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. There are still so many unanswered
Speaker 1: questions about what led to the death of twenty two
Speaker 1: year old Courtney Copeland. Family members say Copeland was on
Speaker 1: his way to a friend's house when he was shot
Speaker 1: through his car window. A bullet hit his back. He
Speaker 1: managed to flag down a police car in front of
Speaker 1: the district station and was rushed to a hospital. The
Speaker 1: wound was fatal. I believe that not enough has been
Speaker 1: done to thought of Courtney murder, Like what would you
Speaker 1: like done that I haven't done. I personally would have
Speaker 1: went back and reinterviewed everybody to make sure that we
Speaker 1: absolutely who ever did this to us, as did you
Speaker 1: turn yourself in to ask for forgiveness from God. My
Speaker 1: name is Chaparral Else this is a 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. And it's the story of my
Speaker 1: search for the truth. This is Somebody. Everybody. Somebids every
Speaker 1: day non bide the snugging. That's right, and so every
Speaker 1: black person in this country must rise up and say
Speaker 1: I'm somebody. I have a rich, proud and noble history,
Speaker 1: however painful and exploded, it has been a Black people
Speaker 1: have always had to say it out loud, I am
Speaker 1: somebody because the people in charge keep telling us we're not.
Speaker 1: I am black, but I'm black and beautiful. This is
Speaker 1: something Dr Martin Luther King used to stay in front
Speaker 1: of crowds, and Reverend Jesse Jackson has carried on the tradition.
Speaker 1: When I hear Reverend Jackson saying that when he tells
Speaker 1: you that you are somebody, he reminds you to think
Speaker 1: about your own self worth. And even though the world
Speaker 1: around you was telling you that you are nothing, you
Speaker 1: are somebody. And my son Courtney, he was somebody. I
Speaker 1: felt I had the responsibility to force the police to
Speaker 1: take a look at his case and say, hey, this
Speaker 1: kid is somebody. Hey, everybody, welcome back to Keep Up
Speaker 1: Alive with Reverend Jesse Jackson. I'm Santita Jackson. We want
Speaker 1: you to call us at one. That's Santita Jackson. She
Speaker 1: co hosts the radio show Keep Hope Alive with her
Speaker 1: father Reverend Jesse Jackson here in Chicago. Their show airs
Speaker 1: on w v o N The Voice of the Nation,
Speaker 1: but it used to be called the Voice of the Negro.
Speaker 1: The station was a catalyst and getting out the message
Speaker 1: of the civil rights movement, and now their mainstream. Let
Speaker 1: me go to chappearl from Chicago. What is on your mind?
Speaker 1: I've been a frequent caller for years. I'm always on
Speaker 1: their Facebook page and I'm so glad you came off
Speaker 1: of that Facebook. What's on your money today? Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for taking my concern a little good morning
Speaker 1: to your panel. I wanted to actually reiterate what Dr
Speaker 1: Roberts said. You were one of my best callers, someone
Speaker 1: who was very confrontational in a respectful way, very informed,
Speaker 1: and very determined to get the story right. So the
Speaker 1: thing about Santita, she knows so many people, she's connected.
Speaker 1: So after Courtney was killed, she was one of the
Speaker 1: first people I called. There was two or three in
Speaker 1: the morning, something like that. I immediately became alarmed because
Speaker 1: anyone who calls me at that hour it's typically not
Speaker 1: good news. And you were in between crying and talking,
Speaker 1: and you just kept saying, this is my son and
Speaker 1: my baby. You just kept saying, Courtney, my baby, my baby, Santita,
Speaker 1: he's been killed. I told her the detectives wouldn't tell
Speaker 1: me much of anything, but they wanted to ask me
Speaker 1: a bunch of questions. I said, I told you to stop.
Speaker 1: You need to record that is right down, everything that
Speaker 1: you heard and saw felt, because you will lose it
Speaker 1: as we go, as time goes on. Fantitita's advice to
Speaker 1: write everything down, that was the best advice I could
Speaker 1: have been given. In the beginning, you get the truth.
