The Chicago Police Board hearing on brutality charges against Officer James Comito, who faced similar accusations in the Jeremiah Mearday case, was a study in conflicting testimony Monday, with one exception.
All of the witnesses, including the alleged victim, agreed that Comito did not kick and beat Dearyal Harvey in a vacant apartment building last April.
Otherwise, the witnesses–Harvey, Comito and three other police officers who went to the building at 4856 W. North Ave.–gave contradictory accounts of what happened there.
Comito, 31, and Officer John Murphy, 28, both three-year veterans, were suspended without pay and accused by department officials of repeatedly kicking the 37-year-old Harvey while arresting him in the building, which was undergoing renovation at the time. Comito and Murphy face dismissal if the charges are upheld.
Harvey, who subsequently pleaded guilty to burglary in the case, testified Monday before hearing officer Cornelia Honchar that he entered the building to look for scrap metal to sell.
He said that when he heard police arriving, he tried to hide under a staircase, but was discovered by the officers.
He said that after he obeyed their orders to come out from his hiding place and was kneeling with both arms raised, two of the four officers began to kick him in the head and upper body more than 10 times.
Special Corporation Council Michael Coffield, who was hired in January to handle the Harvey case, then handed photographs of Camito and Murphy, along with those of Officers Martin Lopez and William Burke, who were in the second squad car that responded to the burglary call, to Harvey.
Burke and Lopez have not been charged with using excessive force and remain on duty, but it was the photos of Burke and Murphy that Harvey identified as being the officers who had kicked him. He said Camito and Lopez had been on the scene, but had not abused him.
On cross-examination by attorney Paul Geiger, who is representing Camito and Murphy, Harvey said he had previously told Coffield essentially the same story.
Soon after the hearing began, the city conceded that Harvey had a record that includes two drug-related felony convictions in addition to the guilty plea on the burglary charge after his April arrest. They also acknowledged that he tested positive for cocaine the night of the incident, and Harvey testified that he had been drinking and smoking crack before his arrest.
Camito, Murphy, Burke and Lopez all gave substantially similar descriptions of the night’s events during their testimony.
They said that after they arrived at the North Avenue building, they spotted someone near a third floor stairwell.
The officers said they gave chase and then heard what sounded like someone falling down the stairs before finding Harvey, blood streaming from a cut over his eye, getting off a pile of old radiators in the darkened first floor vestibule.
They said Harvey was combative and it took the efforts of all four of them handcuff him.
“He started swinging at us right away,”Camito said. “We checked the box in the arrest report that he resisted. No one ever kicked him. No one ever hit him.”
