Disgraced Chicago cops posed with black suspect wearing antlers

Aamer Madhani | USA TODAY

CHICAGO — Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday sought to distance the Chicago Police Department from two ex-Chicago police officers who posed more than a decade ago for a racially-charged photo with a African-American man lying on his stomach with deer antlers on his head.

The photo, which was believed to have been taken between 1999 and 2003 at a Chicago police station, was published in the Chicago Sun-Times this week after a Cook County judge declined to keep the photo out of the public eye.

"Let me be clear: That photo does not represent the values of the city of Chicago that we all share in common," Emanuel told reporters Tuesday. "It doesn't represent the values of the Police Department."

In the photo, officers Timothy McDermott and Jerome Finnigan, are armed with rifles and kneel over an unidentified African-American drug suspect who they allegedly splayed to look like hunters' bounty. Both former officers are white and the suspect is black.

The publication of the shocking photo comes as Chicago, like many other big cities in the USA, is grappling to repair damaged relations in the African-American community.

Earlier this month, the city council approved an unprecedented reparations package to the mostly African-American victims who were tortured by police officers under the control of former police commander Jon Burge.

From 1972 through 1991, the suspects were subjected by Burge's police officers to mock executions and electric shock and beaten with telephone books as their interrogators flung racial epithets at them. A Chicago Police Department review board ruled in 1993 that Burge's officers had used torture. He was fired.

The day after Emanuel announced his support for the Burge reparations package in April, the city approved a $5 million payout to Laquan McDonald, a black teenager fatally shot 16 times by police last fall.

Last month, Superintendent Garry McCarthy announced that he was launching a listening tour to meet with residents and community leaders to mend strained relations between police and minority communities.

The officers in the antler photo were part of a disgraced special unit that was accused of robbing drug dealers and other individuals of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Finnigan is serving a 12-year prison sentence for robbery and home invasion after pleading guilty in 2011.

McDermott was not charged with any criminal wrongdoing, but was fired from the police department last year based on the photo. The Chicago Police Board, which oversees disciplinary matters, voted 5-4 to fired McDermott. The dissenting board members thought a suspension was a more appropriate punishment.

McDermott has sued to reverse his dismal. In an internal affairs investigation, he described the incident as a youthful indiscretion

"I was asked to join the photo and I did so without exercising proper judgment," McDermott said according to the transcript. "I made a mistake as a young impressionable police officer who was trying to fit in. I wish I could go back and change this split second decision."

The photo came to attention of the CPD after federal prosecutors gave the photo to police in 2013 after Finnigan had been sentenced to prison.

The department sought to keep the image out of the public eye, arguing they wanted to protect the privacy of the suspect shown in it, but a judge refused to hide the picture in March. The Sun-Times obtained the image in the court file. Police were never able to identify the suspect, who was never charged.

McCarthy, the city's top cop, called the photo "disgusting."

"As the superintendent of this department, and as a resident of our city, I will not tolerate this kind of behavior, and that is why neither of these officers works for CPD today," McCarthy told the Sun-Times. "I fired one of the officers and would have fired the other if he hadn't already been fired by the time I found out about the picture."