CHICAGO (USA Today) — Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday sought to distance the Chicago Police Departmentfrom 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.