Feds investigating 2020 shooting by Chicago police at train station

CHICAGO — Federal authorities are investigating a shooting last year of an unarmed man by Chicago police at a busy downtown transit train station that was captured on cellphone video by a rider, federal documents show.

The alleged victim, Ariel Roman, received a subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury in January about the shooting, according to a copy of the subpoena reviewed by the Chicago Tribune.

Roman, who was badly wounded in the shooting, was also asked to provide his medical records documenting his recovery. Assistant U.S. Attorney Georgia Alexakis wrote in a letter attached to the subpoena that the records were being sought “pursuant to an official criminal investigation.”

No charges have been filed in the case. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office could not immediately be reached Wednesday.

The grand jury subpoena was first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times.

It is rare for a Chicago police officer to face federal charges stemming from an on-duty shooting. The last was Marco Proano, who was charged with excessive force for firing 16 times into a moving vehicle filled with teens in December 2013. Proano was convicted by a jury and sentenced in 2017 to five years in prison.

Roman was shot at the Grand Avenue CTA Red Line station downtown on Feb. 28, 2020. The cellphone footage of the incident, which was captured by a CTA customer, was among the most explosive the CPD has grappled with since the 2014 killing of teenager Laquan McDonald by Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke.

Van Dyke was charged in Cook County Criminal Court after police dash camera footage of Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times was made public. A jury convicted him in 2018 of second degree murder and aggravated battery and was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison.

Roman filed a federal lawsuit after he was shot, alleging he was suffering from an anxiety attack when he was “harassed, chased, tackled, pepper-sprayed, tasered and shot twice” without justification by Chicago police Officers Melvina Bogard and Bernard Butler.

In April of last year, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which investigates shootings involving Chicago cops, released more than a dozen video and audio clips from the shooting. While the cellphone video was seen on social media within hours of the shooting, the COPA footage provided closer views of the struggle between Roman and the two offices, as well as the scramble afterward as police tended to the man and passengers squeezed by his body on the floor.

In one of the clips, Bogard and Butler are shown struggling for several minutes to handcuff Roman, on the platform in the 500 block of North State Street after he was stopped for passing between two cars of a moving train. The partners press on top of Roman while repeatedly demanding that he stop resisting.

“Please, let me go,” Roman can be heard to say. “I didn’t do nothing to you. I didn’t do nothing to you.”

“Stop resisting,” one of the officers responds, repeating it nearly a dozen times.

He then yells, “Shoot him.”

At one point in the clip, Roman can be seen standing up and then bending down to pick up his coat. He appears to stagger toward a railing and a shot rings out. Roman can be seen rushing up an escalator.

A second shot can then be heard.

Reaction to the shooting by city officials was unusually swift and direct, perhaps driven by the availability of cellphone video taken by a CTA customer.

Charlie Beck, the interim police superintendent at the time, stripped Bogard and Butler of their police powers, which doesn’t allow them to carry their badges or a gun in performance of their duties.

The Civilian Office of Police Accountability announced in October it had completed its investigation into the shooting. From there, Chicago police Superintendent David Brown had up to 90 days to review COPA’s findings and decide whether he agrees with them, a deadline that passed in mid-January.

Neither side has revealed how they decided on the case. If COPA decided the officers should face punishments ranging from a 31-day suspension to firing and Brown agreed, then the case would go to the city’s Law Department, which would review and likely prepare disciplinary charges against the police officers. It’s the same Law Department that is also representing the officers in a civil lawsuit filed by Roman for the shooting, but different attorneys handle the disciplinary case.

From there, the Law Department would forward the charges to the Chicago Police Board — a nine-member panel that decides on the most serious disciplinary cases — if city attorneys believe the officers should face a minimum punishment of at least a 31-day suspension.

If COPA and Brown don’t agree, then a single Police Board member would review both sides and decide whether the case should go to the full board for a hearing on the evidence.

But as of Wednesday, 13 months since the shooting, there has still been no decision on how city officials plan to proceed with the disciplinary case.

“Regarding the Red Line shooting incident, I’ve been told that if COPA has completed its report, then it’s in process,” said Kristen Cabanban, a Law Department spokeswoman.