If I can't have her, nobody can

[Monello]

The book I just got done reading made a reference to a murder of a Chicago police officer. So I used the googler to find out more about this case. I found a great article, written way back in 1989. A lot of the issues that the article raises are still valid today. It's an interesting read. A bit long, more of a novella. I find these after the fact articles interesting. Lots of people knew there was an issue but figured someone else would intervene. Then when the facts start coming out, people deny that they had information or contradict other people's accounts of events.

The entire article is here.

Not that it is relevant to this case but the dead officer is the granddaughter of Elijah Muhammad, of the nation of islam.

Here's some excerpts:

[FONT=&quot]This was hardly the first time Ed had given Selena reason to fear him. He had beaten her periodically during most of their 15 years of marriage. The past January, he had cracked a few of her teeth with a pop to the jaw. Selena had tolerated the beatings and stuck with him, partly for the sake of their two young children[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]"I'm not a loser, Joe," Ed frequently told Avila and other members of the tac team. "I went through one divorce. She's not gonna leave me."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]"What do you mean?" Avila would ask him.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]"If I can't have her, nobody's gonna have her."[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]But she doubted she'd get any assistance; by then, her trust in police had evaporated, and she seemed resigned to her fate. She gave a copy of the letter to a friend, with instructions to make it public if anything happened to her "so everyone will know I exhausted all avenues to get help. I don't know where else to turn." She told the friend she was mailing copies to Ed's commander, to her commander, and to the Internal Affairs Division (IAD), which is responsible, along with the Office of Professional Standards (OPS), for reviewing complaints against department members. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]She told friends she first talked to her own commander, George Sams, and that he referred her to Ed's commander, James Ivory. Sams says Selena never told him of her problems with Ed.

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Avila told Sergeant Bonds how Ed had broken down. Bonds says he, in turn, told his immediate' supervisor--Lieutenant Willie Evans--what had happened, and that Evans then conferred with Ed.
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Evans says Bonds never told him about Ed breaking down; he says he didn't confer with Ed that day; he says he didn't learn until after the homicide/suicide that Ed had been making threats.

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]In such cases, a supervisor can decide that an attempt to arrest should be made. Nimocks notified the supervisor on duty in his district, Sergeant George Boone. Boone would not discuss the matter directly with me; but he told police spokesperson Vicini he didn't have Ed arrested because Selena was unwilling to sign a complaint against him. I asked Officer Nimocks whether Selena had wanted Ed arrested. "I can't answer any questions about that," Nimocks said. "I could get jammed on this."[/FONT]