By Eric Zorn

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

August 19, 2014

                       (Chicago Police Commander Glenn Davis demonstrating the classic "I-aint-did-nunta-nobody" face.)

                   --Some of the dry straw feeding the fires of outrage in Ferguson, Mo., is the suspicion — the fear, the certainty — that police just aren't very good at investigating alleged misdeeds of their own.

Under ordinary circumstances, police officials are at least grudgingly transparent, sharing information that doesn't compromise their investigation. What are the basic facts? How do they jibe with what witnesses are telling authorities? What's the next step and when can we expect it?

But when an officer's conduct comes under fire, they tend to go all opaque.

            (Show 'em the gun line, Boss!)

In Ferguson, it took six days for the public to learn a fundamental detail: the name of the police officer who fired the shots that killed Michael Brown during an altercation on a residential street Aug. 9. And at this writing, we've yet to hear a comprehensive account of the officer's version of events to contrast them with the version told by other witnesses.

"When people don't get information, oftentimes they'll make up their own," said U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill. "Rumors get started, eight or 10 versions of events start going around and the mistrust of police increases."

I contacted Davis to talk to him not just about Ferguson but also about his recent call for Chicago police Cmdr. Glenn Evans to be reassigned pending the conclusion of an investigation into a brutality allegation against him.

That allegation, as chronicled in a recent series of reports by WBEZ-FM reporter Chip Mitchell, is that in January 2013, Evans helped chase down a man believed to be carrying a gun, then placed the barrel of his service revolver into the man's mouth to threaten him as he was being restrained.

An Illinois State Police crime lab report from April, posted online, shows that DNA swabbed from Evans' gun matched the DNA of the arrested man, who is now 24 and being held on other charges at the Pontiac Correctional Center.

Evans is in charge of the Harrison District, a high-crime area on the West Side represented by Davis.

Evans is also, as Davis noted, "at the top of the list" of Chicago police officers with multiple excessive force complaints against them from 1988 to 2008. Davis based that observation on a report compiled for the People's Law Office by the late Steven Whitman, Chicago's former chief epidemiologist and the director of the Urban Health Institute at Mount Sinai Medical Center.

The city's Independent Police Review Authority reportedly reviewed the gun-in-mouth allegation, recommended that Evans be relieved of his police powers pending resolution of the complaint and forwarded its findings to Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez for possible criminal charges.

I use the word "reportedly" because, when I presented the police, the review agency and the prosecutor's office with Mitchell's detailed narrative and asked for comment or clarification, each agency declined to confirm or deny even the most plain factual assertions on grounds that the investigation is still open.

Evans is "under investigation," Mayor Rahm Emanuel said at a press availability last Thursday. "When (police Superintendent) Garry McCarthy makes a recommendation and a conclusion, then I will be involved."

Through an underling, Evans declined comment.

Police spokesman Martin Maloney added, "Throughout his career, Cmdr. Glenn Evans has reduced crime and violence for the communities he has served."

People's Law Office founding partner Flint Taylor, who often represents plaintiffs in police brutality suits but is not involved in this story, said he isn't surprised by the near blackout. The Chicago Police "Department gives lip service to the ideals of transparency," he said. "But a big story like this comes along, and (it makes) it almost impossible to get information."

Closing ranks behind the oft-promoted Evans, Taylor said, "sends the message to other coppers that if your statistics are good, that's all that matters."

"Let people know what has occurred," said Davis, speaking of the Evans case. "Let them know how the department is dealing with it. Provide assurances. Secrecy doesn't breed respect for law enforcement."

And respect for law enforcement — trust, confidence — is the dousing rain that too often doesn't fall on our most troubled communities.       

(Tragic Hero/Quasi-Pac avatar)