By turns combative and defensive, unsure and angry– even funny–Jeremiah Mearday on Thursday offered his account of his alleged beating by two police officers, testifying at a sometimes raucous Chicago Police Board hearing that the patrolmen hit him with their flashlights and kicked him as he called in vain for his father.
After threatening to sit out his case against Officers Matthew Thiel and James Comito Jr., Mearday provided three hours of testimony that cast the two officers as aggressors and revitalized a struggling prosecution.
He described the alleged beating in harrowing terms, saying that he was walking to a nearby drugstore when Thiel and Comito stopped him and, for no apparent reason, began to attack him with their heavy metal flashlights.
Comito hit him with a flashlight first, on the top of his head as he was on his knees, Mearday said. Then later Thiel hit him in the face with his flashlight. The officers kicked him and “stomped” him as he called out for his father, he said.
Contradicting the officers’ version, he denied he ever resisted police.
“After that first blow, I curled up and tried to protect my face. . . . Then I felt more licks,” Mearday said.
“Then,” he added, “Officer Thiel came across my head with a flashlight and knocked my teeth to the back of my head.”
Mearday’s appearance at the Police Board hearing came just two days after he said he might not testify–a possibility his defense lawyer had raised repeatedly.
Clad in green corduroy pants, a checked shirt and tie and a sweater, he sat with his hands clasped in his lap and testified before a packed house that was so loud that hearing officer Michael Berland threatened to eject noisemakers.
They offered support for Mearday, voicing assent for his account of what happened late on Sept. 26 near the corner of Pulaski Road and Potomac Avenue.
“Yes, that’s right,” people in the audience said at one point.
At other times they heckled the lawyer for Thiel and Comito, telling him to “shut up” and, at another juncture, saying to him, “You must be crazy.”
The supporters of the two Grand-Central District officers, on the other hand, muttered under their breath as Mearday, 18, testified. As in the past, most all of them were white and many were colleagues from the department; Mearday’s supporters were mostly black.
As for Mearday, he was nervous at first but seemed to gain confidence as his testimony went on. He was at times even combative, dismissing lawyer Paul Geiger with a wave of his hand and challenging him on other matters. When asked by Geiger if had smoked marijuana on the night he was injured, however, he refused to answer, citing his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination.
Also under cross-examination, he denied that he was a member of the Traveling Vice Lords street gang.
But Mearday was tripped up several times during cross-examination. He admitted using aliases and incorrect dates of birth to avoid arrest, and he admitted to a conviction for crack cocaine possession.
When Geiger asked about a statement he gave to investigators from the Office of Professional Standards, which probes allegations of police brutality, he denied that he said he was hit with a stick, as the investigator wrote.
Mearday’s explanation: He said he was hit with a flashlight, and the investigator must have heard him wrong. But that, he said, was the only word she heard wrong. Geiger, questioning Mearday once again, was clearly disdainful.
“I said flashlight,” said Mearday. “But if you would have been talking to me when my mouth was messed up, you would have thought I said stick too.”
“So the only word they took down wrong was stick, when you really said flashlight, right?” Geiger replied.
“Yeah,” said Mearday.
Geiger also focused on Mearday’s contention that he was suffering from an allergic reaction to seafood that night, questioning whether he would have detoured to pick up his friends on his way to the drug store if the reaction was as bad as Mearday said it was.
“If you were itching real bad, and you needed quick relief. . . . Why did you bother to stop for your friends?” Geiger asked, his voice dripping with skepticism.
“I don’t walk by myself. It ain’t safe to walk around there by yourself,” Mearday replied, prompting some laughter–and a long stare from Geiger.
Outside the hearing room, Geiger said he thought he had dented Mearday’s credibility. “How good can it go if I ask him if he is high that night and he takes the 5th?” he said.
Angela Thomas, the assistant corporation counsel prosecuting the case for the city, said the day had been a good one for her side. “I thought his testimony was solid,” she said, almost beaming.
Thomas also was pleased with the testimony of an emergency room doctor called in to evaluate Mearday’s records. Dr. Thomas Flaherty of Evanston Hospital said Mearday’s injuries were “inconsistent” with a fall to the pavement, the explanation Thiel and Comito offered in their testimony. “There’s lots of problems with the police officers’ accounts,” he said.
Flaherty said as well, though, that he saw no indications of Mearday’s allergic reaction.
How it goes from here is unclear, though. Many of the witnesses for the city, which is seeking to fire the officers, seem beset with problems. One, LaRon Betts, 17, was even arrested on Thursday.
Officials said that Betts, one of the youths who Mearday said was with him when he was attacked, was taken into custody in the police headquarters lobby. He was wanted on a controlled substance possession warrant.
