Chicago Goddam! Cop Who Murdered Quintonio Legrier and Bettie Jones Now Sues Legrier’s Estate

February 8, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a reader:

It recently has come out in the news that the Chicago police officer Robert Rialmo, who shot and killed 19-year-old Quintonio Legrier and 55-year-old Bettie Jones in late December of 2015, is suing Legrier’s estate. (See “Double Murder by Chicago Police: ‘When is this going to end?’“ at revcom.us.) Joel Brodsky, the lawyer for the murdering cop, said that the suit will be filed on the grounds of “assault and emotional distress”—TO THE COP!

Say what!?! This is like a Gestapo agent suing Anne Frank for how traumatic it was to send her to her death in a concentration camp.

“Adding insult to injury” doesn’t even describe how despicable this action is. The words of Rialmo's attorney are beyond disgusting: “Something that bothers Officer Rialmo and myself about the way this is going is the family filed the lawsuit before the funeral. It seems like people believe now that if you have a family member killed by a police officer it’s the functional equivalent of winning the lottery.… ever since the City of Chicago paid $5 million to the McDonald family that seems to be the attitude and it’s just crazy.” The fact that the pig attorney has the nerve to say this while attacking the family of someone the cops just killed shows how unrepentant the police are of their murderous ways.

Put yourself in the shoes of Antonio Legrier and Janet Cooksey, Quintonio’s father and mother: first the cop murders your son, then that same cop sues for your dead son’s assets. Cooksey was rightly outraged, saying, “You took my best friend and my only son, and you say you gonna sue?”

Let’s be crystal clear: It was Rialmo who committed deadly assault when he shot Quintonio Legrier seven times and Bettie Jones three times as they stood inside the doorway of their house on the West Side of Chicago. Larry Rogers Jr., the attorney representing the Jones family, said the officer was about 20 feet away when he opened fire, based on the fact that shell casings were found 25 feet from the front door. There was no reason why they had to die. Bullets were also found in the walls of the home, showing that the shots fired by Rialmo also risked the lives of family and others inside. But Rialmo didn’t care. The emotion that describes more accurately how he acted: cold-blooded indifference for the lives of everyone in the household. The claim of “assault and emotional distress” is just another way of saying that Rialmo supposedly “feared for his life,” a now standard argument that police in every city use to justify murder, backed up by the law.

It was not this Chicago cop who suffered emotional distress as he went about this heartless business, but all those within range of his gun that day and family and friends of these two human beings whose lives have been taken from us. We can only guess what emotional distress was felt by Quintonio Legrier and Bettie Jones in the moments before Rialmo opened fire. But we do know the emotional stress suffered by Bettie’s daughter Latisha, when she came to the doorway to aid her mother and the cops threatened to shoot her as well! And we do know the emotional distress the death of their son has caused Janet Cooksey and Antonio Legrier, now only compounded by this outrageous and ugly retaliatory lawsuit.

This is the real emotional stress that every Black and Brown person feels in this “best of all possible worlds” when they come face to face with and have to deal with the police, and the realization that in the next moment they could be shot and killed for no reason. What kind of a system is it where the reality is that a whole section of society lives under a death sentence? What kind of a system is it where a cop can commit murder and then demand money from the family of the one he has murdered?

Chicago Goddam!
This Cannot Go Down Like This! This Cannot Go On!
Police Murder and Terror Must Stop!
Indict ALL the Killer Cops and Everybody Who Covers Up Their Crimes!
The Whole Damn System Is Guilty as Hell!

 

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