Superintendent Garry McCarthy has begun the process to fire Dante Servin, the veteran police detective who fatally shot 22-year-old Rekia Boyd nearly three years ago in North Lawndale and set off months of protests.
In September, the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), recommended Servin be fired. McCarthy had 90 days from that ruling to accept or reject the agency’s recommendation. Protesters have packed Police Board meetings for months, even shutting down the August meeting, criticizing McCarthy’s for the protracted process to fire Servin, who has been on the force since 1991. That prompted the often stoic superintendent to make a rare apology for the slow process.
Earlier this year, Servin faced criminal charges in Boyd’s death but was subsequently acquitted on a technicality. Servin faced several charges including involuntary manslaughter. But a Cook County judge dismissed the charges in April, ruling that Servin’s actions didn’t amount to reckless conduct but an intentional act that warranted a first-degree murder charge instead.
Sutton took little solace in McCarthy’s late-evening announcement recommending Servin’s firing. He questioned “what the big holdup was” in McCarthy’s decision, which Sutton said could have been announced at last week’s Police Board meeting.
McDonald was shot 16 times by officer Jason Van Dyke on October 20, 2014, in Archer Heights, after McDonald allegedly refused to drop a four-inch knife. Last week a Cook County judge ordered the release of a video showing the fatal shooting.
“We have no faith that the same Mayor that allowed people to starve for 34 days over a school, will be accountable to black people just because we respond calmly to a documented hate crime committed by a Chicago police officer,” the statement said. “We also believe that leaders do not reserve the right to police people’s emotions. Our responsibility is to organize public energy into impact.”
