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Vol. 76/No. 18      May 7, 2012

 
Illinois rally protests killing by cops
 
BY BETSY FARLEY
AND JOHN HAWKINS
 
NORTH CHICAGO, Ill.—Three hundred and fifty people marched to City Hall here April 21 demanding the firing and prosecution of the cops responsible for the death of Darrin Hanna. At a North Chicago City Council meeting April 9, new evidence was presented against the six cops who beat Hanna Nov. 6 as they arrested him for allegedly attacking his pregnant girlfriend. He died a week later.

In March, the state attorney’s office cleared the cops, claiming they “acted reasonably and appropriately.” On April 20 the U.S. Department of Justice told the Chicago Tribune that it has begun a preliminary inquiry into the case.

Hanna’s relatives played a police audio recording at the April 9 meeting obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that contradicts the cops’ version, indicating Hanna, 45, was not resisting the police and was pleading for his life.

“Put me down, please. I’m about to die,” Hanna is heard on the tape. “I was down. They’re killing me!”

The cops say they Tasered Hanna two or three times, punched him in the face twice, and hit him repeatedly with batons on the back of his legs.

“The county coroner’s report says Hanna received multiple Taser shocks,” Muriel Collison, attorney for Hanna’s mother and son, told the Militant. “The pictures from the medical examiner’s office shows seven Taser marks.”

On Feb. 22, Collison and attorney Kevin O’Connor, said that results of an independent autopsy showed that Hanna died from “sickle cell crisis” and “multisystem organ failure” caused by “multiple blunt traumas,” including hemorrhages of the abdomen, chest and spleen

The tape is “the smoking gun that was never talked about by the state’s attorney or state police,” O’Connor told the Chicago Tribune. “It’s the complete opposite of what they reported. And nobody analyzed it because nobody wanted to analyze it.”

Among the speakers at the April 21 rally were Jesse Jackson, president of Rainbow/Push Coalition; Juan Rivera, exonerated and released from prison after serving 19 years for a rape and murder he did not commit; and state Rep. Rita Mayfield, a cousin of Hanna.

Nearly every week since Hanna was killed dozens of people in North Chicago and from surrounding communities have joined Gloria Carr, Hanna’s mother, and Ralph Peterson, Hanna’s cousin, at meetings of the North Chicago City Council to demand prosecution of the cops and to shine a spotlight on other instances of cop brutality in this predominantly African American working-class town in Lake County, about 35 miles north of Chicago.

Hanna’s family filed a civil wrongful death suit in federal court Dec. 13.
 
 
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Havana conference protests killing of Trayvon Martin
Event recalls Harry Moore, Black rights fighter in Florida
Conference discusses legacy of struggle by blacks in Cuba
Havana event takes up fight against discrimination  
 
 
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