April 14, 2020 • 68 mins
Shapearl enters a legal battle with the City of Chicago, to get them to release videos from the night Courtney died. She contacts a journalism organization called the Invisible Institute and teams up with them to investigate the case. With this added pressure, the city releases the videos, and Shapearl and her family gather to watch. New information prompts the Invisible Institute and Shapearl to re-examine the case.
A co-production of Topic Studios, The Intercept, the Invisible Institute, and iHeartRadio, in association with Tenderfoot TV.
We want to hear from you, email us at info@somebodypodcast.com or leave us a voicemail at 773-270-0121.
Host: Shapearl Wells
Producers: Alison Flowers and Bill Healy
Story Editor: Sarah Geis
Associate Producer: Ellen Glover
Executive Producer, Invisible Institute: Jamie Kalven
Executive Producers, Topic Studios: Maria Zuckerman, Christy Gressman and Leital Molad with Special Thanks to Lizzie Jacobs
Supervising Producer, The Intercept: Roger Hodge
Sound Design: Carl Scott and Bart Warshaw
Mix Engineer: Michael Raphael
Theme Song: “Everybody’s Something,” Chance the Rapper
Additional Reporting: Sam Stecklow, Annie Nguyen, Kahari Blackburn, Rajiv Sinclair, Henri Adams, Matilda Vojak, Dana Brozost-Kelleher, Frances McDonald, Diana Akmakjian, Andrew Fan, Erisa Apantaku and Maddie Anderson.
Translation Support: Benny Hernandez Ocampo and Emma Perez
Fact Checking: Nawal Arjini
Original Music: Eric Butler and Nate Fox of the Social Experiment
Special thanks to Chaclyn Hunt, Maira Khwaja, Andrew Fan, Anwuli Anigbo, Trina Reynolds-Tyler, Sukari Stone, Erisa Apantaku, Craig Futterman, Rick Rowley, Yanilda Gonzalez, Forrest Stuart, Mariah Garcia, Sarah Kinter, Shannon Heffernan, Aaron Moselle, Alan Mills, Vidura Jong-Bahadur, Jason Schumer, Justin Williams and the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation Media Center, Matt Topic, Chris Rasmussen, Bennett Epstein, David Bralow and Julie Wolf.
Theme song “Everybody’s Something” by Chancelor J. Bennett and DJ Ozone with compositions by Roger Karsher, Chuck Magione and James Yancey of Universal Music Publishing Group and Slum Village (R.L. Altman III, Titus Glover/Baatin, J Dilla); recording artist/performance by Chance the Rapper, appearing courtesy of himself and Chance the Rapper LLC.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
What you're about to hear in the following episode does
not implicate the Chicago police in the murder of Courtney.
Copeland previously on somebody, and so when they said that
he was combative, we were shocked with that information. We
never got their report about him that he was combative.
I know how he is, and I know he didn't
(00:23):
do anything to pose a threat. I remember him specifically
being handcuffed to the bed, and so we were like, Okay,
where's the police, we need these handcuffs all. My name
is Chaparral Wells. This is the story of my son, Courtney,
a young black man in a fancy car who wound
up with a bullet in his back in front of
(00:44):
a Chicago police station. It's the story of my search
for the truth. This is somebody. Everybody, these guys every day,
no bide He's not no. That's right. March four, one hour,
(01:19):
sixteen minutes and fifty three seconds. This is the last
time you hear Courtney alive, just moments after he's been shot.
It's difficult to understand, but I hear my baby saying
(01:42):
I've been shot. I've been shot. Chary. I felt as
a mom, like my baby he's hurt and I can't
be there. When police gave me Courtney's phone back, I
(02:04):
went straight to his recent calls and there it was.
But it took a whole year between me learning that
this call existed and hearing it for myself. Did my
son down? What do you mean as you did Courtney
Copeland down? Now? What do you think? Absolutely so? Why
(02:29):
weren't you Why didn't you inform me the first time
we met. That was a recording of my conversation with police.
They never told me that they had nine on one
call on Courtney. I wanted to hear the last moments
of my son's life. I felt like as a mom,
I deserved that It had been over a year since
(02:52):
they had contacted me about my son's style. I felt
like my son had become a statistic, like he was
basicly put on the shelf. The day after he died,
and I was in a battle with the city to
get them to release any in all videos that they had.
I wanted somebody, anybody to hear me. Okay, Facebook, I'm
(03:17):
gonna try this again, Like I was saying, you know,
we are the average black family trying to fight against
a huge city and everywhere we turned, We're here the
doors getting slammed in our face. And I was like,
(03:37):
God just helped me to get to where I need
to be. I was reading through articles and I just
happened to come across article about Lakwan. Lakwan McDonald was
the biggest cover up that's the Chicago Police Department ever
had in its existence, far as far as I'm concerned.
(03:59):
Lakwan got shot sixteen times front and back, and he
was running away from police. He was seventeen years old,
a sixteen shots in a cover up. The police, the
city try to hide what happened to Lakwan until a
(04:24):
judge forced them to release that video. Now, the dash
camp video shows Van Dyke shooting and killing seventeen year
old Lakwan McDonald in two thousand fourteen. In the black community.
None of us were surprised to see this, but the
Lakwa McDonald case got the whole country talking about race
and the police for months. The only explanation offered for
(04:49):
while Lakwan McDonald died on that street was that an
officer had fired at him in self defense. That's Rachel
Maddow and the Kwon McDonald had been shot in the chest.
That was the public story about this case. The only
thing that interrupted that public trajectory is that some very
aggressive journalism happened in Chicago. I heard about this reporter
who blew open the case of Lakwa McDonald. Mr Calvin,
(05:13):
thank you very much for your time to that. I
appreciate you being here. It's good to be with you.
Um you've been chasing the information on this case for
so long. I decided I would reach out to that reporter,
Jamie Calvin, so I sent an email. I didn't even
know if anyone would actually read my note, but before
I knew it, I had someone from his organization on
(05:33):
the phone. So thank you for writing to us. No,
I've you know, been following or what you did with
La Kwan and uh, just trying to get someone to
listen to me because I'm like, it's just it just
doesn't add up. A few days later, I was sitting
down with Jamie. I brought all my papers with me,
(05:53):
my fouls, I mean, I had everything. I have such
strong impressions of that day, so I remember you're coming
and it's coming, and sitting right here at this table.
Your ability to find in that stack of paper without
file folders with tabs naming to find whatever document you
wanted to illustrate a points you were making, which I
(06:16):
think I still think of as a kind of card shark,
you know, virtuosity. But when I walked him through the case,
I didn't know at the end of the conversation how
it would go, what he would say, but I felt
that he was listening to me. I've had a lot
of these conversations in the course of my career, none
quite like this, because you've laid out the uh sequence
(06:38):
of events as you understood it, and identified the inconsistencies
and anomalies and just suspect things and the police account.
Jamie said that his journalism team will take the case.
They call themselves the Invisible Institute. When I first went there,
(07:01):
I was like, this really is invisible because the way
it's set back into a very secluded area, you'll never
know it exists, like a little detective agency type of feeling.
He actually referred me to his partner, Alison Flowers. Good
to see you. How are you? Allison is a journalist
at the Invisible Institute. I saw your busy this weekend
(07:24):
moving your daughter into college. Right first, I just wanted
to check in and see how your mother's day was.
She's so sweet, but she's a hardball. She will get
the answers for you. How long were you there? Were
there for? And Allison, you're sitting next to me right now.
Let's see, we've known each other now for almost three years.
It's been a long road and we've been in touch
(07:46):
almost every single day. Yes, okay, Alison, I'm back. Okay, Hey, Chap,
I'm here with Jamie and Bill by the way, Bills
with the Invisible Institute too. So person, how are you
feeling after the revelations. I remember when I first met you.
I think we were downstairs in the coffee shop, and
(08:07):
you were like very meticulous. You were taking notes, you
hit your list of questions, you hit Okay, hey, we're
gonna hit this, We're gonna do this, We're gonna do that.
At this point, I was like, hey, I love her,
you know. I remember you being very measured, but I
could also tell that you were in a lot of pain,
(08:27):
but it was almost sort of secondary to your drive.
When I first met you, you told me what you
believe happened to Courtney, that he died after an encounter
with police, and that this seemed like a traffic stop
gone wrong, and you had all this information that you've compiled,
the handcuffing, the fact that there was no blood in
the car, and the fact that they weren't releasing the
(08:48):
videos to you, and so you thought maybe Courtney was
shot somewhere else. There were just a lot of unanswered
questions at that time. So from here on out, Alison
is going to join me in this investigation. So one
of the first things we did was pull records for
the police officers who were outside the station with Courtney.
There are a lot of officers on the scene, but
(09:09):
there were two main players, Officer Andrew Block and Sergeant
Sean Ronan. When Courtney pulled up to the station, Officer
Block was the first person he saw. Block said Courtney
got out of his car and rushed over to him.
He told him, I've been shot, and then he collapsed
to playing down a granted centeral of donim and just
(09:31):
said he was shot. Okay, look at the ms okay
right away. Block called an ambulance immediately, which is protocol.
And when we dug into his history, we didn't see much.
He's now a lieutenant, but then they're Sergeant Sean Ronan. Guys,
(09:52):
as soon as you can try and pinpoint the location,
we've got Rogan Glass at Felban and Long. It might
have happened over here, so we're just trying figure it out.
Ronan was the one running the show, and when we
checked out his history on the force, we found some
alarming stuff and he got a whole bunch of complaints
against him, thirty complaints that we've identified, more complaints than
(10:14):
eighty nine of other Chicago police officers. Ronan's been disciplined twice,
and that's pretty unusual, given that most of the time
in Chicago, complaints are dismissed in favor of police officers.
They are descriptions of him calling a black man a nigga,
a motherfucker, and a stupid ass gang bank and Ronan's
(10:35):
been accused of false arrest, planting evidence, slamming a man's
face into the concrete, and in one case, he and
some other officers were accused of throwing a man out
of window, tazing and beating him, and then refusing him
medical care. That case was settled, Ronan stayed on the force,
and then there's this from the year after Courtney died.
(11:09):
It's a video of Ronan shooting at a man during
a traffic stop. Six times. Police put in reports that
the man pointed a gun at them. He survived, Oh
my god. And Ronan was involved in another shooting, but
for that one he was given one of Chicago Police's
top awards, the Superintendent's Medal of Valor. I should note
(11:30):
that most officers never fired their guns over their whole careers.
So the fact that Ronan has done this at least twice,
that's a big deal. When I was investigating Courtney's murder
on my own, the city of Chicago didn't pay me
any mind. But when the Invisible Institute came aboard, they
(11:51):
changed their tune. The Invisible Institute sent in a ton
of record requests, not just for the records of the
officers on the scene, but for police videos and the
recordings from the scanner. And this got the attention of
the detectives. Finally, did he say why he was calling?
(12:12):
Just out of the blue after Fritilla. Here I am
on the phone with one of them Visible Institute reporters, Sam.
He said, I noticed, you guys have this valid forward
your question. I said, it's you're right to know. I
told Sam that the detective asked me to come down
to the station. Are you gonna go? I'm trying to
figure out if I should go. A few days later,
(12:40):
I'm sitting down with those officers face to face. It's
been more than a year since our first and only meeting,
just after Courtney died, and I'm recording once again. When
I first heard Chapel's lease recordings, I was disturbed by
(13:03):
the way the officer spoke to her, a grieving mother.
