When a Chicago police officer stands trial in a case that accuses him of lying about a gun arrest, the jury won’t hear about other problematic gun seizures that could lead to his firing, a judge has ruled.
Officer Daniel Fair, 35, was charged last year with writing a bogus report and providing false testimony about the arrest of Rodney Westerfield, who was found with two guns during a search in West Pullman in August 2020.
As part of that case, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office has tried to tie Fair to a broader “scheme” investigated by the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which found that Fair and three other tactical officers seized guns without making arrests and then lied about where the weapons came from.
Despite citing COPA’s allegations in court, prosecutors have declined to file charges in connection with those findings.
“After a thorough review, we concluded that the evidence presented to us was insufficient to meet our burden of proof to approve criminal charges,” the state’s attorney’s office previously has said.
Now, in a ruling June 20, Cook County Circuit Judge Ursula Walowski shot down prosecutors’ bid to introduce “other crimes evidence” in the gun case. The judge said those accusations have little resemblance to the criminal charges and that they’d probably have an unfair “prejudicial effect” on Fair’s case.
Fair’s lawyer Tim Grace said the judge “got it right and followed the law,” calling the evidence regarding any other crimes “irrelevant and highly prejudicial.”
A state's attorney’s spokesperson wouldn’t comment Friday.
Walowski’s ruling marks the second time a Cook County judge has rejected prosecutors’ efforts to bolster arguments in a criminal case by citing what they say is a pattern of misconduct.
In December, prosecutors tried to get Westerfield’s conviction vacated, pointing to “credibility issues involving Officer Fair and the other officers involved in his arrest that came to light after [Westerfield] pled guilty.”
Westerfield pleaded guilty in November 2021 to a felony gun charge and was sentenced to a year in prison, much of that time served at the Cook County Jail.
Judge Michael Kane ruled that separate accusations raised by COPA against Fair and the other cops were irrelevant to Westerfield’s case, noting that Westerfield admitted having two guns.
“I’m not sure what happens in COPA, and frankly I don’t care,” Kane said, referring to a complaint Westerfield made to the agency. “All I care about is what goes on in the courtroom and what I’m given.”
COPA had found that Officers Fair, Jeffery Morrow, Kevin Taylor and Rupert Collins — all former members of a Calumet District tactical team — engaged in misconduct that was “substantial and irrefutable.”
A report the agency issued in January detailed four instances between June 2021 and October 2021 in which it said the officers lied about the source of guns they pulled off the street.
In one case, COPA said, Fair and Morrow recovered a gun used in a killing in Kentucky but let the suspect go. The agency said that, had the officers searched his name in a law enforcement database, they would have learned he had an active arrest warrant for murder.
Fair and Taylor also took cash and marijuana during a vehicle search in June 2021, according to COPA, which said GPS records showed they drove to Fair’s block after the search but that the contraband never was inventoried.
Police Supt. Larry Snelling agreed with COPA’s findings in May and set in motion the process for firing the officers, each who has come under FBI scrutiny.
Fair and Morrow “admitted to a pattern of seizing firearms and completing false reports” in interviews with federal agents, according to COPA, which said both said they were trying to “help” people out by not arresting them for gun crimes.
Morrow also told COPA he was looking to please his bosses by boosting their gun-recovery numbers. He said he viewed one of the gun recoveries as a “positive community interaction,” a controversial measure of police activity that he noted was stressed by former Supt. David Brown.
Taylor told the FBI he was aware of the “pattern of completing false reports,” according to COPA, which said Collins said he didn’t know anything about the practice.
The FBI played a key role in COPA’s investigation, flagging body-camera footage and alerting investigators that one of the seized weapons had been linked to the killing in Kentucky. But COPA said the FBI declined to pursue charges.
Neither the FBI nor the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago would comment.
Calumet District COPA report by Tom Schuba on Scribd
