Cook County DA Anita Alvarez and Cuyahoga County DA Timothy McGinty both lost primary elections on Tuesday, signaling regime change by voters for two of the most hated, worst prosecutors in America.
While much of the country focused on Presidential elections, Chicago area voters dumped Anita Alvarez, whose biggest claim to fame before the Laquan McDonald video cover up was losing the landmark case ACLU vs. Alvarez, which invalidated Illinois unconstitutional wiretapping law.
Alvarez enabled Chicago Police to hide corruption behind that wiretap statute, not to mention the many other departments who patrol Cook County’s more than 5,200,000 residents.
It’s no surprise that Honan Square, the Chicago Police’s “black site” torture prison only came to light shortly after the ACLU immortalized Alvarez in case law, and that only happened because Anita Alvarez used the Cook County District Attorney’s office to defend the un-American suppression of free speech until the very bitter end.
Cuyahoga prosecutor Timothy McGinty gained recent infamy for failing to indict Cleveland Police officer Timothy Loehmann for fatally shooting 12 year-old Tamir Rice, or his partner Frank Garmback for standing idly by his partner and both refusing to render aid to the dying child.
In contrast, Baltimore prosecutor Marylin Moseby indicted six officers in the death of Freddie Gray, most of them for failing to render aid to their fallen suspect, even after checking his condition in the back of a Baltimore Police van multiple times.
McGinty just didn’t see things that way, and hired a series of pro-police experts to apologize for Loehmann, who had no probable cause to even arrest Rice for carrying a gun, since the boy committed no gun crimes.
Ohio is an open carry state.
Then McGinty decided unilaterally to keep the Tamir Rice grand jury documents secret, which is the right of a prosecutor, but wrong for the community.
Compare that to the St. Louis County District Attorney, who failed to indict Ferguson officer Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown sparking months-long demonstrations and riots in the streets, but at least released their grand jury record in an effort at transparency.
But that’s not all Timothy McGinty did to earn the ire of Cleveland-area residents with his efforts.
The Cuyahoga County prosecutor and his team failed to obtain the conviction of Cleveland Police Officer Michael Brelo who jumped onto the hood of a suspects car and unloaded his service firearm’s entire clip into the windshield after a police chase so absurd, the only parallel I can think of is the movie “The Blues Brothers” which ironically is set in Alvarez’s hometown.
After Brelo’s exoneration at trial, McGinty released this official statement explaining his true motivations, that he was thankful that no police died in the chase of two unarmed suspects, which eventually ended with 13 cops discharging over 130 rounds into the car:
A series if tragic errors on November 29, 2012, and the subsequent trial of Cleveland Police Officer Michael Brelo forced all of us, the City, the community and the police to confront some tough issues that many would have preferred to postpone. The trial forced us to examine how and why so many errors and flawed assumptions could have led to the deaths of two unarmed people – a totally innocent, trapped and essentially kidnapped mentally ill passenger and a panicked and disturbed petty criminal – after a chase of more than 20 minutes and 20 miles that involved more than 100 officers and was led by a group of supervisors who ignored their training and Division of Police rules. To highlight the danger that the out-of-control police also posed to the innocent public and to one another, one only need examine the heavy “friendly fire” they inflicted on their own police cars. Only by the grace of God did we not have a number of police deaths.
Reading McGinty’s statement makes it sound like it was more difficult to convict Brelo than O.J. Simpson, which previously set the gold standard for blown prosecutions in American jurisprudence.
But Chicago and Cleveland voters demanded change, and they did it the right way, by voting.
Without change at the ballot box, these two “public servants” might’ve stayed in office for decades to come, handing out “get out of jail free” cards to police in their districts like so many Monopoly cards to cops who lie, cheat, steal or kill.
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