We want to make sure there's context to everything, so
we're gonna let large, unedited chunks at this tape play out.
The first time I met police in that dingy old building,
I played alone because I needed their help. The second time,
I didn't come to play with them. I don't needed answers.
(13:25):
I needed to know what happened to myself. That's part
of your record. We sat across from each other from
the conference table, white board, vending machines, and fluorescent lights department.
I brought in my big case Foul, which had the
paramedics report that said my son had been handcuffed and
claimed he was violent and combative. This just starts me
(13:48):
greatly because of the fact that my son was handcuffed.
I'm like, okay, if he collapses, at what point he
was he arrived at the hospital and uh, handcuffed? There
was a police officer that also followed the amulance. And
(14:08):
this is what I'm upset because I'm like, how do
you guys not know that my son was handcuffed? They
kept questioning what I had uncovered? What when was he handcuffed?
If you're saying that he was handcuffed during the time,
we never said he was handcuffed. Man, Okay, what's that is?
I mean, that's a that's a a CPD document. Okay,
that's a CFD Okay, okay, So you're denying that he No, No,
(14:34):
I didn't say that. No, don't put police. Don't put
words in my mouth. I'm saying that that's that's that's
not a police department document. That's just that first. Yeah,
that's a Chicago part of the document to review it
and cofens. Okay, again, it says handcuffs. Clearly I've never know. Okays, No,
(14:55):
it's obviously touch what I never know the handcuffed my
baby as he was dying. Don't know where and they
acted like it was routine. We can see why the
handcuffs were necessary, or restraints, restraints whatever, however he was
restrainted wasps or folies or whatever. Devices specifically said, who's
(15:15):
telling you at the hospital that he was handcuffed? Oh?
The nurses? Everybody told me who because we need to
talk to specifically? UM, I gave them the E R
nurse's name, Clarissa Hawkins. She's the one who told me
that Courtney was handcuffed to the stretcher when he arrived
at the hospital. They should have been with him in
(15:35):
the ambulance. That's the policy completely Again, if you put
handcuffs on a patient, you would also then in turn
put that information into your file that said that this
person was handcuffs. I've never done that. Why not? Why
(15:55):
why wouldn't he under arrest? Who knows? You tell me
he was never? I don't know, but I'm telling you
I don't know. It's a lot of things that you
told me that have not panned out, such a one
in regards to his uh in regards to him well here,
(16:17):
I have no no, no, You're you're saying a lot
of things. Tell me why I'm gonna give you. Well,
I've been investigating in regards to this case. Okay, go ahead, Okay.
I felt angry. I felt like they were gas lighting me,
like they were just sitting here lying in my face,
even though the proof is right in front of me.
So again, at one point in time from him, what
(16:38):
does that have anything to do with a solving new
shot up? What does that have any Does that have
anything to do with a solving crime. No, what they're
saying is the fact that he was handcuffed had nothing
to do with solving his murder. It's not probitive evidence
to solving the crime of who shot your son, ma'am. Okay,
(17:01):
you want to do which is our end goal? Which
is our end goal? So what so what this tells you?
I'm I'm more than Tom. Well, you know what, I'm
just kind of this way, um, because back and forth,
back and forth, this could have gone on forever. I
(17:37):
was mad as hell when they told me that they
still had not even talked to the on same officers
after a year of investigating my son's murder. They had
their own reports and they just assumed what was written
was true, and they were growing tired of listening to
me that's basically what you' that's what the officer. These
(18:00):
are all assumptions, These are not facts. Then they started
talking very sarcastic to me, flipping through their reports, saying
to each other, how many fouls you got there? It
appears you put some work into its working it. I'm
not denying that he didn't put any work. I'm just
trying to make him long borrow. That's my life, this
is my chat. They kept trying to tell me how
(18:22):
much work they put into the case, the time driving
around that neighborhood looking for video with me and trying
to find video evidence. But they missed up. I know
they did because I was talking to people that they
had never talked to. And if I could have talked
to the on SENE officers myself, I would have certainty
(18:43):
that this is not a possibility. So what you're telling
me is this, you believe I don't believe the police
targeted your son. I believe shot and killed him in
front of the police stage. No. I believe that not
enough has been done to solve courtneys murder. What would
you like? What would you like done that I haven't done.
(19:04):
I personally would have went back and reinterviewed everybody to
make sure that we They assume police officers tell the truth,
but I don't. Sergeant Mitchell, Yes, now they saw in
the history that no no, no, no, no, no, don't
even don't even no no, no no, no. What what I'm
saying to you is that this problem didn't just occur
(19:27):
with Courtney Copeland's case. The breakdown from the community. And
you know, I'm not not just just I am talking reality.
I'm here to talk to you until you begin to
meet to these white men or having none of my
experience as a black woman in Chicago, your department has
(19:51):
not saying this particular I'm just saying CPD in general
has a history that has been tainted. I know it's unfair, absolutely,
especially to these two gentlemen in this room. Absolutely it is.
I'm saying, I know it's unfair, but that is just
bring it off because it's the reality that it's not
(20:13):
with these two guys, because I know him personally, noting
that they didn't think to my son, I take offense
to that. I really do, because your painting would have
broad brush. Man, It's not a broader brush when it's
everyday reality. Do you understand Okay, start to I'm not
you know what, do you understand that that's the reality
(20:34):
with black and brown people in Chicago? Not? And I'm
telling you not what else. I wanted them to understand
that this wasn't only my perspective. And if if I
haven't been clear on this, I apologize. Our goal, our
stated goal here is to find, arrest, charge, and convict
(20:56):
the offenders who did this series. That's our state goal. Okay,
no variants, no nothing, no politics, no bullshit, no nothing.
And I'll tell you something else. Regardless of what you
may think of me because I'm white, I it doesn't
talking that, but I love you to think that. I really,
I really don't care because I've been a policeman long
(21:16):
enough where there's some people that just that this is
what is what they have a problem with. I want
to let you know, number one, I don't have a
problem with it. If that's the way you feel, that's
the way you feel about me, that's fine. I just know.
But I I just want to want everybody. I want
to let you know it still is you. You could
spit on the floor when you see me, it's still
(21:37):
not going to affect me from from from working, and
if I whether we never talk again or we become good,
it doesn't matter one way or another to me. If
something good comes that I'm able to pick up and
run with, I'm gonna I'm gonna run with it with
with your son's murder, And whether you yet thank me
(21:58):
or tell me to get fucked at the end all
of this, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I'm definitely
gonna thank you because that's my Yeah, I want to know, why,
so do I. I? But no, okay, so do I.
But as far as this whole black, brown, green ship,
it doesn't. I said, you can't discount the history of
what happened. It was time ago. But before I left,
(22:22):
there was one more thing they wanted to be sure
to say to me. This also bothered me from her
conversation the other day, the fact that you're recording me
without my knowledge or consent. If you if you ask
me something, I'll answer you as truthful as I know,
but do not be surreptitiously recording me. It's all I'll
(22:43):
tell you. It's it's a crime. It's actually not illegal,
And I'm sure your attorney would tell you the same thing,
just like I can't turn this on and record you.
So I'm okay with be a reported Well no more,
I know, but I have to let you know and
I'm not okay being recorded. So just so you know,
I don't nothing. I neither do I. But you're still
(23:05):
you do not have money to record me. It's illegal.
So just so you know, because I know you've been
recording me every conversation. You're recording me from the first
time of first day we Matt, why do you say that?
Because do I have a reason to record it? I
don't know. You eidently you think you do, because your
your whole focus on this thing is is something the
(23:26):
police did wrong. I just wanted to know what happened
to my son, and to me, nothing was off the table.
What you're saying is he was calling nine one one
while he was on the phone while the police were
and then the police killed him. I don't know if
the police kid. I don't know. I don't they have
(23:47):
good luck with your good luck with your parallel investigation.
I don't know good luck. I don't know good luck
because you didn't get any answers that I don't have.
What I'm saying that I am open to all scenarios,
so am I. By this time the supervising sergeant had
already walked out the room. Where you go, Okay, let's
(24:17):
hit it. I needed to find someone who would tell
me the truth, someone who was right there outside the
police station. I got the name of one of the
e m t s who cared for Courtney at the scene,
Daniel Cortez Allison, and I decided to knock on his
(24:40):
front door. They probably think it's somebody electionary. Well, what
do you do? You want to write a Right as
we were leaving, he opened the door. I had a
mic clip to my jacket, so that's why it sounds
a little fuzzy. Oh hi, hi, the cortest. My name
(25:01):
is Pearl Wells. And you were one of the mt
that actually worked on my son the night that he
had passed away. And right now actually uh chronic chronicling
this journey and a documentary and I am recording right now.
And I was wondering if you had a few moments
that I can talk to you about. Yes, can I
show you his picture? And it was on the on
(25:25):
Grand and Central. I had Courtney's flyer with me, the
same one I had put up all over the neighborhood
and the picture of the BMW, and we were actually
trying to get some information about his final moments. I'm sorry, man,
but I don't recall uh much about it. I've been
(25:45):
on the job for many years and a lot of runs.
I'm sorry remember anything at all? Was that black guy
and a BMW. We asked if you remember Courtney being
handcuff He says he didn't recall. I don't recall. Okay,
do you see a lot of gunshot victims handcuffed? I
(26:06):
can't answer that, and I don't know. I'm not sure,
so okay, because what she's concerned about her two things.
One she really wants to know just his final moments,
which it sounds like you just don't remember, okay. And
the other thing is it's very concerning to her that
he was handcuffed, and this was before he was in
the ambulance. And so I'm not a police officer paramedica,
(26:30):
so whatever their procedures are, I don't know, But I
know what paramedics don't handcuff people. Do you remember your cuffs?
That's for the police. So you wouldn't have requested the
handcuffs on a patient unless they're being physically violent towards me.
But you don't remember this. Unless someone's physically being violent
towards me, then I would have them arrested because hitting
(26:50):
meus like hitting a coff. Okay, do you remember that?
I don't know. I don't recall that. I don't remember
any of that. Do you remember this case at all?
Not much. I've already explained that, so you can stop questioning. Okay.
I don't need to be aggressive. I just wanted to
already an answer. So that's an answer, right, Okay, was
(27:11):
an answer. Okay, I'm sorry for yours. Thank you, thank
you so much. Thank you for your time, for not
being better healthful, you know I got I'm sorry for
the loss health. Thank you so much. All Right, have
a good day. Thank you. Let me get this straight.
(27:33):
He didn't remember, he didn't remember my son, who was
right in front of the district police station. I mean, like,
how often does this happen? Right? And there was one
thing he specifically did not remember though. Yeah, he didn't
remember Courtney being combative. He did not say that Courtney
(27:54):
was fighting, he was violent. But this is the narrative
that they wrote in their reports. I mean this whole
case for me is about uncovering the truth, but it's
also about clearing Courtney's name. After the Invisible Institute stepped in,
(28:18):
all of a sudden, the city had no problems releasing
the videos from the night Courtney died. They also released
the police radio from that night, picking a male of
His name is Chicotey Copeland, The birth of a second
(28:42):
It's hard to understand, but if you listen closely, the
officer says, he gave me a date of birth. Then
he pauses, he gave me a date of birth, the
birth of The detectives at the hospital told me Corton
didn't say anything after collapse, but Courtney was talking to
them and giving them information. Finally, almost five hundred days
(29:11):
after my son died, the city sent me a bunch
of DVDs in the mail. I truly felt so sick
about it because what I was about to see. I
braced myself and I popped the first one in the
player in the bedroom. The disc won't even play because
the city sent them in this crazy format G sixty four,
(29:35):
which I've never even heard of. This was gonna be
the first time I was going to see the final
moments of my son, and then for those videos not
to play, and they knew that I wouldn't be able
to open this format. It's like they were trying to
make it impossible for me to find out the truth.
