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