Rekia Boyd
Police Brutality 

Rekia Boyd’s Killer Yearns For Disability Pay

Jake Dubois , , , , , , , , , , ,

Former Chicago Police Detective Dante Servin, who shot and killed Rekia Boyd in 2012, seeks disability pay.

Ex-Chicago Cop, Dante Servin, wants disability pay after he was acquitted of killing a 22-year-old Black woman, Rekia Boyd. The former cop quit the police force after the shooting and he claims that he has been hampered by post-traumatic stress disorder since then. We have collected more information on this issue from the following trustworthy sources:

The Root

Chicago police detective who quit his job just days before a Chicago Police Board hearing would have determined whether he would be fired for the 2012 shooting death of 22-year-old Rekia Boyd is now seeking disability pay, the Chicago Tribune reports.

 

According to the report, former Chicago Police Detective Dante Servin is demanding disability pay from the city, saying that he continues to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder from the 2012 shooting that sparked protests and outrage.

The Tribune notes that the 48-year-old could collect as much as 75 percent of his former $104,000 salary until his police pension kicks in.

Servin was charged with involuntary manslaughter in Boyd’s death, but was later acquitted. Boyd was among a group of people in Chicago’s Douglas Park when Servin approached to tell them to keep the noise down. Servin said one of the group, Antonio Cross, became agitated and appeared to pull out what he thought was a gun.

 

Servin, who was in plainclothes at the time, said he yelled that he was a police officer and drew his gun, firing across his body out the window at Cross as he kept driving. Cross was struck by a bullet in his hand. However, Boyd, who was several feet behind Cross, was shot in the back of the head and died the next day.

Cross told authorities that he had a cellphone in his hand and that he was telling Servin to leave, thinking that Servin was there to buy drugs. No gun was recovered from the scene, other than the one fired by Servin, the Tribune notes. See more

New York Post

An attorney for the police pension board said the agency must first determine if Servin qualifies for disability pay. A technicality may actually block the former detective from receiving it since he did not use up all his sick and furlough days before leaving the department, attorney David Kugler told the newspaper.

 

Servin’s attorney, Thomas Pleines, disagreed with that assessment, saying the fundamental issues of Servin’s claim is whether he was injured while performing his duties as a police detective and whether those injuries impacted his ability to continue working.

A psychologist has diagnosed Servin with post-traumatic stress disorder and the former detective has seen a psychiatrist, Pleines said in a memo to the pension board last month. Both doctors indicated Servin could not work as a result of the “various manifestations of the PTSD,” Pleines said. The memo did not elaborate or provide details.

The pension board is currently reviewing whether Servin’s disability claim has legal standing if he did indeed have unused sick days before quitting. A decision could be made as early as Nov. 3. See more

Women Free Time

Thomas Pleines, who could not be reached by The Post on Thursday, acknowledged that Servin’s attempt to collect disability was unusual, given the fact that the independent police agency found that his actions violated the police department’s use of force guidelines. Despite that, he’s still entitled to make his claim, Pleines told the Tribune.

“Dante Servin is doing nothing other than what the law allows him to do, regarding his resignation, his application for disability and his avoiding being fired by the department,” Pleines said. “Everything he does is sanctioned by Illinois law.”

 

Martinez Sutton, the brother of Rekia Boyd – whose death ignited criticism against allegations of excessive use of force by Chicago police two years before Laquan McDonald’s death – learned of Servin’s attempt to collect disability pay from the Tribune. He told the newspaper it’s another example of police receiving protections that victims simply don’t get.

“Let’s be real. Some of the police officers actually do (face) danger,” Sutton told the newspaper. “This is just a case where (he) wasn’t even close to being in danger. No weapon found. And look at the justice we got.” See more

The former officer fired into a crowd and killed an innocent Black woman, Rekia Boyd, just because he believed they were making noise in public and one of them was allegedly holding a gun (which later turned out to be a cell phone). Now he wants to collect taxpayers’ money for the PTSD he has suffered since the shooting. This is quite repulsive, to say the least. He has already escaped the punishment, now he wants Black people to pay police for seeing their brothers and sisters killed. The system can’t be taken seriously if African-Americans continue to suffer such injustice.

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