(29:57):
But about a week later, the folks from the Invisible
Institute were able to convert the footage and they brought
it over to my house. Thank you for coming, technical wizards.
Thank you guys have not you know? So what do
(30:22):
you think of it? Why don't you watch that? Oh?
But we sat at the dining room table. It was me,
my mom, Brent, Courtney's little sisters, and my unc kimp.
The videos came from four different cameras. The main one
was in front of the police station. There were also
(30:43):
other camera angles from around the block. Remember it's in
the middle of the night. The video is kind of
grainy and pretty bad. This is the police station. You
can see you, yeah, the addresses. In the following too,
we see the BMW outside the police station. The car
is still running. We can see the smoke coming from
the exhaust pipe. There are two police cars behind the BMW.
(31:09):
Then another one shows up with its lights on. It
looks like Courtney's car has been pulled over, but Courtney
himself it's nowhere in sight. Right then the camera swings away,
But why would you move the ham here? You know
it's something going on over there. And you can see
the lights bouncing off right. You know there are cars
(31:30):
right and you can see them increase as a few
more cars come out. We don't even know what's going on.
We still can't see where cortneyer is or what the
police are doing. Finally, a few minutes later, the camera
comes back to the scene, but still no Courtney. It
looks like his jacket that's there. It was freezing that night.
(31:53):
I know Courtney was wearing his pea coat when he
was shot. There's a bullet hole in the back. But
here it is us crumbled up on the ground. Where
is he? A police officers looking through the back window
of the BMW with a flashlight. And then the camera
pans and we see Courtney for the first time. Courtney
(32:24):
is laying on the ground on his elbows and he's
shifting his weight. He was wearing a red Nike sweater.
It was his favorite sweater. Courtney is surrounded by officers.
Ye see right here, this is what the tow drop
driver saw see Courtney is there on the ground. Look
(32:45):
at that. Hey wait a minute, Look my son is
on his hands and knees. He's reaching up for somebody
to help him. On the police radio, this is when
they call for more officers to the scene. Courtney is
(33:06):
definitely not combative. He's not violent or danger to others. Oh,
the E M T S are there now, right now,
there's an ambulance on the scene. There's an unmarked car
blocking part of the camera's view of Courtney. Somebody, either
a paramedic or cop is pulling him up like fast
(33:28):
and forcefully from the ground. It looks like there could
be a stretcher right there. The video, it's really blurry here.
You can't really see what's going on. But according to
the paramedics report, this is the moment that Courtney was handcuffed.
So handing this has to be. This is what they're
(33:53):
doing on. This is what they're doing on they're comfortable.
Oh no, happier to be a combat it right now.
Just get through his feet. Yeah, so name what they're doing.
(34:26):
Oh oh, then Courtney was gone. Maybe he's in the ambulance.
All we know is that we don't see him again.
(34:48):
My whole family. We were all at the dining room table,
just holding on to each other. We went back through
the footage of Courtney's driving en route to his girlfriend's
house before he got shot. Jamie pointed out that Cordney's
(35:10):
BMW was being followed by two police cars, one mark
and one unmarked, and then these three cars they disappeared
off the screen, and when we see Courtney next, he's
on the ground reaching up for help and he's surrounded
(35:34):
by police. When the Invisible Institute came to my house
(36:00):
with those police videos and we saw Courtney on his knees,
shot and begging for help, I saw for myself what
I already felt in my bone, the taps. Here's what
(36:24):
we saw. Two police cars following Courtney's BMW. They're all
they're driving down the street. The next time we see
my son, he's on the ground in front of the
police station. What happened during those moments we couldn't see
(36:49):
between him driving his car down the street and ended
up with a bullet in his back. Everything was telling
me that the police shot my son. I sat with
this for a few days. I was by myself. My husband,
Brent was out of town, he drives a truck, so
he was on his job. But then Jamie from the
(37:14):
Invisible Institute came back to my door. He re examined
those videos and he had new information information that changed everything.
The idea that the police were implicated. It seems much
less likely now, okay, um, which, as I say, I'm
(37:38):
speaking for myself, is something of a relief. I mean,
we don't want that to be true, even though a
big story, but another you don't want it to be true.
After he left, I called Brent and explained everything. Hello, Hey,
(37:59):
can you talk. He was out on the road driving
through the rain. The first car that we thought were
the police that was not Courtney's vehicle in the in
the league Okay, And they found some new evidence that
said that it may have happened the way uh. The
(38:22):
police stated they looked at the car more closely, the
shape of the trunk, the headlights in the windows. It
did not match the structure of a BMW. It turns
out it was never Courtney's BMW. We were looking at
the wrong car. And there is a video showing Courtney's
(38:45):
actual car and you can see him going down the
side street not being followed by anyone speeding towards the
police station. One thing that Jamie said before he left
the first time is that he told me, now we
have to go investigate our investigation. And I'm glad he
(39:08):
did because I wouldn't want to implicate wrongly anyone for
this murder. So now it's seen that police never followed
Courtney's car after all that it may have happened like
the police told us Courtney was shot and then drove
(39:28):
himself to the police for help. Uh. You know, they
still you know, feel that, you know, he was treated
kind of badly, but they don't necessarily believe at this
time they actually did the shooting. I mean, it's it's
hard to swallow, you know, it's hard to swallow, you know. Um.
(39:53):
I mean because Sunday I was feeling okay, maybe they
actually did do it, But now I'm okay, maybe they didn't.
Look pretty much. That gets square one where you probably
he still never find camel, right, it's still alighted down on. Yeah. Yeah,
(40:25):
it was just stormy because it's because it's like a
I food now here, okay, babe, I'm uh, I just
need to process all of this. I'll be here for
you as soon as I can. All right, love, all right,
(40:47):
by bye. When I thought police killed Courtney and made
me feel like his death served some type of higher
purpose like Emmett Till or Lakwa McDonald, they're killing actually
(41:09):
woke up the country with Emmett Till when people saw
how he was murdered, they were shocked to see such brutality,
and the same with Lakwam McDonald. With Corney dying, if
the police did it, it would have been a major
(41:30):
cover up and it would have shook Chicago to the core.
But if cops didn't kill him, then his death was
just another unsolved Chicago murder. I went from knowing who
killed my son to knowing nothing. I talked with him
(42:00):
Visible Institute folks and Alison, you and Jamie told me
that you stay on the case and we start this
all again. But the way police treated Courtney still wasn't okay,
and it wasn't just We need to reckon with this
and we need to find out who really did kill Courtney.
(42:20):
So that's where we're headed next. But first we needed
to better understand how we got this wrong. So I
sat down with Jamie to talk about it. So I
think we were in retrospect predisposed to find that the
police were implicated in the murder At the Invisible Institute,
(42:40):
our goal is to hold public institutions accountable, and we
see a lot of cases involving police abuse. In the
past decade, the city of Chicago has paid out more
than a half a billion dollars in police misconduct lawsuits.
All of this is true, and it influenced the way
we saw those videos. Now we had to walk back
(43:01):
our assumptions and start over again. The metaphor of walking
back and assumption feels exactly right. You're really trying to
to reorient and and reboot the really the entire investigation. Alison,
what's been your experience with police. My perspective on the
(43:23):
police has changed over time. When I was a kid,
I thought, like a lot of white people do, that
the police existed just to keep everybody safe. One time,
I was in my twenties and I thought someone was
breaking into my apartment, so I rushed into my closet
and I called nine one one, and when the police came,
they just told me it was a raccoon officer. Friendly.
(43:48):
Then later as a reporter, I've called on the police
to help me with stories, and I've also had to
call out the police and report on their abuses of power.
Now I'm married and my husband is black, and he's
been pulled over by police searched by dogs twice. The
last time this happened, he was actually on his way
(44:08):
back from a job interview and wearing a suit. We
have a three year old son, and he was actually
just a few months old when I met you, Chapral
So your story about losing your son just hit me
right in the gut. I remember um having the conversation
(44:28):
with my son of how to interact with police. Make
sure you don't reach for anything. Cortney, be very calm,
be very polite and courteous. Yes, sir, Yes, ma'am. You
have to have these conversations. It's like it's different for
white people in America and black people in America. It
(44:51):
has always been different, and there has always been a
sense of h I believe comfort for white people in
a sense of fear for black people when it comes
to police. Right. I wasn't raised to fear the police,
and we were. For me and Brent, our fear goes
(45:12):
way way back. Both our grandparents. They grew up in
the South. You know. My grandmother was born in nineteen Yeah,
my grandfather's a nineteen and they saw a lot and
my grandmother actually had to flee from the South because
(45:32):
of all the hangings and the lynching and everything like that.
My grandmother must always called him the man. You know,
we had to flee from the man. We had to
leave because of the man. She said that, you know,
she only experienced some type of freedom when she came
to Chicago. I'm just glad that she didn't see what
(45:53):
happened to Courdney, because I don't think that she would
be able to have survived it. Yeah. Sometimes I just
sit here and I just think, like I'm still in
the days. There was m a rhyme that came to
mind that I heard back in high school, like senior year,
(46:16):
because it's talking about police and police brutality, and it
said you were put here to protect us, but who
protects us from you? I remember when Courtney was about
six months old. It was the summer, and we were
(46:39):
staying with my grandmother in the Inglewood area. One day,
we were all sitting on the porch, just me and
my cousins, my uncle's and then all of a sudden game.
Bankers just started shooting out of nowhere, and I remember
my uncle grabbing Courtney out of my hands and rushing
(47:01):
us up in the house upstairs so that we can
be safe. I remember telling myself, I cannot lose my
son to these streets. That day, I said I'm moving.
I lived out of my car for about two weeks
until I was able to secure an apartment. I was like,
(47:24):
my son is going to have a chance of surviving,
and that was my goal, was just to keep him safe,
to keep him out of harm's way so that he
can grow up and and enjoy his life without worrying
about being shot and killed in Chicago. C O. P
(47:45):
E l A n D. First name Courtney. Um can
I have a date of three four sixteen. I've been
dreading it, but I went back to the place where
they did Courtney's autopsy, the medical Examiner's office, the mom
(48:07):
The last time I was there, I identified my son's
body on a metal slab. That's the doctor that did
the examination. That's the case number, and then this is
the doctor's assisting she'll be able to speak with you
and maybe set up something where you guys can speak
about it and clarify. I was there because my son's
case was coming down to two questions. One who killed Courtney?
(48:31):
I promise you we're gonna dig into that soon. And
two did police do everything they could to help him?
I needed to know if my son could have survived
this injury. There's a note in the hospital records that
Courtney's a order got hit, that's the main artery in
(48:54):
the body, But the autopsy report says nothing about that
order getting hit. In fact, it says it was intact.
So I just left the emmy's office. I want to know,
but I don't want to know. So anyway, I'm gonna
(49:16):
give them a call and see what they say. Hopefully
they could answer these present questions. The eight order getting
hit means he would have bled out within minutes, and
this all mattered because there were delays in Courtney's case. Yes,
I felt that they took too long to get him
(49:39):
to the hospital. From the time that he was on
the scene in front of the police station into the
time that they drove off in the ambulance, it was
about thirteen minutes. Every part of me wants to believe
that my son could have survived. Every part part of me.
