CHICAGO, May 29 (UPI) -- Black community leaders Wednesday were outraged that two police officers who shot and killed two unarmed motorists in separate car chases within hours of each other in 1999 will not face criminal charges.
Federal and county prosecutors Tuesday said they had found no evidence of criminal intent in the fatal June 4, 1999, shooting of LaTanya Haggerty, a 26-year-old computer programmer, or the June 5, 1999, shooting of 22-year-old Northwestern University football player Robert Russ, a senior days away from graduation.
The city reached an $18 million settlement of a civil suit filed by the Haggerty family last year.
Haggerty was killed by a black woman officer who mistook a cell phone for a gun during a traffic stop that turned into a chase that continued despite a supervisor's order to end it. The officer was fired and is appealing her dismissal.
The officer who shot Russ about eight hours after Haggerty's death received a 15-day suspension for using his gun to smash a tinted window on the student's car after a chase on the Dan Ryan Expressway. A trial date has not been set in a lawsuit filed on behalf of the Russ family.
"It's certainly not what anyone would hold up as quality police work," State's Attorney Dick Devine told a news conference. "But there was no evidence to show criminal intent on the part of the officers."
Black activists angry over the decision not to prosecute the officers called for a special prosecutor to conduct a civil rights investigation.
"Today was a total disrespect and a slap in the face to these families and to the African-American community and people of good will," said Rev. Paul Jakes, president of the Christian Council on Urban Affairs.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said his office and the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division had conducted a through review of the evidence in the Haggarty case and concluded it was the "result of a violation of a police order and police procedures."
