LAST DECEMBER SIX off-duty Chicago police officers reportedly attacked four businessmen in a bar, leaving one in need of reconstructive surgery and another with four broken ribs. In February off-duty officer Anthony Abbate beat up a young female bartender who declined to serve him any more drinks. Both incidents were recorded by security cameras.
The damn thing about it is that Michael Pleasance would probably be alive today if the two officers assigned to cover the Red Line station at 95th Street hadn’t been late for work. Alvin Weems and Donald Johnson worked for the CPD’s Public Transportation Section. While they were with that unit they rotated to various sites, not knowing where they’d be posted from one day to the next. On Saturday, March 8, 2003, Weems and Johnson were supposed to report to the 95th Street station at 6 AM. Weems arrived at 6:17, Johnson was nowhere in sight, and the two officers on the midnight shift had already left.
Then Weems reappears, pushing Anderson in front of him. Anderson is 30 years old, five foot seven, 210 pounds—a man of some heft. Weems, 40 pounds lighter and two inches shorter, pushes Anderson toward a tiled wall near the terminal’s Dunkin’ Donuts store, his right hand grasping Anderson’s shirtfront, his left hand waving his gun around.
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In that moment, Weems would certainly have welcomed the assistance of his partner, but Officer Johnson hadn’t shown up yet. Weems also would have benefited from access to his handcuffs, his pepper spray, his baton, and even his police hat, but they were all in his bag somewhere on the floor. He couldn’t call for backup as his radio was in the police room. All things considered, he had gotten himself into a jam. One solution would have been to simply let Anderson go. The apparent crime wasn’t serious—misdemeanor battery, most likely, as no one seems to have been hurt badly in the fight. And at that point Weems couldn’t have known whether Anderson had been an instigator or someone who’d been attacked.
Pleasance drops from the frame. Over the next 90 seconds, the CTA cameras show, Weems and Anderson continue talking. Anderson points repeatedly toward the turnstiles. They move down the corridor, away from Pleasance’s body. Weems kicks a leg out from under Anderson, who goes down. They wrestle and then stand again, Anderson still in Weems’s control.
Officer Johnson arrived for work at 6:45.
The roundtable on the Michael Pleasance shooting, presided over by Sandra Day, began at 1:40 PM the day of the shooting. Weems didn’t appear, which was his option. Day’s memo, written after the roundtable, said “victims and witnesses to this incident” participated in it and “all parties related the same account of the incident as indicated by P.O. Weems.” But the unanimity of the seven witnesses listed in Day’s account is absent in the final report of Area Two Violent Crimes detective Paul Alfini, in which two of those witnesses had Pleasance saying “Put the gun up, you don’t need to do that,” and “I don’t care if you are the police, put the gun away,” while a third witness recalled Pleasance repeatedly calling Weems a “punk” but also saying “This isn’t necessary.”