(50:01):
Every part of me wants to believe that I had
time to get to him. Every part of me wants
to believe. So, Chapel, you were waiting to get answers
from the medical examiner, and we'd already tried to talk
to Courtney's surgeon, but the hospital wouldn't let her speak
(50:22):
to us. So in the meantime we turned to other
medical experts to look at the case. From the Corners report,
it appeared that the bullet went through his lung and
then it was launched somewhere in the muscles of his
left neck. Grace Chang is a trauma surgeon at Mount Sinai,
a hospital on Chicago's West Side. We actually talked to
three trauma surgeons, but Dr Chang was the only one
(50:43):
whould go on the record, and right away she told
us something that helped us understand why there was no
blood in Courtney's car, because he wasn't just bleeding out,
he was bleeding in. You could say, his his chest
cavity was filling with blood. Yeah. Um, that's a pretty
large receptacle. It can hold a live hold several leaders
(51:05):
of blood Assentially. Dr Chang described the emergency surgery when
doctors opened up Courtney's chest. You go in there, you
resuscitate their heart, and you can also fix and stop
the bleeding. So that's why you do that. She also
noticed the discrepancy between the surgeon's report and the autopsy
report about the a ORDA asked had it gone through
the a ORDA? Typically that's not a survival injury either,
(51:27):
So that's why I watch my butt down to the
Medical Examiner's office for answers. Was Courtney's a order hit
or not? Did he have a chance or not? In
the next day, they called me back Alice, and I
hoped right on the phone right after she said her
finding when she did the autopsy, Uh, they did. She
(51:51):
didn't find any damage today order. So that's why she
didn't include it in her in her autopsy. And she's like,
you know, you know he did lead out. Um Uh,
she said you could tell that by the amount of
blood that was in his chest. She had actually reviewed
his file again and she says that his order was intact.
It still brings me back to had they taken him
(52:14):
to the hospital right away, because he's begging him like
he helped me, help me. Don't stand around looking at me,
helped me get me for the hospital. For the life
of me, the life of me, Alixon, I can't say
that that he would have survived. I can't say a
(52:34):
I just wanted them to give him a chance. They
didn't give him a chance. Courtney's heart stopped in the
ambulance four minutes before he arrived at the hospital. If
he had got there just a few minutes earlier, maybe
(52:55):
he could have been saved. So every delay mattered. We
kept coming back to the fact that Courtney was handcuffed.
Reports say it was because he was combative, and by
the way, it's not uncommon for trauma patients to present
a combative, especially when they're losing lung function, but handcuffs
(53:17):
aren't used when trauma patients are combative. A spokesperson for
the Chicago Fire Department told me they're paramedics, don't use handcuffs,
they don't have handcuffs, and they don't restrain people with handcuffs.
We exchanged dozens of emails, but then when we asked
the spokesperson about Courtney's case specifically, that's when their story changed.
(53:40):
He told me they requested cuffs because Courtney was flailing
in the street. Before paramedics arrived. But that's just not
what the video shows. It doesn't make sense. Well, we
know at this point that they had his plates, and
they had his name, and they knew that the car
wasn't registered to him, and they were treating him as
a suspect more in the victim. That's just the bottom line.
(54:03):
You can see him reaching up begging them for help.
You see this on this tape. And the fact that
they're saying that they're only resolution was to handcuff him.
I just know that they wouldn't have done this to
(54:23):
somebody who was white. Um okay, let me just pull
up the video. It's about roughly nineteen minutes into the video.
But um, h okay, he's a guy in the red hoodie.
(54:51):
I mean, looking at this segment of the video, it
looks as if he's lying there mostly a mobile as
police are kind of standing up ound him. Stephen Russian
as a professor at Loyola Law School. He specializes in
police reform. We wanted his take on the police's treatment
of Courtney, so we watched the footage together of Courtney
(55:11):
outside the police station and there's a crowd of officers
just milling around and it does not look to me
as though he's receiving any medical treatment. It looks like
he's being treated like a suspect. Because I think one
thing we haven't talked about is the number of officers
around him, all of which is relevant. If you're going
to say he's a threat, if he's a risk other people,
threat to the officers, you have one too, three four
(55:32):
officers looks like and yeah, if you hadn't he hadn't
put this in context for him, it looks like they
are handcuffing a suspect to bring him in for an arrest.
There were at least eleven police officers on the scene.
I asked Russian about another fact. There were no police
on board the ambulance to unlock the handcuffs. Courtney's ear nurse, CLARESSA.
Hawkins told us they couldn't get to work on Courtney
(55:54):
right away because they had to wait for the police
to arrive. Um, if they're arresting someone suffering a you know,
life threatening wound, and that person has to go to
the hospital and they're in cuffs, do you know whether
the police have to accompany in the ambulance follow because
I think they would need to be there to like
on handcuff it, right, so it's not. But in this
(56:16):
case they weren't in the ambulance. As a lawyer of
that starts down there like a civil liability issue there
immediately right. What Russian is saying is this, by handcuffing
Courtney and not going with him in the ambulance, police
officers may have stood in the way of Courtney's life
saving treatment. There's another delay that also bothered me. Courtney
(56:41):
was shot on the northwest side of Chicago, but got
transported all the way east to Illinois Masonic Hospital in
the Lakeview neighborhood. Paramedics and Illinois are supposed to take
the gunshot victims to the closest trauma center that can
take them. The closest trauma center was not Anoymasonic, but
(57:01):
maybe it was the fastest one to get there that night. Nope,
we checked that out too, So we found out that
there were actually two other trauma centers that were closer
and faster to get to, Strosure and Mount Sinai. Not
dramatically closer, but when we're talking about life or death,
minutes really do matter. It could have saved him another
(57:24):
five to ten minutes on the road. We looked at
all different routes, times of day, and traffic patterns, and
why these four or five or even ten minutes matters.
It's because my son's heart stopped four minutes before getting
to the hospital. Every day. I can't help thinking about
(57:47):
the difference those few minutes could have made. I mean,
what do you do with this information? None of this
makes sense to me. I where to God not if
it makes sense. It hurts my heart. I'll tell you
(58:08):
I'm sorry. I think Courtneys. You know, I didn't want
to say he's lucky because what happened to him was
so unlucky. But you know, if you're going to have
any mom in the world to get answers for you,
you wanted to be Chaparral Wells. Police never found any
(58:32):
physical evidence in the car, just some broken glass on
the street. The state crime lab analyze the bullet fragment
lodged into Courtney's neck and the bullet jacket, but it
just wasn't enough to identify a gun. But we knew
a neighborhood two shots, so where's the other bullet? I'm
(58:57):
just surprised that there wasn't anything recovered from the autopsy
um or or in the car. That's just just kind
of amazing that there was nothing. We talked to this
firearms forensic expert, David Brundage. He said he was surprised
police didn't find anything when they processed the car. The
police searched the car unseen. Brundish said they should have
(59:21):
also searched the car under better lighting, like an open garage.
So actually, let me get my evidence back ready. Brundage
told us that sometimes bullets can hide in the seams
of car seats. They just leave tiny slits and until
you remove the seat and search, you'll never know. It
(59:43):
could actually lead us to the murder weapon. He said
the second bullet might still be in the car and
gave us instructions on how to search for it. Well
not so. We found a BMW certified mechanic at a
little auto shop in the sub birds. He agreed to
help us take the car apart, both the seat the
(01:00:07):
entire seats and take it out of the bat and
then where are you gonna put it? We took out
the front seats. After all this time we saw some
broken glass. All right, Chaparral, you want a girl ahead
and grabbed that glass. Tell many pieces? Is that one, two, three,
(01:00:28):
four or five? Six? Okay, so we don't find anything here,
Where's the bullet? We kept searching, but we didn't find
a bullet. We did find some debris that looked like
it could be something, so we put it in evidence backs.
(01:00:49):
We sent them back to the firearms for rented expert,
and we waited. When we got the news, we were disappointed.
I'm getting you have some sort of news to report. Yes, well, yes,
it is not very very informative. But I finished looking
at the physical items that you shipped to me. I
(01:01:15):
did find one kernel of gunpowder. Yeah. He told us
that when he looked at it under a microscope, all
he could see was that the gunpowder was likely from
the Winchester Owl Incorporation, which sells to a number of
ammunition companies. It could have been used in almost any
(01:01:39):
type of gun. Well, at least we looked because our
investigation was going to be thorough. Now that we were
rebooting the investigation, we all returned to the street where
we believe Courtney was shot, the spot where his friends
first collected broken glass and saw skid marks, and where
(01:02:00):
a neighbor said she heard shots fired. Courtney was shot
on Chicago's northwest Side. It's a neighborhood called Belmont Craigan.
I went out there right after Courtney died, putting up posters,
knocking on doors, begging somebody to tell me something. We
knew that you'd already covered this ground, but now we
(01:02:21):
wanted to hit every single house between there and the
police station. We needed to find witnesses. Chaparl is going
to lead the way. Um, but how many cards do
you How many spots do you have? I got three,
I got the feats down. I got three spots. We
set out with a crew, a group of journalism students,
of course, use Chaparl, me and our producer, Bill so Chaparral.
(01:02:46):
We're in your van, the same one that you used
to haul Courtney and his buddies to basketball games as
they were growing up. And I noticed a strawberry air
freshener dangling from your rear view mirror, and this necklace
that belonged to Courtney. The necklace was us a medallion
that he had earned from world ventures. It reminds me
of him, and it makes me feel close to him.
(01:03:11):
So the first thing you wanted to show us the
police cameras near the station. But I knew that that camera,
that's the camera that rotates. Do you see all these
cameras boom boom boom. It's like Kadrean cameras right here,
and you tell me that you don't have any camera.
We drove over to the intersection of Grand and Central,
(01:03:32):
the police station where Courtney collapsed on the ground. We
put on our blinkers and we got out. It looks
like they still have his photo up. Check Bill and
are at the lighthole on the corner, and there was
a flyer with Courtney's face on it. It was one
of the reward posters I had put up more than
(01:03:55):
a year before. We went inside. Bill and I stood
on the side of the tree right outside the police station. Yeah,
his photo is still there. They were tearing them all down,
but I'm glad to see that this one it's still up.
(01:04:16):
It's him. It's been almost two years. Everything right now
is a mystery, everything because it's not just about police
killing black people, but it's also about them allowing them
to die to him that he was nothing but a
(01:04:37):
niggle on the street who got shot. I feel that
sometimes you know, when you go through these situations, the
dead could no longer speak, so you have to do
it for them. Right in the middle of all of this,
a cop pools up behind us because he asks Bill,
(01:04:58):
if we got into an acci that we're good. You
know the reason why you guys are blocking traffic right?
Her son died right here, right, and so we're I
feel bad for that, but I mean, you guys could
have parked over here this way. You're not gonna what
are your sofa? Move out the way, don't block traffic.
(01:05:21):
We called it a day rush, bro. Thank you everybody,
so bods every day Nobody's nothing, no body right. Somebody
(01:05:51):
is a co production of The Invisible Institute, The Intercept,
Topic Studios, and I Heart Radio in association with Tenderfoot TV.
I'm Chaparral Wells. This podcast is produced by Alison Flowers
and Bill Heally. Sarah Guice is our story editor. Ellen
Glover is our associate producer for The Invisible Institute. Jamie
(01:06:15):
Calvin is executive producer for Topic Studios. Maria Zuckerman, Christie Gressman,
and Letyle Mallard are executive producers. Special thanks to Lizzie
Jacobs for the intercept. Roger Hodge, Deputy Editor, is supervising producer.
