Civil Liberties

City of Chicago Wants Ruling Against Police "Code of Silence" Vacated

Arises from a case where an off-duty cop beat a female bartender half to death and all his cop buddies kept their mouths shut

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Two top civil rights attorneys argued strongly against efforts by the city to vacate the recent landmark jury verdict that a "code of silence" within the Chicago Police Department in part led to an off-duty officer's infamous video-recorded beating of a female bartender.

"The city should not be permitted to escape a finding that it covered up the misconduct of its officers by allowing it to simply erase that adjudication as if it never occurred, and then go on denying a code of silence," attorneys Locke Bowman and Craig Futterman wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief filed late Tuesday in federal court.