Wednesday's print column

A one-week gap in the timeline of the Sonia Antolec story suggests that Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez is more concerned with currying favor with police officers than standing by her prosecutors when they do the right thing.

Let's review: On July 10, Antolec, a Cook County Juvenile Court prosecutor in the criminal delinquency division, met with the two victims of a "wilding" attack on the CTA Red Line in March and determined that they would be unable to identify any of the eight young women who were that day facing trial. Antolec dropped the charges and made notes to that effect in her daily report to her supervisor.

Sonia Antolec (WTTW-Ch. 11)

Seven days passed. Antolec said she was then summoned by her supervisor's supervisor and told that "downtown" was unhappy with the "bad press" her decision was getting.

Alvarez's spokeswoman Sally Daly denies that Antolec was told this. But the only "press" on the decision had been a glancing expression of indignation the day before, July 16, on Second City Cop, an anonymously written blog purporting to speak for rank-and-file Chicago police officers.

Under the headline "All wilding charges dropped," the blogger relayed "an email we got this weekend" about the disposition of the case and griped, "welcome to justice, Cook County style. Not a consequence of any sort."

The blog mention "perhaps triggered discussion about these cases within and outside of this office," Daly said.

So either Antolec made a very lucky guess when she lied about what her supervisors told her or she's telling the truth.

In either event, Antolec's decision, previously not even a ripple in the news media or in the Juvenile Court building, was suddenly a blamestorm now that the anonymous police officers were peeved. Antolec was called into two more meetings in subsequent days and finally told she was being suspended for three days without pay and demoted "for failing to inform her supervisor that she intended to drop the charges," Daly said.

When I asked for a written copy of the rule Antolec violated, Daley replied, “There are long-standing policies and procedures that our ASA's receive significant training on.”

Through another source I later received a copy of rules dated July 23 -- a week after the Second City Cop blog posting --- sent to prosecutors from the head of the State’s Attorney’s Juvenile Justice Bureau spelling out the rules Daley said were so well understood (see full text of that memo below).