Sound designed by Carl Scott and Bart Warshaw. Michael Raphael
(01:06:37):
is our mixed engineer. Our theme song, Everybody's Something is
by Chance the Rapper. Original music for the podcast by
Nate Fox of The Social Experiment and Eric Butler. Additional
reporting by Sam Stecklow, Annie When, Khari Blackburn, Ray, Jef Sinclair,
Henry Adams, Matilda Voyat, Dana Brozos, Kelleher for Answers, McDonald,
(01:07:01):
Diana Archmagian, Maddie Anderson, Andrew Fan and Rissa a pin Taku.
Translation support by Benny Hernandez Ocampo and Emma Prez. Fact
checking by Noah Are Jenny Special thanks to Chris Rasmussen,
Bennett Epstein, Matt Topic, David Bralow, and Julie Wolf. We
(01:07:23):
want to hear from you. Email us at info at
Somebody podcast dot com or leave us a voicemail at
seven seven three to seven zero zero one two one.
To learn more about this case and for links to
additional materials, go to our show page at Somebody podcast
(01:07:44):
dot com. You can also find a list of everyone
we want to thank. There so many people helped us
along the way,
What you're about to hear in the following episode does
not implicate the Chicago police in the murder of Courtney.
Copeland previously on somebody, and so when they said that
he was combative, we were shocked with that information. We
never got their report about him that he was combative.
I know how he is, and I know he didn't
(00:23):
do anything to pose a threat. I remember him specifically
being handcuffed to the bed, and so we were like, Okay,
where's the police, we need these handcuffs all. My name
is Chaparral Wells. This is the story of my son, Courtney,
a young black man in a fancy car who wound
up with a bullet in his back in front of
(00:44):
a Chicago police station. It's the story of my search
for the truth. This is somebody. Everybody, these guys every day,
no bide He's not no. That's right. March four, one hour,
(01:19):
sixteen minutes and fifty three seconds. This is the last
time you hear Courtney alive, just moments after he's been shot.
It's difficult to understand, but I hear my baby saying
(01:42):
I've been shot. I've been shot. Chary. I felt as
a mom, like my baby he's hurt and I can't
be there. When police gave me Courtney's phone back, I
(02:04):
went straight to his recent calls and there it was.
But it took a whole year between me learning that
this call existed and hearing it for myself. Did my
son down? What do you mean as you did Courtney
Copeland down? Now? What do you think? Absolutely so? Why
(02:29):
weren't you Why didn't you inform me the first time
we met. That was a recording of my conversation with police.
They never told me that they had nine on one
call on Courtney. I wanted to hear the last moments
of my son's life. I felt like as a mom,
I deserved that It had been over a year since
(02:52):
they had contacted me about my son's style. I felt
like my son had become a statistic, like he was
basicly put on the shelf. The day after he died,
and I was in a battle with the city to
get them to release any in all videos that they had.
I wanted somebody, anybody to hear me. Okay, Facebook, I'm
(03:17):
gonna try this again, Like I was saying, you know,
we are the average black family trying to fight against
a huge city and everywhere we turned, We're here the
doors getting slammed in our face. And I was like,
(03:37):
God just helped me to get to where I need
to be. I was reading through articles and I just
happened to come across article about Lakwan. Lakwan McDonald was
the biggest cover up that's the Chicago Police Department ever
had in its existence, far as far as I'm concerned.
(03:59):
Lakwan got shot sixteen times front and back, and he
was running away from police. He was seventeen years old,
a sixteen shots in a cover up. The police, the
city try to hide what happened to Lakwan until a
(04:24):
judge forced them to release that video. Now, the dash
camp video shows Van Dyke shooting and killing seventeen year
old Lakwan McDonald in two thousand fourteen. In the black community.
None of us were surprised to see this, but the
Lakwa McDonald case got the whole country talking about race
and the police for months. The only explanation offered for
(04:49):
while Lakwan McDonald died on that street was that an
officer had fired at him in self defense. That's Rachel
Maddow and the Kwon McDonald had been shot in the chest.
That was the public story about this case. The only
thing that interrupted that public trajectory is that some very
aggressive journalism happened in Chicago. I heard about this reporter
who blew open the case of Lakwa McDonald. Mr Calvin,
(05:13):
thank you very much for your time to that. I
appreciate you being here. It's good to be with you.
Um you've been chasing the information on this case for
so long. I decided I would reach out to that reporter,
Jamie Calvin, so I sent an email. I didn't even
know if anyone would actually read my note, but before
I knew it, I had someone from his organization on
(05:33):
the phone. So thank you for writing to us. No,
I've you know, been following or what you did with
La Kwan and uh, just trying to get someone to
listen to me because I'm like, it's just it just
doesn't add up. A few days later, I was sitting
down with Jamie. I brought all my papers with me,
(05:53):
my fouls, I mean, I had everything. I have such
strong impressions of that day, so I remember you're coming
and it's coming, and sitting right here at this table.
Your ability to find in that stack of paper without
file folders with tabs naming to find whatever document you
wanted to illustrate a points you were making, which I
(06:16):
think I still think of as a kind of card shark,
you know, virtuosity. But when I walked him through the case,
I didn't know at the end of the conversation how
it would go, what he would say, but I felt
that he was listening to me. I've had a lot
of these conversations in the course of my career, none
quite like this, because you've laid out the uh sequence
(06:38):
of events as you understood it, and identified the inconsistencies
and anomalies and just suspect things and the police account.
Jamie said that his journalism team will take the case.
They call themselves the Invisible Institute. When I first went there,
(07:01):
I was like, this really is invisible because the way
it's set back into a very secluded area, you'll never
know it exists, like a little detective agency type of feeling.
He actually referred me to his partner, Alison Flowers. Good
to see you. How are you? Allison is a journalist
at the Invisible Institute. I saw your busy this weekend
(07:24):
moving your daughter into college. Right first, I just wanted
to check in and see how your mother's day was.
She's so sweet, but she's a hardball. She will get
the answers for you. How long were you there? Were
there for? And Allison, you're sitting next to me right now.
Let's see, we've known each other now for almost three years.
It's been a long road and we've been in touch
(07:46):
almost every single day. Yes, okay, Alison, I'm back. Okay, Hey, Chap,
I'm here with Jamie and Bill by the way, Bills
with the Invisible Institute too. So person, how are you
feeling after the revelations. I remember when I first met you.
I think we were downstairs in the coffee shop, and
(08:07):
you were like very meticulous. You were taking notes, you
hit your list of questions, you hit Okay, hey, we're
gonna hit this, We're gonna do this, We're gonna do that.
At this point, I was like, hey, I love her,
you know. I remember you being very measured, but I
could also tell that you were in a lot of pain,
(08:27):
but it was almost sort of secondary to your drive.
When I first met you, you told me what you
believe happened to Courtney, that he died after an encounter
with police, and that this seemed like a traffic stop
gone wrong, and you had all this information that you've compiled,
the handcuffing, the fact that there was no blood in
the car, and the fact that they weren't releasing the
(08:48):
videos to you, and so you thought maybe Courtney was
shot somewhere else. There were just a lot of unanswered
questions at that time. So from here on out, Alison
is going to join me in this investigation. So one
of the first things we did was pull records for
the police officers who were outside the station with Courtney.
There are a lot of officers on the scene, but
(09:09):
there were two main players, Officer Andrew Block and Sergeant
Sean Ronan. When Courtney pulled up to the station, Officer
Block was the first person he saw. Block said Courtney
got out of his car and rushed over to him.
He told him, I've been shot, and then he collapsed
to playing down a granted centeral of donim and just
(09:31):
said he was shot. Okay, look at the ms okay
right away. Block called an ambulance immediately, which is protocol.
And when we dug into his history, we didn't see much.
He's now a lieutenant, but then they're Sergeant Sean Ronan. Guys,
(09:52):
as soon as you can try and pinpoint the location,
we've got Rogan Glass at Felban and Long. It might
have happened over here, so we're just trying figure it out.
Ronan was the one running the show, and when we
checked out his history on the force, we found some
alarming stuff and he got a whole bunch of complaints
against him, thirty complaints that we've identified, more complaints than
(10:14):
eighty nine of other Chicago police officers. Ronan's been disciplined twice,
and that's pretty unusual, given that most of the time
in Chicago, complaints are dismissed in favor of police officers.
They are descriptions of him calling a black man a nigga,
a motherfucker, and a stupid ass gang bank and Ronan's
(10:35):
been accused of false arrest, planting evidence, slamming a man's
face into the concrete, and in one case, he and
some other officers were accused of throwing a man out
of window, tazing and beating him, and then refusing him
medical care. That case was settled, Ronan stayed on the force,
and then there's this from the year after Courtney died.
(11:09):
It's a video of Ronan shooting at a man during
a traffic stop. Six times. Police put in reports that
the man pointed a gun at them. He survived, Oh
my god. And Ronan was involved in another shooting, but
for that one he was given one of Chicago Police's
top awards, the Superintendent's Medal of Valor. I should note
(11:30):
that most officers never fired their guns over their whole careers.
So the fact that Ronan has done this at least twice,
that's a big deal. When I was investigating Courtney's murder
on my own, the city of Chicago didn't pay me
any mind. But when the Invisible Institute came aboard, they
(11:51):
changed their tune. The Invisible Institute sent in a ton
of record requests, not just for the records of the
officers on the scene, but for police videos and the
recordings from the scanner. And this got the attention of
the detectives. Finally, did he say why he was calling?
(12:12):
Just out of the blue after Fritilla. Here I am
on the phone with one of them Visible Institute reporters, Sam.
He said, I noticed, you guys have this valid forward
your question. I said, it's you're right to know. I
told Sam that the detective asked me to come down
to the station. Are you gonna go? I'm trying to
figure out if I should go. A few days later,
(12:40):
I'm sitting down with those officers face to face. It's
been more than a year since our first and only meeting,
just after Courtney died, and I'm recording once again. When
I first heard Chapel's lease recordings, I was disturbed by
(13:03):
the way the officer spoke to her, a grieving mother.
We want to make sure there's context to everything, so
we're gonna let large, unedited chunks at this tape play out.
The first time I met police in that dingy old building,
I played alone because I needed their help. The second time,
I didn't come to play with them. I don't needed answers.
(13:25):
I needed to know what happened to myself. That's part
of your record. We sat across from each other from
the conference table, white board, vending machines, and fluorescent lights department.
I brought in my big case Foul, which had the
paramedics report that said my son had been handcuffed and
claimed he was violent and combative. This just starts me
(13:48):
greatly because of the fact that my son was handcuffed.
I'm like, okay, if he collapses, at what point he
was he arrived at the hospital and uh, handcuffed? There
was a police officer that also followed the amulance. And
(14:08):
this is what I'm upset because I'm like, how do
you guys not know that my son was handcuffed? They
kept questioning what I had uncovered? What when was he handcuffed?
If you're saying that he was handcuffed during the time,
we never said he was handcuffed. Man, Okay, what's that is?
