By Jason Meisner | Contact Reporter
Chicago Tribune
March 2, 2016, 3:28 PM
Standing before a federal judge Wednesday, Chicago police Officer Aldo Brown said he was frazzled from years of patrolling a violence-plagued South Side neighborhood when he made a “split-second decision” in 2012 that he wishes he could change.
As security cameras rolled inside a convenience store in the South Shore neighborhood, Brown, a burly veteran tactical officer, punched a man in the face, then continued to strike and kick him after he was brought down to the floor and handcuffed. Brown said he had seen a handgun sticking out of the Jecque Howard’s back pocket, but the video appeared to show otherwise.
Standing before a federal judge Wednesday, Chicago police Officer Aldo Brown said he was frazzled from years of patrolling a violence-plagued South Side neighborhood when he made a “split-second decision” in 2012 that he wishes he could change.
As security cameras rolled inside a convenience store in the South Shore neighborhood, Brown, a burly veteran tactical officer, punched a man in the face, then continued to strike and kick him after he was brought down to the floor and handcuffed. Brown said he had seen a handgun sticking out of the Jecque Howard’s back pocket, but the video appeared to show otherwise.
“We cannot have a policing community where it’s us versus them,” Kendall said. “It’s not a sliding scale where if violence increases, constitutional rights decrease.”
The prison sentence — believed to be the first in seven years for a Chicago cop for an on-duty incident of excessive force — comes amid continued fallout for the Police Department and Mayor Rahm Emanuel over the release months ago of a video showing Laquan McDonald, a black teen, being shot 16 times by a white officer.
Chicago police officers rarely have been charged with excessive force on the job — and usually only when video backs up a victim’s version of events, records show. The last Chicago cop to be given prison for such misconduct came in 2009, when Officer William Cozzi was sentenced to 40 months in prison for the videotaped beating of a combative hospital patient shackled to a wheelchair.
After Wednesday’s sentencing, Brown’s attorney, Daniel Herbert, told reporters he planned to appeal. Citing the city’s startlingly high homicide statistics so far in 2016, Herbert said cases like Brown’s have cast a pall on proactive policing and emboldened criminals.
“Today it was justice for the criminals,” Herbert said in the lobby of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. “The message that we have now sent out is that there is no reason, there is no incentive for a police officer ever to do proactive work again going forward.”
Brown was convicted of a single count of using excessive force after a weeklong trial in October, a month before the release of police dash-cam video of 17-year-old McDonald’s killing led to murder charges against Officer Jason Van Dyke as well as a U.S. Justice Department probe into use of force by the Police Department. The same jury acquitted Brown of two counts of filing false police reports.
Brown, 39, remains free on bond and must report to prison by June 24. He was put on paid desk duty shortly after the incident and currently is suspended without pay. He faces firing because of the felony conviction.
In arguing for probation, Jennifer Russell, another of Brown’s attorneys, said the humiliation of seeing news reports on his case and the constant playing of the beating video was not only punishment enough for Brown but also a staunch deterrent for other cops who might think they can get away with using excessive force.
“Their worst nightmare, rather than getting shot on the job, is to be standing in Aldo Brown’s shoes right now,” Russell said.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Romero, in arguing for up to a 2 1/2-year prison term, said the impact of Brown’s actions on the community and his fellow police officers was enormous.
In addition to Howard’s beating, Brown had two excessive force complaints against him sustained in 2011 and 2012, Romero said. He also was accused in a lawsuit of punching a suspect in the face during a search at a gas station. That suit was settled in 2012 for $37,000, records show.
“Police officers should be held to a higher standard,” Romero said. “The very system we operate in depends on their trustworthiness and their honesty. The defendant failed in every possible way to live up to that standard.”
Acting on a tip in September 2012, Brown, a plainclothes tactical officer in the South Chicago district since 2005, went with his partner, Officer George Stacker, to check out whether drugs were being sold at the Omar Salma convenience store in the 7600 block of South Coles Avenue. The tip also alleged that employees were acting as lookouts for the dealers.
The surveillance footage — which had no audio — showed Brown handcuffing store clerk Howard and several others and searching some customers’ pockets. He then walked up and down the store aisles looking for contraband.
When Howard lifted his shirt to show his waistband, the video showed the 6-foot-3, 265-pound Brown punching the much smaller Howard in the face with a quick right hand. After Howard stumbled back into a cooler door, Brown choked him with his left hand and then cocked his right fist and delivered a blow to Howard’s ribs, the video showed. Brown then dragged Howard along the floor toward the back of the aisle.
As Howard lay on his back on the floor, Brown hit him a third time in the face, according to the video. He then rolled Howard over and handcuffed him. After finding and removing a loaded .22-caliber handgun from Howard’s back pocket, Brown kicked Howard in the side, the video showed.
Howard suffered scratches and bruising but was not seriously injured in the attack, prosecutors said. He later filed a federal lawsuit that the city settled for $100,000.
Testifying in his own defense at trial, Brown told jurors he feared for his life after spotting the gun in Howard’s pocket before he threw the first punch. But the video showed Brown continued to beat and kick Howard for nearly a minute before he took control of the weapon — a reaction prosecutors said proved Brown had lied about seeing the gun.
In a lengthy and emotional statement Wednesday to the judge, Brown’s sister, Annette, complained that her brother was being made a “fall guy” in the fallout over the McDonald shooting and called the charges against him “a disgrace.”
Brown was raised in a tightknit family of seven siblings, the sister said. He met his wife, who is also a Chicago police officer, in elementary school, she said.
Standing next to his sister with his hands splayed on a lectern, Brown burst into tears as she talked about his three children, including a 9-year-old daughter with special needs.
“My brother … is not who the media and the court system is making him out to be,” his sister said. “He’s not a criminal. He’s part of the solution, not part of the problem.”
