Chicago cop on trial in 2012 fatal shooting of black woman
CHICAGO — A Chicago police officer went on trial on Thursday on felony charges in the 2012 fatal shooting of a 22-year-old black woman in a case that has drawn attention as the nation debates police use of deadly force, especially against young black people.
Dante Servin, who is Hispanic, is the first Chicago police officer in more than 15 years to be charged in a fatal shooting. He is charged with involuntary manslaughter and other felonies in the off-duty shooting of Rekia Boyd.
“She didn’t see it coming. She didn’t stand a chance,” Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Ramon Moore told Judge Dennis Porter at the outset of the trial.
Servin has chosen to allow Judge Porter, rather than a jury, decide his guilt or innocence.
“We expect our officers, on duty or off duty, to conduct themselves in an honorable manner,” Moore said.
Jennifer Blagg, one of the attorneys representing Servin, told Porter that one of the men Boyd was with at the night of the shooting had reached into his waist band, extended his arm and charged toward Servin.
“Mr. Servin wasn’t looking for trouble, he was trying to stop trouble from happening,” Blagg said.
Servin called 911 late on March 20, 2012, to report a loud party in a park near his home, prosecutors say. After midnight, on March 21, he left his home to get food, armed with an unregistered semiautomatic handgun, the indictment said.
He then got into an argument with a group of young people in an alley and shot at them from his car, wounding Boyd, who died the next day, according to prosecutors.
Servin faces up to five years in prison if convicted. He is on desk duty pending the outcome of the trial.
The last Chicago police officer convicted in a killing, Gregory Becker in 1997, had shot a homeless man in an off-duty incident. He served nearly four years in prison.
The trial follows a $4.5 million settlement that the city of Chicago paid to resolve a civil lawsuit filed by Boyd’s family.
Boyd’s name has been one of many called out at protests around the country since an on-duty white police officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager during a confrontation in Ferguson, Missouri, in August, sparking a national debate about policing. The shooting was ruled justified.
