in rare cases but in appropriate cases will reverse a case where they find that it's against the manifest weight of the evidence meaning when the opposite conclusion is clearly evident the courts will write a wrong this is one of those cases where the court should take a close look at the seven instant decide that the opposite conclusion is clearly evident in this case this is the case that the police board is based on an incident that happened on march nineteen two thousand and one when two chicago police officers responded to a scene where there was already another police officer and his partner taking some police action for detaining or handcuffing four individuals for suspicion of something we're not exactly sure of based on the record but nobody committed any crimes or was arrested in this case for reasons that are not clear in the record a decision was made to let three of those individuals everybody in cuffs were taken off on their own way but another vehicle not handcuffed not in custody friedel leave at any time according to the un contradicted evidence in the record and drove him from thirty five hundred mclean to sixteen thirty named north spaulding it's about a five or drive drive take seven minutes it's almost straight south the decision to go to that particular edge arrest was not something made up by either one of my clients it didn't come out of thin air they got it address superintendent when he made the decision to file the charges of the boy but at the hearing he says i was just joking and this was all a joke they must not have gotten my joke or understood it and when he's asked by one of the officers attorneys well did you tell the internal affairs division about this joke that your head without interest he said the answer is yes and the attorney says he did and he says yes and then goes on to say something that should try to anyone who's in the court system or who cares about a system that is designed designed to seek the truth and this is a page one twenty one of the report of proceedings and it's page one twenty four of the february sixth two thousand and thirteen please forward hearing when he's asked about why is this not in your statement that he goes on for about a paragraph any he basically says when he was asked a question at the conclusion is or anything else you want to add he says i looked over to my lawyer and that's when she asked the detective of we can talk all the way i could for a moment and pretty pretty much said ok and then he goes on to say i'm not going to put anything else in here saying that they made a joke to make it easier for them since they pretty much told i t v that i told them to do this which i didn't write and so this comes out of the piece we're hearing when the professionalism they were there for a brief period of time nobody was hurt they went there in a way this is a fake and i think it is important if it's true that the superintendent steering this case if they went there so that they could you know threaten this factors i want to point to here before i get my colleague some time and then sit down in this case where the superintendent has approved the decision was made to call the young man who brought us contradicted the officers when they say they had no reason to believe he didn't live on spalding that was not done there's a police officer that was with officer eden's who may shed light on whether whether or not this was a joke or what was said there a police officer whose name is sweeney was mean first name is not mysteriously disappear even though there's two others that are found in this case and the final fact i want to point out that's missing from the record from the it should be considered is an inference against the party with the of these two ushers statements were both taken on the same day april eighteenth two thousand and eleven were presented and as part of the record and yet the board is finding that statements they made to the internal affairs division were false  took a teenage boy into rival gang territory for the purpose of terrorizing him spent ten minutes there terrorizing him is not against the manifest weight of the evidence to the contrary that that fighting is evidence is as is appropriate the series is circumstantial as is inferential from the record but what the record allows us to drop it in several things most notably is the testimony that  precinct that the location of stalling in question was one k territory and that's strong evidence why would that be why would that particular location be chosen in the first place that  person who we welcome that neighborhood otherwise why would they have why would they have done that why would they have exposed them to this particular group of gangsters for this amount of time how does that show that the you know the south side of chicago to you know someplace on the north side of chicago you know how do we know that they knew that he was an imperial gangster well i don't think it's necessary but they knew he was a hero gangster i think that they immediately suggested smalling as a location known to everybody that i believe that's undisputed that's well known latin came territory if i don't believe there's a dispute there and they were t again that the most crucial though is what they did when they got there they said council concedes in his brief that they immediately learned that that unsurprisingly the steel did not live testimony a lot so write her credit oh yes sheet that's a minute and then she said within a couple minutes after that the video started which is ninety seconds and with the end of that video it seems to me like the show is over if there is a show it seems to me like everyone's walking away you know so maybe you just agree but i see you know i mean the video only gives us a glimpse we don't see everything but what we do see in the video everyone is walking away it's dispersed so when i do my math i get closer to five minutes and i get the interaction with the gang members running in to be more like two to a half minutes or something like that i'm not saying that's an insubstantial amount of time but but don't we have to take a look at how long this happened it wasn't as if they paraded this gentleman for you know ten or fifteen or twenty minutes or something well again because this is i mr view and because the factual findings must be taken as true unless they are against the minutes and the video didn't have to start immediately even if the video was short i believe it was approximately ninety seconds i'm i'm not quite sure it's i didn't count the time exactly but  videoing we just have this one video that someone posted to youtube and and it became available to everyone else so again because of because of the nature of mr overview i think we're bound to  fifteen hundred but then why why go to that address that's something i'm having trouble understanding if it was a joke and if he knew it was me either he knew it was a joke or he did if he thought it was a joke why did he go there i believe is because that's where he intended to go regardless of what what officer eat said also easily it was a joke he played along believing it was a joke there was no reason to take taken there also he said i know he wasn't from there i thought it was contact that's evidence it stand based on the video you know listening to that video these officers are claiming that they're trying to figure out where mr christie zero lives also a casa claims that she's trying to figure out where he lives but there's absolutely nothing in the video that supports that listening to the video time and time again they there's nothing else here is are trying to inquire where does he live can you tell us where you live so why is he why why why response if they were seriously intending to take him home when they got to the scene and a resident that they had no reason to disbelieve mismated spirit said no he's not from around here they stayed they didn't ask him where he  these individuals around who are threatening who are calling who are using epithets against mr steele who wanted their little friends to gang bang everybody's yelling came various king slogans making king signs and had any interest would ever provide information about where he lives it would have taken two seconds to realize about was not going to happen close the door and do something else that's not what they did and as the board pointed out in making its findings even shows what they really intended to do questions about jokes aside questions that original had to side with this conversation with officer eaton's when they got there they decided they were going to torment him and that is as it would recognize is more than enough to justify the sanction of dismissal indeed the group found that conduct in and of itself so troubling that was the sole basis that it focused on when explaining why it cho so i believe even if he you know again going completely contrary to the board's findings here no board found that they intended to meet their original intent was to take him there even if that intent changed at some point that still conduct while be unbecoming of a chicago police officer how a police officer could find that exposing a young man to these sorts of taunts and threats from from from again from a group of ga considered arbitrary or on reasonable or inconsistent the need to the service which is the which is the show so bases on the wish that sation can be overturned just briefly touch on a few work that's correct but he also used to call their own witnesses regarding their if they did testify their own defense obviously they call their own their own witnesses would say oh of course of the whole time i i i they were saying right take me to slowly and i thought that was just fine and i just didn't speak up but they didn't do that so there was based on no reason to call  no i didn't correct and then the interview proceeded there is writing and then he wanted to confer with his lawyer and he came back and he said i didn't order them to do it because i can't order them to do is being rather obligation during that investigation if it in visual said i want to keep this off the record to just set aside material that would be that be surprising if if that were the case  say well i want to keep this off the record just because i don't want to talk about it that would really undermine the entire procedure but it sounds like to me that sounds like also means was being forthright in saying you asked me this we're trying to build a story about why they're there if there are no further questions we respectfully request that you referred to the decision of the police is they don't know this young man and these are two people that have had no disciplinary history have a wealth of positive facts no background and they come from the kind of backgrounds we should welcome and encourage  officers these officers excelled at their job living in the community they were policing and to see their careers ended on this point because of a joke from another officer who tried to hide the fact that there was a job from the people who are making a decision about the case that