Speaker 1: The cover up happens after the first day or so,
Speaker 1: but in the beginning, you get the truth. I went
Speaker 1: straight into investigate a mode. I wrote up a timeline
Speaker 1: and I made a voice recording on my phone to
Speaker 1: keep track of all the details. I told that recorder
Speaker 1: everything I was thinking about the night I got the news,
Speaker 1: so approximate around two fifteen am, I received a thunderous
Speaker 1: beat on my door and I told that recorder about
Speaker 1: my conversation with detectives. I begin to question, through my pain,
Speaker 1: can I talk to the officer. I need to know
Speaker 1: exactly what my son said to him, and they said
Speaker 1: that that's the only thing that he had said that
Speaker 1: he had been shot. I also told that recorder about
Speaker 1: what I really believed happened to Courtney. I believe my
Speaker 1: son was stopped and pulled out his vehicle because they
Speaker 1: ran the place and they saw a young black man
Speaker 1: driving the Hispanic area with a car that was not
Speaker 1: registered in a black person's name. Courtney had a co
Speaker 1: sign on that BMW his friend Christian Hernandez. It was
Speaker 1: his name on the car registration and not Courtneys, which
Speaker 1: the police would have known they ran his plates, and
Speaker 1: Christian told me that police called him right after Courtney
Speaker 1: died to ask who the real owner of the car was.
Speaker 1: And another thing we knew. The police had Courtney's name,
Speaker 1: the male of his name, and so they would have
Speaker 1: learned that Courtney had an I R number. That's a
Speaker 1: number that's assigned to you when you're arrested. Let me
Speaker 1: give you a little backstory. When Courtney was about seventeen,
Speaker 1: he and some friends found a debit card to school
Speaker 1: and they used it to buy some Harold's chicken. And
Speaker 1: I get this phone call and it's my mom and
Speaker 1: she's like, Courtney's in jail. I'm like, who what, Cordneys,
Speaker 1: Who does our mare. So I have told her well,
Speaker 1: and I don't care what he did. Leave him there.
Speaker 1: I remember being so mad at him. Courtney was punished
Speaker 1: with the in school suspension. The case was tossed. He
Speaker 1: never got rested again, but the I R number followed him,
Speaker 1: no matter that he was just a kid and all
Speaker 1: that he and his friends did was still some chicken.
Speaker 1: A week after Courtney died, me, my husband Brent, and
Speaker 1: my mom Renee, we met with police. The station was
Speaker 1: old and dilapidated. Brint recorded the whole thing on his
Speaker 1: phone from his pocket. Hello. Hi. While we waited, I
Speaker 1: was taking calls and planning Courtney's funeral. The wake is
Speaker 1: at one, then the uh, the actual services is going
Speaker 1: to start at three, so it's a two hour visitation
Speaker 1: and then the program obvious a meeting. Can I getting
Speaker 1: some soft drinks, water chips, anything at all? Waters, water, water,
Speaker 1: free water from you? Yeah, Monday is the barrier, Sergeant Mitchell? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: is that team. Hold hold on one second. The three
Speaker 1: of us set across from the three of them. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to know if you want to speaking next,
Speaker 1: and what was your sergeant, Mitchell? Sergeant m Yes, ma'am. Oh,
Speaker 1: you're the big wig. Huh. I wrote down their names. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: first of all, you have our condolences. Um. Everybody we've
Speaker 1: spoken to. Um, there's someone was a great kid, Um
Speaker 1: and nobody's had a bad word to say about them.
Speaker 1: And they told us they do everything they could to
Speaker 1: find out who killed court this er persons to justice. Okay.
Speaker 1: We we we myself, the detectives. I couldn't have two better
Speaker 1: guys work in the case. Okay. Um, you know there's
Speaker 1: you know, there's some sometimes people are out in that game,
Speaker 1: they're they're playing out there and you know, things happen.
Speaker 1: This is not the case here, um, And like I said,
Speaker 1: you're it provides us with an extra incentive. You know.
Speaker 1: We were kind of of the belief that homicide is
Speaker 1: you know, it's almost biblical. It's like the worst thing
Speaker 1: you can do to somebody. Here. They asked if we
Speaker 1: had any questions. My mom, Brent and I we had
Speaker 1: a lot, so farre away. Okay. The first question I
Speaker 1: hit was who was the officer on the scene that
Speaker 1: assisted my son. There were several officers on the scene,
Speaker 1: and um, they did they attempted to They were they're
Speaker 1: comforting to your son. We know that for a fact. Um,
Speaker 1: may we have the n ange of the officers. No,
Speaker 1: I am not gonna um not right now. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: just okay, okay, okay, um. No, we're not going to
Speaker 1: give out names of officers in this okay, Um. But
Speaker 1: I can ensure you that they summoned help right away.