I mean, that's a that's a a CPD document. Okay,
that's a CFD Okay, okay, So you're denying that he No, No,
(14:34):
I didn't say that. No, don't put police. Don't put
words in my mouth. I'm saying that that's that's that's
not a police department document. That's just that first. Yeah,
that's a Chicago part of the document to review it
and cofens. Okay, again, it says handcuffs. Clearly I've never know. Okays, No,
(14:55):
it's obviously touch what I never know the handcuffed my
baby as he was dying. Don't know where and they
acted like it was routine. We can see why the
handcuffs were necessary, or restraints, restraints whatever, however he was
restrainted wasps or folies or whatever. Devices specifically said, who's
(15:15):
telling you at the hospital that he was handcuffed? Oh?
The nurses? Everybody told me who because we need to
talk to specifically? UM, I gave them the E R
nurse's name, Clarissa Hawkins. She's the one who told me
that Courtney was handcuffed to the stretcher when he arrived
at the hospital. They should have been with him in
(15:35):
the ambulance. That's the policy completely Again, if you put
handcuffs on a patient, you would also then in turn
put that information into your file that said that this
person was handcuffs. I've never done that. Why not? Why
(15:55):
why wouldn't he under arrest? Who knows? You tell me
he was never? I don't know, but I'm telling you
I don't know. It's a lot of things that you
told me that have not panned out, such a one
in regards to his uh in regards to him well here,
(16:17):
I have no no, no, You're you're saying a lot
of things. Tell me why I'm gonna give you. Well,
I've been investigating in regards to this case. Okay, go ahead, Okay.
I felt angry. I felt like they were gas lighting me,
like they were just sitting here lying in my face,
even though the proof is right in front of me.
So again, at one point in time from him, what
(16:38):
does that have anything to do with a solving new
shot up? What does that have any Does that have
anything to do with a solving crime. No, what they're
saying is the fact that he was handcuffed had nothing
to do with solving his murder. It's not probitive evidence
to solving the crime of who shot your son, ma'am. Okay,
(17:01):
you want to do which is our end goal? Which
is our end goal? So what so what this tells you?
I'm I'm more than Tom. Well, you know what, I'm
just kind of this way, um, because back and forth,
back and forth, this could have gone on forever. I
(17:37):
was mad as hell when they told me that they
still had not even talked to the on same officers
after a year of investigating my son's murder. They had
their own reports and they just assumed what was written
was true, and they were growing tired of listening to
me that's basically what you' that's what the officer. These
(18:00):
are all assumptions, These are not facts. Then they started
talking very sarcastic to me, flipping through their reports, saying
to each other, how many fouls you got there? It
appears you put some work into its working it. I'm
not denying that he didn't put any work. I'm just
trying to make him long borrow. That's my life, this
is my chat. They kept trying to tell me how
(18:22):
much work they put into the case, the time driving
around that neighborhood looking for video with me and trying
to find video evidence. But they missed up. I know
they did because I was talking to people that they
had never talked to. And if I could have talked
to the on SENE officers myself, I would have certainty
(18:43):
that this is not a possibility. So what you're telling
me is this, you believe I don't believe the police
targeted your son. I believe shot and killed him in
front of the police stage. No. I believe that not
enough has been done to solve courtneys murder. What would
you like? What would you like done that I haven't done.
(19:04):
I personally would have went back and reinterviewed everybody to
make sure that we They assume police officers tell the truth,
but I don't. Sergeant Mitchell, Yes, now they saw in
the history that no no, no, no, no, no, don't
even don't even no no, no no, no. What what I'm
saying to you is that this problem didn't just occur
(19:27):
with Courtney Copeland's case. The breakdown from the community. And
you know, I'm not not just just I am talking reality.
I'm here to talk to you until you begin to
meet to these white men or having none of my
experience as a black woman in Chicago, your department has
(19:51):
not saying this particular I'm just saying CPD in general
has a history that has been tainted. I know it's unfair, absolutely,
especially to these two gentlemen in this room. Absolutely it is.
I'm saying, I know it's unfair, but that is just
bring it off because it's the reality that it's not
(20:13):
with these two guys, because I know him personally, noting
that they didn't think to my son, I take offense
to that. I really do, because your painting would have
broad brush. Man, It's not a broader brush when it's
everyday reality. Do you understand Okay, start to I'm not
you know what, do you understand that that's the reality
(20:34):
with black and brown people in Chicago? Not? And I'm
telling you not what else. I wanted them to understand
that this wasn't only my perspective. And if if I
haven't been clear on this, I apologize. Our goal, our
stated goal here is to find, arrest, charge, and convict
(20:56):
the offenders who did this series. That's our state goal. Okay,
no variants, no nothing, no politics, no bullshit, no nothing.
And I'll tell you something else. Regardless of what you
may think of me because I'm white, I it doesn't
talking that, but I love you to think that. I really,
I really don't care because I've been a policeman long
(21:16):
enough where there's some people that just that this is
what is what they have a problem with. I want
to let you know, number one, I don't have a
problem with it. If that's the way you feel, that's
the way you feel about me, that's fine. I just know.
But I I just want to want everybody. I want
to let you know it still is you. You could
spit on the floor when you see me, it's still
(21:37):
not going to affect me from from from working, and
if I whether we never talk again or we become good,
it doesn't matter one way or another to me. If
something good comes that I'm able to pick up and
run with, I'm gonna I'm gonna run with it with
with your son's murder, And whether you yet thank me
(21:58):
or tell me to get fucked at the end all
of this, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I'm definitely
gonna thank you because that's my Yeah, I want to know, why,
so do I. I? But no, okay, so do I.
But as far as this whole black, brown, green ship,
it doesn't. I said, you can't discount the history of
what happened. It was time ago. But before I left,
(22:22):
there was one more thing they wanted to be sure
to say to me. This also bothered me from her
conversation the other day, the fact that you're recording me
without my knowledge or consent. If you if you ask
me something, I'll answer you as truthful as I know,
but do not be surreptitiously recording me. It's all I'll
(22:43):
tell you. It's it's a crime. It's actually not illegal,
And I'm sure your attorney would tell you the same thing,
just like I can't turn this on and record you.
So I'm okay with be a reported Well no more,
I know, but I have to let you know and
I'm not okay being recorded. So just so you know,
I don't nothing. I neither do I. But you're still
(23:05):
you do not have money to record me. It's illegal.
So just so you know, because I know you've been
recording me every conversation. You're recording me from the first
time of first day we Matt, why do you say that?
Because do I have a reason to record it? I
don't know. You eidently you think you do, because your
your whole focus on this thing is is something the
(23:26):
police did wrong. I just wanted to know what happened
to my son, and to me, nothing was off the table.
What you're saying is he was calling nine one one
while he was on the phone while the police were
and then the police killed him. I don't know if
the police kid. I don't know. I don't they have
(23:47):
good luck with your good luck with your parallel investigation.
I don't know good luck. I don't know good luck
because you didn't get any answers that I don't have.
What I'm saying that I am open to all scenarios,
so am I. By this time the supervising sergeant had
already walked out the room. Where you go, Okay, let's
(24:17):
hit it. I needed to find someone who would tell
me the truth, someone who was right there outside the
police station. I got the name of one of the
e m t s who cared for Courtney at the scene,
Daniel Cortez Allison, and I decided to knock on his
(24:40):
front door. They probably think it's somebody electionary. Well, what
do you do? You want to write a Right as
we were leaving, he opened the door. I had a
mic clip to my jacket, so that's why it sounds
a little fuzzy. Oh hi, hi, the cortest. My name
(25:01):
is Pearl Wells. And you were one of the mt
that actually worked on my son the night that he
had passed away. And right now actually uh chronic chronicling
this journey and a documentary and I am recording right now.
And I was wondering if you had a few moments
that I can talk to you about. Yes, can I
show you his picture? And it was on the on
(25:25):
Grand and Central. I had Courtney's flyer with me, the
same one I had put up all over the neighborhood
and the picture of the BMW, and we were actually
trying to get some information about his final moments. I'm sorry, man,
but I don't recall uh much about it. I've been
(25:45):
on the job for many years and a lot of runs.
I'm sorry remember anything at all? Was that black guy
and a BMW. We asked if you remember Courtney being
handcuff He says he didn't recall. I don't recall. Okay,
do you see a lot of gunshot victims handcuffed? I
(26:06):
can't answer that, and I don't know. I'm not sure,
so okay, because what she's concerned about her two things.
One she really wants to know just his final moments,
which it sounds like you just don't remember, okay. And
the other thing is it's very concerning to her that
he was handcuffed, and this was before he was in
the ambulance. And so I'm not a police officer paramedica,
(26:30):
so whatever their procedures are, I don't know, But I
know what paramedics don't handcuff people. Do you remember your cuffs?
That's for the police. So you wouldn't have requested the
handcuffs on a patient unless they're being physically violent towards me.
But you don't remember this. Unless someone's physically being violent
towards me, then I would have them arrested because hitting
(26:50):
meus like hitting a coff. Okay, do you remember that?
I don't know. I don't recall that. I don't remember
any of that. Do you remember this case at all?
Not much. I've already explained that, so you can stop questioning. Okay.
I don't need to be aggressive. I just wanted to
already an answer. So that's an answer, right, Okay, was
(27:11):
an answer. Okay, I'm sorry for yours. Thank you, thank
you so much. Thank you for your time, for not
being better healthful, you know I got I'm sorry for
the loss health. Thank you so much. All Right, have
a good day. Thank you. Let me get this straight.
(27:33):
He didn't remember, he didn't remember my son, who was
right in front of the district police station. I mean, like,
how often does this happen? Right? And there was one
thing he specifically did not remember though. Yeah, he didn't
remember Courtney being combative. He did not say that Courtney
(27:54):
was fighting, he was violent. But this is the narrative
that they wrote in their reports. I mean this whole
case for me is about uncovering the truth, but it's
also about clearing Courtney's name. After the Invisible Institute stepped in,
(28:18):
all of a sudden, the city had no problems releasing
the videos from the night Courtney died. They also released
the police radio from that night, picking a male of
His name is Chicotey Copeland, The birth of a second
(28:42):
It's hard to understand, but if you listen closely, the
officer says, he gave me a date of birth. Then
he pauses, he gave me a date of birth, the
birth of The detectives at the hospital told me Corton
didn't say anything after collapse, but Courtney was talking to
them and giving them information. Finally, almost five hundred days
(29:11):
after my son died, the city sent me a bunch
of DVDs in the mail. I truly felt so sick
about it because what I was about to see. I
braced myself and I popped the first one in the
player in the bedroom. The disc won't even play because
the city sent them in this crazy format G sixty four,
(29:35):
which I've never even heard of. This was gonna be
the first time I was going to see the final
moments of my son, and then for those videos not
to play, and they knew that I wouldn't be able
to open this format. It's like they were trying to
make it impossible for me to find out the truth.
(29:57):
But about a week later, the folks from the Invisible
Institute were able to convert the footage and they brought
it over to my house. Thank you for coming, technical wizards.
Thank you guys have not you know? So what do
(30:22):
you think of it? Why don't you watch that? Oh?
But we sat at the dining room table. It was me,
my mom, Brent, Courtney's little sisters, and my unc kimp.
The videos came from four different cameras. The main one
was in front of the police station. There were also
(30:43):
other camera angles from around the block. Remember it's in
the middle of the night. The video is kind of
grainy and pretty bad. This is the police station. You
can see you, yeah, the addresses. In the following too,
we see the BMW outside the police station. The car
is still running. We can see the smoke coming from
the exhaust pipe. There are two police cars behind the BMW.
(31:09):
Then another one shows up with its lights on. It
looks like Courtney's car has been pulled over, but Courtney
himself it's nowhere in sight. Right then the camera swings away,
But why would you move the ham here? You know
it's something going on over there. And you can see
the lights bouncing off right. You know there are cars
(31:30):
right and you can see them increase as a few
more cars come out. We don't even know what's going on.
