Sept. 17--The city agency that investigates the most serious allegations against Chicago police officers has recommended that Detective Dante Servin be fired for the fatal off-duty shooting of a 22-year-old woman.
The decision from the Independent Police Review Authority comes almost five months after Servin was acquitted in Cook County criminal court on involuntary manslaughter charges in the killing of Rekia Boyd.
Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who had publicly disagreed with the criminal charges against Servin, will now decide if he agrees with the recommendation to fire him. If he goes along, the Chicago Police Board would decide if Servin should be fired. If that panel backs his firing, Servin could sue in Cook County Circuit Court to try to win his job back.
Servin said he was not aware of IPRA's recommendation when reached by a reporter this afternoon.
"Wow. Wow. My God," he said through deep breaths after being told of IPRA's recommendation to fire him. "It's surreal and illogical. I lived this reality. And I am living this nightmare."
The case has taken on national interest amid growing concern about police use of lethal force, particularly on unarmed minorities, after several incidents across the country.
IPRA's Chief Administrator Scott Ando said Servin committed several violations, including shooting Boyd by discharging his gun into a crowd and failing to certify that weapon with the department. Servin also committed "inattention to duty" for making inconsistent statements about the incident to IPRA, Cook County prosecutors and Chicago police detectives, Ando said.
"As a result, I recommended that Detective Servin be separated from the Chicago Police Department," Ando said in a prepared statement. "As the Chief Administrator of IPRA, I take my responsibility for making recommendations seriously.
"These findings and recommendations were based on all available evidence, witness statements and the policies and procedures of the Chicago Police Department."
Servin had been the first Chicago police officer in years to be criminally charged for a fatal off-duty shooting, but the bench trial abruptly ended in April when a veteran judge at the 26th and California courthouse acquitted the detective on a legal fine point.
In a controversial decision, Judge Dennis Porter ruled that prosecutors failed to prove that Servin acted recklessly, saying that Illinois courts have consistently held that any time an individual points a gun at an intended victim and shoots, it is an intentional act, not a reckless one. He all but said prosecutors should have charged Servin with murder, not involuntary manslaughter.
The race of Boyd and the officer -- she was black and he is white -- never became an issue in the trial itself, but it still hung over the proceedings, coming amid a national outcry over the deaths of unarmed African-Americans at the hands of white police officers in Ferguson, Mo., New York City, Cleveland and elsewhere.
Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez defended her decision to charge Servin with involuntary manslaughter.
Prosecutors had alleged Servin acted recklessly in March 2012 when he fired five shots over his shoulder from inside his car in the direction of four people who had their backs to him in a dark West Side alley.
Servin's attorneys said he was in fear for his life after Antonio Cross, one of the four, pulled an object from his waistband, pointed it at Servin and ran toward his car. But police found only a cellphone.
Boyd, 22, was fatally shot in the back of the head, while other rounds grazed Cross' hand and hit a signpost. Only Cross was charged in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, but the misdemeanor aggravated assault charge was dropped in March 2013 -- on the same day the city formally agreed to pay Boyd's estate $4.5 million to settle a wrongful-death lawsuit.
By November 2013, Alvarez charged Servin with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, reckless discharge of a weapon and reckless conduct -- the first criminal charges against an off-duty Chicago cop since Gregory Becker was charged in the 1995 killing of a homeless man, Joseph Gould. A jury convicted Becker in 1997 of armed violence, involuntary manslaughter and official misconduct, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Reading his seven-page ruling from the bench, Porter said there was no dispute that Servin had intended to kill Cross, but under the involuntary manslaughter law, prosecutors had to prove he acted recklessly in the legal sense of the word.
"It is easy to say, 'Of course the defendant was reckless. He intentionally shot in the direction of a group of people on the sidewalk. That is really dangerous ... and in fact Rekia Boyd was killed. Case closed,'" Porter wrote. "It is easy to think that way, but it is wrong."
That's because Illinois law says that intentionally firing a gun at someone on the street "is an act that is so dangerous it is beyond reckless," Porter wrote. "It is intentional and the crime, if any there be, is first-degree murder."
Porter acknowledged that it was "perhaps even unfortunate" that neither side would have "closure" on whether Servin was justified in opening fire that night, but he said he had no choice under the law but to dismiss the charges.
Servin is the second Chicago police officer this year who IPRA has recommended be fired after shooting someone. The agency in April recommended that Francisco Perez be fired after he was "inattentive to duty" when he fired 16 shots at the wrong car moments after a drive-by shooting outside a Mexican restaurant in the East Ukrainian Village neighborhood in 2011.
After reviewing IPRA's findings, McCarthy in July recommended Perez, who was also off-duty at the time of the shooting, be fired for lying about what happened -- but not for actually shooting someone.
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