Speaker 1: They comforted your son. Um, they did all that they
Speaker 1: could to help him. Um. You know, you know, you
Speaker 1: see and you hear a lot of things. But I'm
Speaker 1: actually really proud of the way the officers conducted themselves,
Speaker 1: you know. But when I started to press them, it
Speaker 1: was clear they hadn't even talked to the officers on
Speaker 1: the scene. So when my son approached the cops, what
Speaker 1: did he say? From what I understand, even if you
Speaker 1: related to the officer, he'd been shot. Um, they called
Speaker 1: nine when they got on the radio, and some of
Speaker 1: an ambulance. He didn't tell them anything. He didn't elaborate,
Speaker 1: like him occurred that. I mean, I know my son,
Speaker 1: and that's just like hard to belie. We are going
Speaker 1: to speak with all the officers that were on the scene. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you haven't done it. The detectives. They see what happened.
Speaker 1: This happened over the midnight shift, and Midnight's assigns detectives
Speaker 1: to do the scene, and they speak with the officers,
Speaker 1: and we're there. I asked them about the cameras right
Speaker 1: outside the station, the ones that would have shown what
Speaker 1: happened when my son pulled up, about the police station,
Speaker 1: the police station. Those cameras don't work. Those cameras do
Speaker 1: not that's crazy, they said, they didn't work. I tell you,
Speaker 1: I arrived as the young policeman in that station in May.
Speaker 1: I went to the district those cameras, and I was
Speaker 1: there in January of ninety one until we came here
Speaker 1: four years ago. Multiple requests over the years, the district
Speaker 1: commander to him, right outside the police station, there's a
Speaker 1: big park with three schools. So to tell me those
Speaker 1: cameras hadn't worked in that case, that was unacceptable. I
Speaker 1: do share. I do share your frustration when things don't
Speaker 1: work for us. Cameras don't work, computers don't work, automobiles
Speaker 1: don't work. It is very frustrating. But you know what,
Speaker 1: we have these hurdles in every investigation. I'm just trying.
Speaker 1: How can you use the people have to how I
Speaker 1: feel like the job is to serve and protect, but
Speaker 1: you can't do it your if you don't have the
Speaker 1: property equipment to use it. And that shows me the
Speaker 1: lack of priority it is to save lives in this city.
Speaker 1: But when I talked to the detectives on the phone
Speaker 1: to set up this meeting, one of them told me
Speaker 1: that they had already seen a video from the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Came only won't work and you said that you did
Speaker 1: find uh? You said you saw him on one camera, right,
Speaker 1: I said, I was able to view one and run.
Speaker 1: That's what I said. Okay, so you have you you
Speaker 1: do have other videos that you need to watch. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I needed to see what was on those tapes, but
Speaker 1: they wouldn't give them to me. They said it was
Speaker 1: an ongoing investigation. So I went back home and I
Speaker 1: pushed in other ways. I hit the streets and I
Speaker 1: got back on the radio. Women have the power to
Speaker 1: transform this world. We can end crime and violence if
Speaker 1: we all agree to do one thing to share. My
Speaker 1: theory is that the gang bangers, the police, everybody is
Speaker 1: a suspect until they ruled themselves out. I have to
Speaker 1: see the video in order to rule them out whom
Speaker 1: Cortney's homegoing service was at the Cicero Community Center. The
Speaker 1: funeral home wouldn't work because Courtney had too many friends,
Speaker 1: so we had people standing room only. Courtney was everyone's
Speaker 1: best friend. He had that gift of making everyone feel important.
Speaker 1: Everybody was saying, oh, he was my best friend. He
Speaker 1: was my best friend. He was my best friend. He
Speaker 1: really was my best friend. I just loved the stories
Speaker 1: people told, like Courtney's friend Jova, was just like that
Speaker 1: whole chance. The rapper showed up too. He stayed in
Speaker 1: the back, you know, walking in the room and seeing
Speaker 1: all these familiar faces and all these faces that I
Speaker 1: had never seen before, all broken over my friend. You know,
Speaker 1: it just hit me like he was just a good dude,
Speaker 1: funny dude. Just like realizing like that that somebody had
Speaker 1: taken him. You know, it was just hard for me
Speaker 1: to to deal with that. Ship there. I put Corney
Speaker 1: in a tuxedo. That's what he's wearing his favorite picture.
Speaker 1: So I told myself, I'm gonna make him look just
Speaker 1: like that. The service, it was so beautiful and sent Tita,
Speaker 1: she sang for him, We bring up no You're sang
Speaker 1: this song, I think by my hello, you're Jackson. Troubles
Speaker 1: of the world. We've been a waitly it says, soon
Speaker 1: I will be done with the troubles of the world.
Speaker 1: You are supposed to cry at birth and rejoice at death,
Speaker 1: because as excited as we are to see a baby,
Speaker 1: you don't tell a baby, well, this is gonna be
Speaker 1: a tough journey. All of his best friends were his pallbearers.