We still can't see where cortneyer is or what the
police are doing. Finally, a few minutes later, the camera
comes back to the scene, but still no Courtney. It
looks like his jacket that's there. It was freezing that night.
(31:53):
I know Courtney was wearing his pea coat when he
was shot. There's a bullet hole in the back. But
here it is us crumbled up on the ground. Where
is he? A police officers looking through the back window
of the BMW with a flashlight. And then the camera
pans and we see Courtney for the first time. Courtney
(32:24):
is laying on the ground on his elbows and he's
shifting his weight. He was wearing a red Nike sweater.
It was his favorite sweater. Courtney is surrounded by officers.
Ye see right here, this is what the tow drop
driver saw see Courtney is there on the ground. Look
(32:45):
at that. Hey wait a minute, Look my son is
on his hands and knees. He's reaching up for somebody
to help him. On the police radio, this is when
they call for more officers to the scene. Courtney is
(33:06):
definitely not combative. He's not violent or danger to others. Oh,
the E M T S are there now, right now,
there's an ambulance on the scene. There's an unmarked car
blocking part of the camera's view of Courtney. Somebody, either
a paramedic or cop is pulling him up like fast
(33:28):
and forcefully from the ground. It looks like there could
be a stretcher right there. The video, it's really blurry here.
You can't really see what's going on. But according to
the paramedics report, this is the moment that Courtney was handcuffed.
So handing this has to be. This is what they're
(33:53):
doing on. This is what they're doing on they're comfortable.
Oh no, happier to be a combat it right now.
Just get through his feet. Yeah, so name what they're doing.
(34:26):
Oh oh, then Courtney was gone. Maybe he's in the ambulance.
All we know is that we don't see him again.
(34:48):
My whole family. We were all at the dining room table,
just holding on to each other. We went back through
the footage of Courtney's driving en route to his girlfriend's
house before he got shot. Jamie pointed out that Cordney's
(35:10):
BMW was being followed by two police cars, one mark
and one unmarked, and then these three cars they disappeared
off the screen, and when we see Courtney next, he's
on the ground reaching up for help and he's surrounded
(35:34):
by police. When the Invisible Institute came to my house
(36:00):
with those police videos and we saw Courtney on his knees,
shot and begging for help, I saw for myself what
I already felt in my bone, the taps. Here's what
(36:24):
we saw. Two police cars following Courtney's BMW. They're all
they're driving down the street. The next time we see
my son, he's on the ground in front of the
police station. What happened during those moments we couldn't see
(36:49):
between him driving his car down the street and ended
up with a bullet in his back. Everything was telling
me that the police shot my son. I sat with
this for a few days. I was by myself. My husband,
Brent was out of town, he drives a truck, so
he was on his job. But then Jamie from the
(37:14):
Invisible Institute came back to my door. He re examined
those videos and he had new information information that changed everything.
The idea that the police were implicated. It seems much
less likely now, okay, um, which, as I say, I'm
(37:38):
speaking for myself, is something of a relief. I mean,
we don't want that to be true, even though a
big story, but another you don't want it to be true.
After he left, I called Brent and explained everything. Hello, Hey,
(37:59):
can you talk. He was out on the road driving
through the rain. The first car that we thought were
the police that was not Courtney's vehicle in the in
the league Okay, And they found some new evidence that
said that it may have happened the way uh. The
(38:22):
police stated they looked at the car more closely, the
shape of the trunk, the headlights in the windows. It
did not match the structure of a BMW. It turns
out it was never Courtney's BMW. We were looking at
the wrong car. And there is a video showing Courtney's
(38:45):
actual car and you can see him going down the
side street not being followed by anyone speeding towards the
police station. One thing that Jamie said before he left
the first time is that he told me, now we
have to go investigate our investigation. And I'm glad he
(39:08):
did because I wouldn't want to implicate wrongly anyone for
this murder. So now it's seen that police never followed
Courtney's car after all that it may have happened like
the police told us Courtney was shot and then drove
(39:28):
himself to the police for help. Uh. You know, they
still you know, feel that, you know, he was treated
kind of badly, but they don't necessarily believe at this
time they actually did the shooting. I mean, it's it's
hard to swallow, you know, it's hard to swallow, you know. Um.
(39:53):
I mean because Sunday I was feeling okay, maybe they
actually did do it, But now I'm okay, maybe they didn't.
Look pretty much. That gets square one where you probably
he still never find camel, right, it's still alighted down on. Yeah. Yeah,
(40:25):
it was just stormy because it's because it's like a
I food now here, okay, babe, I'm uh, I just
need to process all of this. I'll be here for
you as soon as I can. All right, love, all right,
(40:47):
by bye. When I thought police killed Courtney and made
me feel like his death served some type of higher
purpose like Emmett Till or Lakwa McDonald, they're killing actually
(41:09):
woke up the country with Emmett Till when people saw
how he was murdered, they were shocked to see such brutality,
and the same with Lakwam McDonald. With Corney dying, if
the police did it, it would have been a major
(41:30):
cover up and it would have shook Chicago to the core.
But if cops didn't kill him, then his death was
just another unsolved Chicago murder. I went from knowing who
killed my son to knowing nothing. I talked with him
(42:00):
Visible Institute folks and Alison, you and Jamie told me
that you stay on the case and we start this
all again. But the way police treated Courtney still wasn't okay,
and it wasn't just We need to reckon with this
and we need to find out who really did kill Courtney.
(42:20):
So that's where we're headed next. But first we needed
to better understand how we got this wrong. So I
sat down with Jamie to talk about it. So I
think we were in retrospect predisposed to find that the
police were implicated in the murder At the Invisible Institute,
(42:40):
our goal is to hold public institutions accountable, and we
see a lot of cases involving police abuse. In the
past decade, the city of Chicago has paid out more
than a half a billion dollars in police misconduct lawsuits.
All of this is true, and it influenced the way
we saw those videos. Now we had to walk back
(43:01):
our assumptions and start over again. The metaphor of walking
back and assumption feels exactly right. You're really trying to
to reorient and and reboot the really the entire investigation. Alison,
what's been your experience with police. My perspective on the
(43:23):
police has changed over time. When I was a kid,
I thought, like a lot of white people do, that
the police existed just to keep everybody safe. One time,
I was in my twenties and I thought someone was
breaking into my apartment, so I rushed into my closet
and I called nine one one, and when the police came,
they just told me it was a raccoon officer. Friendly.
(43:48):
Then later as a reporter, I've called on the police
to help me with stories, and I've also had to
call out the police and report on their abuses of power.
Now I'm married and my husband is black, and he's
been pulled over by police searched by dogs twice. The
last time this happened, he was actually on his way
(44:08):
back from a job interview and wearing a suit. We
have a three year old son, and he was actually
just a few months old when I met you, Chapral
So your story about losing your son just hit me
right in the gut. I remember um having the conversation
(44:28):
with my son of how to interact with police. Make
sure you don't reach for anything. Cortney, be very calm,
be very polite and courteous. Yes, sir, Yes, ma'am. You
have to have these conversations. It's like it's different for
white people in America and black people in America. It
(44:51):
has always been different, and there has always been a
sense of h I believe comfort for white people in
a sense of fear for black people when it comes
to police. Right. I wasn't raised to fear the police,
and we were. For me and Brent, our fear goes
(45:12):
way way back. Both our grandparents. They grew up in
the South. You know. My grandmother was born in nineteen Yeah,
my grandfather's a nineteen and they saw a lot and
my grandmother actually had to flee from the South because
(45:32):
of all the hangings and the lynching and everything like that.
My grandmother must always called him the man. You know,
we had to flee from the man. We had to
leave because of the man. She said that, you know,
she only experienced some type of freedom when she came
to Chicago. I'm just glad that she didn't see what
(45:53):
happened to Courdney, because I don't think that she would
be able to have survived it. Yeah. Sometimes I just
sit here and I just think, like I'm still in
the days. There was m a rhyme that came to
mind that I heard back in high school, like senior year,
(46:16):
because it's talking about police and police brutality, and it
said you were put here to protect us, but who
protects us from you? I remember when Courtney was about
six months old. It was the summer, and we were
(46:39):
staying with my grandmother in the Inglewood area. One day,
we were all sitting on the porch, just me and
my cousins, my uncle's and then all of a sudden game.
Bankers just started shooting out of nowhere, and I remember
my uncle grabbing Courtney out of my hands and rushing
(47:01):
us up in the house upstairs so that we can
be safe. I remember telling myself, I cannot lose my
son to these streets. That day, I said I'm moving.
I lived out of my car for about two weeks
until I was able to secure an apartment. I was like,
(47:24):
my son is going to have a chance of surviving,
and that was my goal, was just to keep him safe,
to keep him out of harm's way so that he
can grow up and and enjoy his life without worrying
about being shot and killed in Chicago. C O. P
(47:45):
E l A n D. First name Courtney. Um can
I have a date of three four sixteen. I've been
dreading it, but I went back to the place where
they did Courtney's autopsy, the medical Examiner's office, the mom
(48:07):
The last time I was there, I identified my son's
body on a metal slab. That's the doctor that did
the examination. That's the case number, and then this is
the doctor's assisting she'll be able to speak with you
and maybe set up something where you guys can speak
about it and clarify. I was there because my son's
case was coming down to two questions. One who killed Courtney?
(48:31):
I promise you we're gonna dig into that soon. And
two did police do everything they could to help him?
I needed to know if my son could have survived
this injury. There's a note in the hospital records that
Courtney's a order got hit, that's the main artery in
(48:54):
the body, But the autopsy report says nothing about that
order getting hit. In fact, it says it was intact.
So I just left the emmy's office. I want to know,
but I don't want to know. So anyway, I'm gonna
(49:16):
give them a call and see what they say. Hopefully
they could answer these present questions. The eight order getting
hit means he would have bled out within minutes, and
this all mattered because there were delays in Courtney's case. Yes,
I felt that they took too long to get him
(49:39):
to the hospital. From the time that he was on
the scene in front of the police station into the
time that they drove off in the ambulance, it was
about thirteen minutes. Every part of me wants to believe
that my son could have survived. Every part part of me.
(50:01):
Every part of me wants to believe that I had
time to get to him. Every part of me wants
to believe. So, Chapel, you were waiting to get answers
from the medical examiner, and we'd already tried to talk
to Courtney's surgeon, but the hospital wouldn't let her speak
(50:22):
to us. So in the meantime we turned to other
medical experts to look at the case. From the Corners report,
it appeared that the bullet went through his lung and
then it was launched somewhere in the muscles of his
left neck. Grace Chang is a trauma surgeon at Mount Sinai,
a hospital on Chicago's West Side. We actually talked to
three trauma surgeons, but Dr Chang was the only one
(50:43):
whould go on the record, and right away she told
us something that helped us understand why there was no
blood in Courtney's car, because he wasn't just bleeding out,
he was bleeding in. You could say, his his chest
cavity was filling with blood. Yeah. Um, that's a pretty
large receptacle. It can hold a live hold several leaders
(51:05):
of blood Assentially. Dr Chang described the emergency surgery when
doctors opened up Courtney's chest. You go in there, you
resuscitate their heart, and you can also fix and stop
the bleeding. So that's why you do that. She also
noticed the discrepancy between the surgeon's report and the autopsy
report about the a ORDA asked had it gone through
the a ORDA? Typically that's not a survival injury either,
(51:27):
So that's why I watch my butt down to the
Medical Examiner's office for answers. Was Courtney's a order hit
or not? Did he have a chance or not? In
the next day, they called me back Alice, and I
hoped right on the phone right after she said her
finding when she did the autopsy, Uh, they did. She
(51:51):
didn't find any damage today order. So that's why she
didn't include it in her in her autopsy. And she's like,
you know, you know he did lead out. Um Uh,
she said you could tell that by the amount of
blood that was in his chest. She had actually reviewed
his file again and she says that his order was intact.
