Page 10 - July2019 FOP Magazine

SecondVice President’s Report
Tribune sticking to Boudreau attacks, despite City fighting innocence petition
Already reeling from a collection of cases that provide powerful evidence that the Chicago Tribune falsely claimed that Chicago Police Officers coerced confessions from accused killers, the paper is ig- noring powerful evidence that it has done so once again.
Retired police sergeant Kenneth Boudreau has been in the crosshairs of the Chicago Tribune since 2001, when the paper published a series alleging a “pattern” of suspicious convictions against Bou-
dreau and other detectives who worked with him.
But since those claims were published, a host of exonerations extolled by the paper, chiefly columnist Eric Zorn and former Tribune reporter Steve Mills, have crashed under the weight of renewed scrutiny and new evidence. Rather than take this evi- dence into account, the Tribune reporters have doubled down on their narratives, all the while regularly alleging a “code of silence”
among members of the police department.
Now, Tribune reporter Megan Crepeau, who categorically re-
fuses to admit this evidence into any of her stories about police misconduct allegations, is attempting to maintain the innocence
narrative of Arnold Day, who was convicted in 1994 for murder. Boudreau worked on the Day case.
Day obtained his release from prison not through any ruling by the courts but rather a decision from a controversial state commission, the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission (TIRC), which has broad authority to overturn convictions on claims of police misconduct, even when the courts reject these claims.
TIRC decisions and petitions for certificates of innocence are two of the remaining life rafts to which Chicago media like the Tribune and Crepeau cling in order to preserve their claims of police misconduct amid the growing sentiment by police, pros- ecutors, judges and an informed public that these narratives are hogwash.
In late June, Crepeau wrote about the decision by the presid- ing judge of the Cook County Criminal Division, Leroy Martin, rejecting an amicus brief by Boudreau’s city-hired attorneys. In it, the attorneys argued the certificate of innocence petition by Day should be rejected because the evidence is overwhelming that Day committed the murder. In doing so, the attorneys are reject- ing not only the innocence petition, but also the TIRC decision that let Day out to begin with.
But Boudreau’s city attorneys are not the only ones challenging Day’s innocence petition. Several weeks ago, FOP attorneys also filed a brief challenging the petition but were denied standing by the judge.
In her obvious crusade to preserve her paper’s modern mythol- ogy of police misconduct and the tenuous claims against former detective Boudreau, Crepeau conveniently ignores the ominous fact that both the City and FOP are arguing that Day is guilty.
In doing so, both the City and Lodge are attacking one of the key legal proceedings used by the Tribune to justify innocence claims. These challenges make it that much more difficult for ac- tivist journalists like Crepeau to paint the innocence certificates as bona fide declarations of innocence. These challenges also weaken the ability of lawyers representing the once-convicted offenders to get a massive payout from taxpayers through a civil lawsuit.
The fact that City attorneys now appear willing to fight inno- cence certificates, therefore, is an ominous development. That’s the real story of what is taking place in the Boudreau mythology, a mythology largely constructed by the Tribune.
Conservative writer Pat Buchanan observed in a recent col- umn that “the media are seen as militant partisans masquerading as journalists.” Sounds like Buchanan has been reading Crepeau’s articles.
MARTIN PREIB
10 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JULY 2019