Speaker 1: They wore red bull ties, black vests, and white gloves
Speaker 1: as they lowered my son's body into the ground. With
Speaker 1: Courtney's funeral now behind us, I was just left to
Speaker 1: sit in this new reality that my baby he was
Speaker 1: never coming back. But still I didn't know the worst
Speaker 1: of what had happened to Courtney. That news was winding
Speaker 1: this way across the city of Chicago. It started at
Speaker 1: the hospital on the North Side. Someone who worked there
Speaker 1: says something to a friend, and that friend talked to
Speaker 1: my uncle Marvin, who's on the West side, and Uncle
Speaker 1: Marvin called my mom, who's downtown. Uncle Marvin told my
Speaker 1: mom that there was a rumor going around the hospital
Speaker 1: that Courtney was combative. What they told him about that
Speaker 1: he was being combative. We were shocked with that information.
Speaker 1: We really were. Police told me he collapsed in front
Speaker 1: of the station. So when did he all of a
Speaker 1: sudden get uncollapsed and become combative? Plus when he arrived
Speaker 1: to the hospital, he was already in cardiac arrest. I
Speaker 1: asked the hospital to put together Courtney's medical records so
Speaker 1: I can see for myself. Brent and I dropped off
Speaker 1: our daughter at school and headed straight for the hospital
Speaker 1: for the paperwork. I started flipping through the medical records
Speaker 1: before we even left the parking lot. Right away, I
Speaker 1: found a document all right up from the E. M. T. S.
Speaker 1: It says my son was combative, violent, agitated, a dangerous
Speaker 1: to others, and that he was handcuffed. Handcuffed. Police never
Speaker 1: told me about any handcuffs, And why would they handcuff
Speaker 1: someone who's dying unless they thought he was a suspect
Speaker 1: of some kind. Brent was quiet, but I can tell
Speaker 1: he was angry. I know how he is, and I
Speaker 1: know he didn't do anything to pose a threat. Had
Speaker 1: he been a young a young white guy, nice car,
Speaker 1: the situation would have been totally different. I thought about
Speaker 1: those detectives we had just met with. You know, you
Speaker 1: see and hear a lot of things, but I'm actually
Speaker 1: really proud of the way the officers conducted themselves. They
Speaker 1: were just playing me for food. You know, you can
Speaker 1: take some comfort in that that he was there are
Speaker 1: people there to care, and that they you know, they
Speaker 1: didn't help Brennan. I really need to process all of this.
Speaker 1: We felt sick to our stomachs, but we knew we
Speaker 1: had to eat, so we went to one of our
Speaker 1: favorite restaurants, a place called Sweet Maple's Cafe. We drove
Speaker 1: there directly from the hospital. Our hearts were on the floor.
Speaker 1: We couldn't stop thinking about the police handcuffing our baby.
Speaker 1: Right when we walk in the door, lowing behold. There
Speaker 1: she is the e R nurse from the night Courtney died,
Speaker 1: you know, the one who had held my hand and
Speaker 1: comfort of me. She was sitting with an older woman,
Speaker 1: her mother. I told my mom, like, oh my god
Speaker 1: that I was like, Mom, you remember the story I
Speaker 1: was telling you about when a young man got killed.
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's that is his parents right there. Clarissa
Speaker 1: Hawkins was work in the e R when Courtney came in.
Speaker 1: She was the one who cut the clothes off his body.
Speaker 1: I had to ask her, was my baby really handcuffed?
Speaker 1: She told me he was. I remember him specifically being
Speaker 1: handcuffed to the bed, and so we were like, okay,
Speaker 1: where's the police. We need these handcuffs off um and
Speaker 1: then maybe maybe like about I said, about a minute,
Speaker 1: and the police walked in and they took off the
Speaker 1: They you know, took off the handcuffs. Nurse talking said
Speaker 1: when she first saw Courtney, his right hand was handcuffed
Speaker 1: to the stretcher, which was a problem because they needed
Speaker 1: to transfer him to a hospital bed so they can
Speaker 1: work on him and they couldn't. And yeah, it was different.
Speaker 1: I don't remember ever saying any other gunshot victims come
Speaker 1: in handcuffed. She didn't remember anything about him being combative.
Speaker 1: So if if somebody's combattled, we know that when they're
Speaker 1: coming down, because that's one of the first thing they
Speaker 1: tell us for safety. Oh this person's could battlem so
Speaker 1: be ready. We never got that report about him that
Speaker 1: he was combative because then now our security team has
Speaker 1: to come and we have to have extra security there.