It still brings me back to had they taken him
(52:14):
to the hospital right away, because he's begging him like
he helped me, help me. Don't stand around looking at me,
helped me get me for the hospital. For the life
of me, the life of me, Alixon, I can't say
that that he would have survived. I can't say a
(52:34):
I just wanted them to give him a chance. They
didn't give him a chance. Courtney's heart stopped in the
ambulance four minutes before he arrived at the hospital. If
he had got there just a few minutes earlier, maybe
(52:55):
he could have been saved. So every delay mattered. We
kept coming back to the fact that Courtney was handcuffed.
Reports say it was because he was combative, and by
the way, it's not uncommon for trauma patients to present
a combative, especially when they're losing lung function, but handcuffs
(53:17):
aren't used when trauma patients are combative. A spokesperson for
the Chicago Fire Department told me they're paramedics, don't use handcuffs,
they don't have handcuffs, and they don't restrain people with handcuffs.
We exchanged dozens of emails, but then when we asked
the spokesperson about Courtney's case specifically, that's when their story changed.
(53:40):
He told me they requested cuffs because Courtney was flailing
in the street. Before paramedics arrived. But that's just not
what the video shows. It doesn't make sense. Well, we
know at this point that they had his plates, and
they had his name, and they knew that the car
wasn't registered to him, and they were treating him as
a suspect more in the victim. That's just the bottom line.
(54:03):
You can see him reaching up begging them for help.
You see this on this tape. And the fact that
they're saying that they're only resolution was to handcuff him.
I just know that they wouldn't have done this to
(54:23):
somebody who was white. Um okay, let me just pull
up the video. It's about roughly nineteen minutes into the video.
But um, h okay, he's a guy in the red hoodie.
(54:51):
I mean, looking at this segment of the video, it
looks as if he's lying there mostly a mobile as
police are kind of standing up ound him. Stephen Russian
as a professor at Loyola Law School. He specializes in
police reform. We wanted his take on the police's treatment
of Courtney, so we watched the footage together of Courtney
(55:11):
outside the police station and there's a crowd of officers
just milling around and it does not look to me
as though he's receiving any medical treatment. It looks like
he's being treated like a suspect. Because I think one
thing we haven't talked about is the number of officers
around him, all of which is relevant. If you're going
to say he's a threat, if he's a risk other people,
threat to the officers, you have one too, three four
(55:32):
officers looks like and yeah, if you hadn't he hadn't
put this in context for him, it looks like they
are handcuffing a suspect to bring him in for an arrest.
There were at least eleven police officers on the scene.
I asked Russian about another fact. There were no police
on board the ambulance to unlock the handcuffs. Courtney's ear nurse, CLARESSA.
Hawkins told us they couldn't get to work on Courtney
(55:54):
right away because they had to wait for the police
to arrive. Um, if they're arresting someone suffering a you know,
life threatening wound, and that person has to go to
the hospital and they're in cuffs, do you know whether
the police have to accompany in the ambulance follow because
I think they would need to be there to like
on handcuff it, right, so it's not. But in this
(56:16):
case they weren't in the ambulance. As a lawyer of
that starts down there like a civil liability issue there
immediately right. What Russian is saying is this, by handcuffing
Courtney and not going with him in the ambulance, police
officers may have stood in the way of Courtney's life
saving treatment. There's another delay that also bothered me. Courtney
(56:41):
was shot on the northwest side of Chicago, but got
transported all the way east to Illinois Masonic Hospital in
the Lakeview neighborhood. Paramedics and Illinois are supposed to take
the gunshot victims to the closest trauma center that can
take them. The closest trauma center was not Anoymasonic, but
(57:01):
maybe it was the fastest one to get there that night. Nope,
we checked that out too, So we found out that
there were actually two other trauma centers that were closer
and faster to get to, Strosure and Mount Sinai. Not
dramatically closer, but when we're talking about life or death,
minutes really do matter. It could have saved him another
(57:24):
five to ten minutes on the road. We looked at
all different routes, times of day, and traffic patterns, and
why these four or five or even ten minutes matters.
It's because my son's heart stopped four minutes before getting
to the hospital. Every day. I can't help thinking about
(57:47):
the difference those few minutes could have made. I mean,
what do you do with this information? None of this
makes sense to me. I where to God not if
it makes sense. It hurts my heart. I'll tell you
(58:08):
I'm sorry. I think Courtneys. You know, I didn't want
to say he's lucky because what happened to him was
so unlucky. But you know, if you're going to have
any mom in the world to get answers for you,
you wanted to be Chaparral Wells. Police never found any
(58:32):
physical evidence in the car, just some broken glass on
the street. The state crime lab analyze the bullet fragment
lodged into Courtney's neck and the bullet jacket, but it
just wasn't enough to identify a gun. But we knew
a neighborhood two shots, so where's the other bullet? I'm
(58:57):
just surprised that there wasn't anything recovered from the autopsy
um or or in the car. That's just just kind
of amazing that there was nothing. We talked to this
firearms forensic expert, David Brundage. He said he was surprised
police didn't find anything when they processed the car. The
police searched the car unseen. Brundish said they should have
(59:21):
also searched the car under better lighting, like an open garage.
So actually, let me get my evidence back ready. Brundage
told us that sometimes bullets can hide in the seams
of car seats. They just leave tiny slits and until
you remove the seat and search, you'll never know. It
(59:43):
could actually lead us to the murder weapon. He said
the second bullet might still be in the car and
gave us instructions on how to search for it. Well
not so. We found a BMW certified mechanic at a
little auto shop in the sub birds. He agreed to
help us take the car apart, both the seat the
(01:00:07):
entire seats and take it out of the bat and
then where are you gonna put it? We took out
the front seats. After all this time we saw some
broken glass. All right, Chaparral, you want a girl ahead
and grabbed that glass. Tell many pieces? Is that one, two, three,
(01:00:28):
four or five? Six? Okay, so we don't find anything here,
Where's the bullet? We kept searching, but we didn't find
a bullet. We did find some debris that looked like
it could be something, so we put it in evidence backs.
(01:00:49):
We sent them back to the firearms for rented expert,
and we waited. When we got the news, we were disappointed.
I'm getting you have some sort of news to report. Yes, well, yes,
it is not very very informative. But I finished looking
at the physical items that you shipped to me. I
(01:01:15):
did find one kernel of gunpowder. Yeah. He told us
that when he looked at it under a microscope, all
he could see was that the gunpowder was likely from
the Winchester Owl Incorporation, which sells to a number of
ammunition companies. It could have been used in almost any
(01:01:39):
type of gun. Well, at least we looked because our
investigation was going to be thorough. Now that we were
rebooting the investigation, we all returned to the street where
we believe Courtney was shot, the spot where his friends
first collected broken glass and saw skid marks, and where
(01:02:00):
a neighbor said she heard shots fired. Courtney was shot
on Chicago's northwest Side. It's a neighborhood called Belmont Craigan.
I went out there right after Courtney died, putting up posters,
knocking on doors, begging somebody to tell me something. We
knew that you'd already covered this ground, but now we
(01:02:21):
wanted to hit every single house between there and the
police station. We needed to find witnesses. Chaparl is going
to lead the way. Um, but how many cards do
you How many spots do you have? I got three,
I got the feats down. I got three spots. We
set out with a crew, a group of journalism students,
of course, use Chaparl, me and our producer, Bill so Chaparral.
(01:02:46):
We're in your van, the same one that you used
to haul Courtney and his buddies to basketball games as
they were growing up. And I noticed a strawberry air
freshener dangling from your rear view mirror, and this necklace
that belonged to Courtney. The necklace was us a medallion
that he had earned from world ventures. It reminds me
of him, and it makes me feel close to him.
(01:03:11):
So the first thing you wanted to show us the
police cameras near the station. But I knew that that camera,
that's the camera that rotates. Do you see all these
cameras boom boom boom. It's like Kadrean cameras right here,
and you tell me that you don't have any camera.
We drove over to the intersection of Grand and Central,
(01:03:32):
the police station where Courtney collapsed on the ground. We
put on our blinkers and we got out. It looks
like they still have his photo up. Check Bill and
are at the lighthole on the corner, and there was
a flyer with Courtney's face on it. It was one
of the reward posters I had put up more than
(01:03:55):
a year before. We went inside. Bill and I stood
on the side of the tree right outside the police station. Yeah,
his photo is still there. They were tearing them all down,
but I'm glad to see that this one it's still up.
(01:04:16):
It's him. It's been almost two years. Everything right now
is a mystery, everything because it's not just about police
killing black people, but it's also about them allowing them
to die to him that he was nothing but a
(01:04:37):
niggle on the street who got shot. I feel that
sometimes you know, when you go through these situations, the
dead could no longer speak, so you have to do
it for them. Right in the middle of all of this,
a cop pools up behind us because he asks Bill,
(01:04:58):
if we got into an acci that we're good. You
know the reason why you guys are blocking traffic right?
Her son died right here, right, and so we're I
feel bad for that, but I mean, you guys could
have parked over here this way. You're not gonna what
are your sofa? Move out the way, don't block traffic.
(01:05:21):
We called it a day rush, bro. Thank you everybody,
so bods every day Nobody's nothing, no body right. Somebody
(01:05:51):
is a co production of The Invisible Institute, The Intercept,
Topic Studios, and I Heart Radio in association with Tenderfoot TV.
I'm Chaparral Wells. This podcast is produced by Alison Flowers
and Bill Heally. Sarah Guice is our story editor. Ellen
Glover is our associate producer for The Invisible Institute. Jamie
(01:06:15):
Calvin is executive producer for Topic Studios. Maria Zuckerman, Christie Gressman,
and Letyle Mallard are executive producers. Special thanks to Lizzie
Jacobs for the intercept. Roger Hodge, Deputy Editor, is supervising producer.
Sound designed by Carl Scott and Bart Warshaw. Michael Raphael
(01:06:37):
is our mixed engineer. Our theme song, Everybody's Something is
by Chance the Rapper. Original music for the podcast by
Nate Fox of The Social Experiment and Eric Butler. Additional
reporting by Sam Stecklow, Annie When, Khari Blackburn, Ray, Jef Sinclair,
Henry Adams, Matilda Voyat, Dana Brozos, Kelleher for Answers, McDonald,
(01:07:01):
Diana Archmagian, Maddie Anderson, Andrew Fan and Rissa a pin Taku.
Translation support by Benny Hernandez Ocampo and Emma Prez. Fact
checking by Noah Are Jenny Special thanks to Chris Rasmussen,
Bennett Epstein, Matt Topic, David Bralow, and Julie Wolf. We
(01:07:23):
want to hear from you. Email us at info at
Somebody podcast dot com or leave us a voicemail at
seven seven three to seven zero zero one two one.
To learn more about this case and for links to
additional materials, go to our show page at Somebody podcast
(01:07:44):
dot com. You can also find a list of everyone
we want to thank. There so many people helped us
along the way,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!