“There has been a little hiccup. The NCAA was ready to certify your eligibility until they heard about the crowds that showed up for your game and the fundraisers. I’m going to need a list of everyone involved and get them on record.”
“Why’s it a big deal?” I asked.
“You signed autographs for your movie and played baseball. I expect they know you didn’t receive any compensation for the event. I think they simply don’t know what to do with you.”
“Why do I feel nervous about this?” I asked.
“You shouldn’t. I don’t see where you’ve broken any rules in your role in planning or taking part in the event. I just want to do my due diligence and be prepared in case they have questions,” Mr. Morris said.
“Did Dad tell you there’s another one this weekend?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Did he tell you they’re going to start selling tickets for the car Range Sports gave me?”
“Are you serious? They better not be using your name in relation to any of this,” he ranted.
“Why don’t you call Mrs. Sullivan and talk to her? When I gave the car back to Range Sports, they donated it to the Booster Club to raise funds with,” I said.
“How much do they plan to raise?”
I looked at Dad.
“They’re selling tickets for $100 each, and the plan is to sell a thousand of them,” Dad answered.
“Shit. I’ll call them first thing to make sure you’re not associated with it. It would probably help if they repainted the car.”
“How much longer do you expect the NCAA will take getting David certified?” Dad asked.
“At this point, I don’t know. My fear is that because he’s unique, they might just hold off making a decision. We might not know for several months.”
That just made my day.
◊◊◊ Tuesday March 15
Today was the primary election. Polls showed that the governor and Senator Dixon were well ahead of their challengers. Bev Mass was down a couple of points. A white police officer shooting a young black man with a history of mental illness was too much for the people of Cook County. If the officer had waited for the Taser unit, which had been called, this would have been a nonevent. To shoot the man sixteen times was too much, as far as I was concerned. Bev agreed and had the officer charged with first-degree murder. Unfortunately for Bev, it was a case of ‘kick them all out’ that got her smeared in the primary. I expected that by the end of the day, she would be out of a job come the end of her term.
It could also have been the public perception of how it was all handled. A judge ordered the dashcam recording to be released by November 25 of last year. City officials had argued for months that it couldn’t be made public until the conclusion of several investigations. The fear wasn’t that it might hinder the investigations, it was of what the citizenry would do. There had been recent unrest in other cities when similar events had occurred. Bev had the officer charged; those charges came out on November 24.
The video showed the officer firing sixteen shots into the teen. It took him fifteen seconds to do it, and the video showed the young man face down on the ground for thirteen of those seconds. When people saw the body jerk multiple times as the officer fired, it was game over.
There were eight other officers at the scene when he emptied his gun into the young man. The police union and his lawyers claimed that he was in mortal fear of his life, but that argument didn’t hold water. The police internal investigation disagreed with their assertion that he acted in self-defense. Given the number of policemen present and the call to the Taser unit, they could have waited. When shot, the youth had been pacing back and forth with a knife in his hand. If he’d made a move towards the police, I might have been on board with the officer using lethal force to protect himself. I might even have understood emptying his gun into the kid—under extreme stress, that happened sometimes. But this guy was just pacing; he never made that move.
It didn’t help when one of the local newspapers used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the officer’s police record. He had at least 15 complaints filed against him while working in high-crime neighborhoods. Accusations against him included using racial epithets and pointing a gun at an arrestee without justification. In one instance, he and his partner had made a traffic stop. They were found to have used excessive force on a man with no prior convictions. That led to a $350,000 award for damages in a subsequent civil case.
Once the story broke, a bipartisan protest erupted. On top of that, the officer in question had been reassigned to desk duty and not fired. When that came to light, two local ministers were outraged and rallied the public.