Speaker 1: We have to have medications on board the calm this
Speaker 1: person down. My baby must have been so scared he
Speaker 1: was all by himself, but it's a comfort to me
Speaker 1: that Nurse Hawkins showed him some compassions or something I
Speaker 1: do personally. I remember laying my hands on his arm
Speaker 1: and I started praying for him, like so, I don't
Speaker 1: know what happened, but please, you know, say this person life.
Speaker 1: I started praying. She didn't know anything about Courtney when
Speaker 1: she prayed for him, just that he was somebody. We
Speaker 1: exchanged numbers and left the restaurant, but the day wasn't
Speaker 1: over yet. It wasn't even noon. Next we had to
Speaker 1: go to the Tollyard to get Courtney's car back. We've
Speaker 1: been getting the runaround for weeks. The BMW was caught
Speaker 1: between the police in the impound lot, just stuck in paperwork.
Speaker 1: I wanted all of courtney stuff back, the clothes he
Speaker 1: was wearing, his book bag, his phone, and most of all,
Speaker 1: I wanted the car babay. Courtney's friend, Christian Hernandez, the
Speaker 1: guy who co signed for it, had to meet us
Speaker 1: there to get it released. And the thing that shook
Speaker 1: us both is that there was no blood in the car,
Speaker 1: but police said Courtney was shot inside the vehicle. It
Speaker 1: simply didn't make sense we told the BMW home. A
Speaker 1: lawyer we found was waiting for us to process the
Speaker 1: car back in our garage. The lawyer and his colleague
Speaker 1: took hundreds of pictures of the BMW as evidence. I
Speaker 1: foundly felt like someone was taking my son's case seriously.
Speaker 1: They wore gloves and put the items from the car
Speaker 1: and ziplock bags and labeled them. I stayed inside the house.
Speaker 1: It was too emotional. I've gone through those pictures of
Speaker 1: what they found. There's lots and lots of broken glass,
Speaker 1: but besides that, it was like looking into my son's world.
Speaker 1: There's a yellow sticky note taped to his driver's side
Speaker 1: that says marketing director. That's the job Courtney was working towards.
Speaker 1: It was his goal, and I promise you looking at that,
Speaker 1: it just broke my heart. There was a lighter, a
Speaker 1: nutter butter wrapper, an empty Gatoray bottle, lemon line, his
Speaker 1: favorite kind, in a parking ticket he was probably hiding
Speaker 1: from me. There's one winter glove, no doubt he lost
Speaker 1: the other one. He was always on the goal. Item
Speaker 1: after item sealed up in those plastic bags. There was
Speaker 1: a box for a new iPhone he had just gotten
Speaker 1: that phone a week before he was shot, but the
Speaker 1: phone itself wasn't there. The police still had it a
Speaker 1: few weeks later. When I got it back, the screen
Speaker 1: was cracked and the phone was unlocked. Everybody, every Day,
Speaker 1: No by these Not No Somebody is a co production
Speaker 1: of The Invisible Institute, The Intercept, Topic Studios, and I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in association with Tenderfoot TV. I'm Chaparral Wolls.
Speaker 1: This podcast is produced by Alison Flowers and Bill Heally.
Speaker 1: Sarah Guice is our story editor. Ellen Glover is our
Speaker 1: associate producer for The Invisible Institute. Jamie Calvin is executive
Speaker 1: producer for Topic Studios. Maria Zucker and Christie Gressman and
Speaker 1: Leta Mallod are executive producers. Special thanks to Lizzie Jacobs
Speaker 1: 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 Stecklo Annie When, Khari Blackburn, Ray Jef Sinclair,
Speaker 1: Henry Adams, Matilda Voyat, Dana Roso's kellerher Frances McDonald, Diana Archmagian,
Speaker 1: Maddie Anderson, Andrew Fan and Rissa Apantaku. Translation support by
Speaker 1: Benny Hernandez Occampo and Emma Perez. Fact checking by Noah
Speaker 1: Are Jenny Special thanks to Chris Rasmussen, Bennett Epstein, Matt Topic,
Speaker 1: David Brelow, and Julie Wolf. We want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Email us at info at somebody podcast dot com or
Speaker 1: leave us a voicemail at seven seventy three two seven
Speaker 1: zero zero one two one. To learn more about this
Speaker 1: case and for links to additional materials, go to our
Speaker 1: show page at somebody podcast dot com. You can also
Speaker 1: find a list of everyone we want to think there
Speaker 1: so many people helped us along the way.