Prosecutors: Chicago police officers lied about on-duty shooting
As prosecutors closed their case against two Chicago police officers Wednesday at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, they alleged that the officers shot an unarmed man, instigated a gunfight with the man’s companion and then lied about it on official department forms.
The officers, Christopher Liakopoulos, 44, and Ruben Reynoso, 43, are charged with two counts of aggravated battery with a firearm and two counts of official misconduct, all felonies, in connection with a July 2022 on-duty shooting in Pilsen that wounded one person.
They are standing trial before Cook County Judge Lawrence Flood, who told a crowded gallery of observers that he plans to hand down a verdict Thursday afternoon.
“Before they knew they had to get their story straight, they lied,” said Assistant State’s Attorney Alyssa Janicki. “There is no justification here.”
The prosecutors entered into evidence reports that officers must fill out after they have used force in a police encounter. In those, Janicki said, Liakopoulos and Reynoso indicated that they were fired upon first. Surveillance video shows that to be untrue, she said.
Jim McKay, an attorney for Reynoso, though, crumpled up a piece of paper during closing arguments, calling the reports “garbage.”
“(You) check off a box after you’ve been shot at,” he said. “What do you think these men are thinking after these stupid forms are filled out.”
Prosecutors allege that Liakopoulos and Reynoso were unjustified when they shot Miguel Medina, 24, in the 1000 block of West 18th Street around 7 a.m. on July 22, 2022.
The officers, investigators with the major accidents squad, were driving to the police academy to give trainings that morning when Medina and the group he was with caught their eyes, prosecutors said. In an unmarked sedan, the officers passed the group and then slowly reversed back toward them.
Medina, who testified for several hours Friday, said he and some friends, including one who was armed, were on 18th Street after being kicked out of a party nearby. They feared there were gang members in the car when they saw the sedan travel backward toward them, he said.
Medina and the teen he was with began to approach the car, when, prosecutors said, they realized the occupants of the car were older, and turned away. Medina testified that he put up a hand to show he wasn’t a threat.
During the trial, prosecutors showed surveillance video that showed Medina and the teen confer before walking toward the sedan when the gunfire started. During closing arguments, Janicki stopped the video to show Medina putting up his hand and the teen running away.
The teenager exchanged gunfire with the officers.
After the shooting, the video shows the officers get out of the car, but they did not approach Medina, who was on the ground clutching his back. A man who lived nearby testified that he had medical training and took Medina’s pulse and tried to pack the wounds.
Assistant State’s Attorney Thomas Fryska argued that Liakopoulos and Reynoso did not approach Medina or try to kick away a gun because they knew he was unarmed.
“It’s absolutely clear that the defendants knew Mr. Medina was unarmed,” Fryska said.
The officers’ attorneys, though, countered that Medina and the teen perpetrated a “coordinated ambush of Chicago police officers.” They argued that Medina lied at various points about his actions that night and early morning and that he worked together with the teen in the shooting.
The defense called one witness Wednesday, a city worker who was in a street sweeping truck that morning. The worker testified that he saw a man in a white hooded sweatshirt, which video indicated was Medina, with a gun, and then later saw him “exchanging something” with the teen.
“For the love of God, the whole world is upside down,” McKay said. “For any woke prosecutor out there or a civil rights lawyer know this, the law of Illinois does not say a police officer has to take a bullet before he can discharge a weapon.”
The case is among a handful in recent years in which the Cook County state’s attorney’s office has brought charges against local police officers in connection with allegations of unjustified force in on-duty incidents.
