But a Cook County judge has refused to keep secret the shocking image of former Officers Timothy McDermott and Jerome Finnigan kneeling with what the police department says is an unidentified African-American drug suspect. Believed to have been taken in a West Side police station between 1999 and 2003, the Polaroid photo was given to the city by the feds in 2013 and resulted in McDermott, a clout-heavy cop, being fired last year by the police board in a 5-to-4 vote. The four dissenters said McDermott should only have been suspended. But a majority of the board wrote that “appearing to treat an African-American man not as a human being but as a hunted animal is disgraceful and shocks the conscience.”
McDermott, who has been driving a truck to support his family, is now appealing his dismissal in court. Even though police Supt. Garry McCarthy moved to fire McDermott, attorneys for the police department and McDermott both asked Judge Thomas Allen to keep the photo under seal earlier this year. They said they wanted to protect the privacy of the unidentified African-American man. Allen denied their request in March. The Sun-Times recently obtained a copy of the photo in the court file.
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Gotta hear both sides you guys. Just never know with these things. Like looking at this photo it seems pretty bad, actually really really bad, scumbag cops on a power trip treating a prisoner like an animal, but you just never know, maybe they’re friends and this is just a game they play. Boys being boys. We arrest you and then put horns on your head and hold up guns and pretend you’re a dead animal, haha get it? Who hasn’t played that game before? Tons of fun. Give it a shot before you rush to judgement, that’s all I ask.
