CHICAGO — A Cook County judge on Thursday found a Chicago cop accused of improperly seizing and inventorying firearms while on patrol not guilty of all charges. It’s the latest blow for prosecutors who have struggled to win criminal convictions against Chicago cops.
A March 3, 2023, memo from the chief administrator of Chicago’s police oversight agency, COPA, to then-CPD Supt. David Brown gave some insight into the allegations.
In the memo, COPA chief Andrea Kersten recommended that Brown relieve Fair and four other officers of their police powers while the investigation continued.
Kersten said COPA began its investigation when a woman complained to a CPD sergeant, alleging that two Chicago police officers seized a firearm from her fanny pack as she waited for a bus with her boyfriend and juvenile children on October 5, 2021.
“Okay, we understand why you have this weapon. We’ll let you go. This never happened,” one of the officers allegedly told the woman. But, the woman claimed, the cop kept her firearm. COPA found video of the stop and squad car GPS data that placed Fair’s squad car at the location at the time of the stop, Kersten wrote.
The woman’s gun was later inventoried by Fair and another officer who claimed they found it while responding to a ShotSpotter alert at a different location.
“It would be impossible for the officers to have recovered the firearm in the location and manner stated” in the ShotSpotter report, Kersten’s memo said.
COPA investigated Fair and a different officer for another traffic stop near 525 West 127th Place on June 15, 2021. Citing GPS data and the other officer’s body camera, Kersten said Fair searched the vehicle of a former parolee and a female passenger and found “a large stack of currency and a backpack appearing to contain a large quantity of cannabis.”
The second officer told the former parolee that their in-car computer indicated he was supposed to be in prison, which surprised the man, Kersten wrote.
At that point, the other officer’s body camera was deactivated, she said.
“No arrest report or other documentation exists for this incident, nor any inventory report for the cannabis or currency,” according to the memo.
But the second officer did complete an inventory report that day, claiming to have recovered a handgun in a different location, but the case number the officer associated with the seized gun is associated with an unrelated theft of welding tools report from the opposite side of the city, said Kersten.
Fair was also being eyed in a third case involving both of the cops who were involved in the earlier incidents.
The FBI contacted Chicago authorities about it in December 2022, but it occurred on July 7, 2021.
Kersten said Fair and the other two officers involved in the earlier allegations were all working together when they stopped to question a man in the middle of a street. Body camera footage shows the man admitted to having a gun in his fanny pack, and he claimed to have a firearm owner’s ID card, but not a concealed carry license, Kersten wrote.
She said Fair is heard on body camera speaking with the other two officers about “F/P,” a term she said is “code for found property.” The officer then turned his body camera off.
Later that night, one of the officers working with Fair inventoried a gun that “appears to be strikingly similar” to the one seized from the man standing in the middle of the street, Kersten wrote.
The officer’s report allegedly claimed they recovered the gun from the yard of an abandoned home after a citizen flagged them down to report it near 105th and State Street.
Kersten’s memo mentioned two other gun seizures that were under investigation, both from July 2021.
A grand jury returned a true bill against Fair in August 2023, charging him with two counts of official misconduct and two counts of obstruction of justice by destroying evidence.
Court records show he took the case to a bench trial, which ended today with Judge Ursula Walowski finding him not guilty on all charges.
In recent years, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office has filed charges against more than a dozen Chicago police officers, but the vast majority of the accused officers have won acquittals.
- Prosecutors charged officer Christopher Hillas with official misconduct and aggravated battery in 2022, saying he punched a handcuffed man in the groin. The situation, according to Hillas’ attorney, was a misunderstanding that resulted from the men bumping heads. An embarrassed state’s attorney’s office had to drop the case within weeks after a grand jury refused to indict Hillas.
- In a particularly high-profile, racially charged case, prosecutors accused Officer Bruce Dyker of aggravated battery and official misconduct after viral videos showed him struggling with a Black woman who was walking her dog after hours at North Avenue Beach. The state’s attorney’s office dropped the entire case within a year.
- In another incident caught on video, Sgt. Christopher Liakopoulos and Officer Ruben Reynoso were charged with shooting an unarmed man in Pilsen in 2022. Judge Lawrence Flood acquitted both men in September.
- Sgt. Michael Vitellaro gained widespread attention after a video captured him pinning a teenage boy to the ground, mistakenly believing the teen had stolen his son’s bike. The boy was not involved, and prosecutors charged Vitellaro with battery and official misconduct. Judge Paul Pavlus acquitted Vitellaro in a bench trial, saying he did not believe the boy and his friends provided credible testimony.
- CPD Lt. Wilfredo Roman was found not guilty of shoving a flashlight between a teenager’s buttocks while arresting the boy, who was suspected of carjacking.
- Melvina Bogard, charged with shooting an unarmed man as he fled from a physical altercation with her partner on the Grand Red Line platform, was found not guilty.
- Angel Escobedo, a CPD officer accused of threatening two off-duty officers with a gun during an early-morning altercation in Roscoe Village in 2021, was found not guilty in a bench trial by Judge Donald Panarese.
- Earlier this year, a former Chicago cop was found not guilty of killing his girlfriend while he was on the force in 2021.
