Page 33 - February 2018 FOP Newsletter

What had been lost, however, was a 10-year veteran in Fahey, who received 19 honorable mentions and numerous letters of appreciation during his time on the job. O’Brien had received six honorable mentions and numerous letters during his nine years with the Department.
We come back strong
The idea of forcing the Fahey and O’Brien families to relive the nightmare of yet another trial ignited the ire of several FOP members. One of those was Chicago Lodge 7 Second Vice Pres- ident Marty Preib, who had blogged about how one of the insti- gators of the wrongful-conviction movement – the People’s Law Office – sought a new trial for Jackie Wilson arguing that police abuse coerced his confession.
A Lodge 7 board member suggested fighting fire with firing back and proposed at the Jan. 9 Lodge 7 board meeting to move the Jan. 16 general meeting to 26th and California. Flooding the courtroom with a police presence would be a bold statement to not let Wilson get away with murder.
The motion passed unanimously.
“I have never seen a meeting moved,” Jakstavich noted. “It was just one of those ‘how do we get people there; how do we get members involved.’ The overwhelming response was, ‘Let’s move the meeting.’”
The Lodge believed other forces might be at work here, which fueled the response.
“It was extremely important as I saw it, and members of the board saw it, to make sure that people know we did not forget about it even though it was more than 30 years ago,” President Graham explained.
Word was passed to unit reps, and the information was pur- posely kept off social media until the evening of Friday, Jan. 12. With Martin Luther King Day the following Monday, there
wouldn’t be enough time to reschedule the hearing.
Wilson used the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commis- sion Act to move for the new trial. The act allows convicted crim- inals whose appeals have been exhausted, and whose claims of torture or coerced confessions have been repeatedly rejected by Illinois trial and appellate courts, to make these same claims, unsworn, to a panel of appointed commissioners. If the com- missioners find the claim has merit, a post-conviction hearing is commenced in the Circuit Court, which could ultimately re-
sult in the convict getting a new trial.
According to one of Preib’s blog entries, Michael O’Rourke,
a private attorney working as a special prosecutor, denied that
CONTINUED ON PAGE 34
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CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ FEBRUARY 2018 33
Laverne O’Brien, mother of Chicago police Officer Richard J. O’Brien, is ac- companied into St. Denis Catholic Church to mourn the loss of her son in 1982.