Dante Servin, a police officer in Chicago, was cleared of charges of involuntary manslaughter, reckless discharge of a firearm and reckless conduct after his involvement shooting and killing Rekia Boyd back in March of 2012. Boyd’s family is understandably outraged by the verdict. Ms. Boyd, a 22-year-old Black female, was spending time at Douglas Park (in Chicago) when she was shot in the head by Servin on that fateful day in March.

Judge Dennis Porter ruled that prosecutors failed to prove that Dante Servin acted recklessly, saying that Illinois courts have consistently held that anytime an individual points a gun at an intended victim and shoots, it is an intentional act, not a reckless one. He all but said prosecutors should have charged Servin with murder, not involuntary manslaughter.

Servin cannot be retried on a murder charge because of double-jeopardy protections, according to his attorney, Darren O’Brien.

For quite sometime now, there has been an unspoken assumption that Black men were the primary targets of police brutality, which in many instances is true. This past year alone has dispelled that notion, after the wrongful deaths of Melanoid women, children, elderly, and disabled at the hands of the police.

Here is an additional link to the story.

by B. Clark