an epidemic of police murder of Black and brown people.

Chicago is a concentration of all this—the police terror, the outrage, and all kinds of scrambling and moves by the powers that be to manage widespread anger and outrage.

City Attorney’s Office: Enablers of SYSTEMATIC Police Terror

Hours after the public release of Judge Chang’s decision, Jordan Marsh, a 20-year veteran of the Chicago Law Department, resigned. Marsh’s co-counsel in the case had been allowed to quietly resign during the summer. The exposure that the cover-up of the murder of Darius Pinex involved not just the police on the spot, their supervisors, the dispatchers but also the legal department for the city of Chicago sent shockwaves through the city and nationally. The Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Times ran editorial board statements about the depth of the crisis.

Many people were also dismayed that Marsh was simply allowed to resign (pension intact) rather than being fired and disbarred. As Steve Greenberg, lawyer for the Pinex family, said, “There’s just a total disregard for the truth and it runs to the highest levels. There is a culture to cover up and win at all costs.”

The judge’s ruling brings to the light of day how such a cover-up works. Acting as the city’s attorney in the case, Jordan Marsh had literally hidden the existence of a Chicago Police Department radio dispatch that the cops heard the night they stopped and killed Darius Pinex. The CPD and Marsh did not want this dispatch to come into court because its content blows out of the water the pigs’ lies for BOTH the reason they stopped Pinex’s car in the first place AND the pretext for their aggressive, guns drawn, “high-risk” traffic stop.

The police had claimed for more than four years that the dispatch they heard that night said a car matching Darius Pinex’s car was wanted in a shooting and that there was likely a gun in the car. NONE of that was TRUE and none of it was broadcast over the dispatch that night. The dispatch Marsh concealed described a different car and said nothing about a shooting or a gun. As the New York Times pointed out, even just by running his license plate in their system, Darius Pinex would be alive today. It proves the police were lying and that the two cops had set in motion a chain of events that led to Pinex’s murder at their hands.

Judge Chang’s ruling goes into great detail on the egregiousness of this concealment and the role it played in the earlier trial verdict. (The text of the judge’s ruling is available at the Chicago Tribune website. For more on the cover-up, see “Criminal Conspiracy by the Chicago PD—How to get away with murder“ at revcom.us)

During the wrongful death case, Jordan Marsh had the gall to basically say, “Tell Ms. Gloria Pinex we are sorry for her loss, but this is a courtroom for legitimate cases”—knowing full well that he was a key part of the machinery to cover up a murder and deny her justice.

One of the immediate and direct consequences of the conspiracy to protect the murdering cops: Six months after killing Darius Pinex, the cop Sierra murdered again. In this second murder, a leaked police dash-cam video shows Sierra firing repeatedly into the back of a prone Flint Farmer. The gun Farmer supposedly had turned out to be a cell phone.

“The Police Are Doing Their Job”

The families of both Darius Pinex and Flint Farmer heard those lying words—”justifiable homicide.”

Gloria Pinex and her family have been fighting for justice for five years—fighting heroically through the tears, the sleepless nights. The family has been determined to get to the truth—Gloria read through everything she could get her hands on because she knew she was being lied to from day one. She examined the evidence and struggled to understand why this happened to her son.

There are different forces in the mix of the current scandals and the protests rocking Chicago and different viewpoints and outlooks, including revolutionaries. Reflecting on what she has been going through and thinking about, Gloria Pinex spoke frankly: “So when I met the revolution, I was enlightened with everything, and not even really knowing what the revolution was about, I was ready and willing to fight. And I knew I had to fight for my son’s rights—and then I stood up for everyone else’s rights. I’m still in it to win it. This shit got to stop. It must end... I didn’t see this shit and was asleep until this happened to my son. You all did wake me up and I am glad. And since I been woke up, it is right there—pow!—in your face every m’fucking day.”

Gloria and three sons traveled to New York City last October 22-24 for the Rise Up October actions, as part 100 families of people murdered by the police joining together with others for #Rise Up October—Stop Police Terror—Which Side Are You On?

Gloria Pinex’s heartfelt message: “To all the mommas going through what I am going through and they trying to bamboozle you: Stay strong.” She added, “The police are doing their job. If this wasn’t their job, why they keep getting away with it?”

 

 

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