Word: hanrahan
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...SURPRISING FEATURE of the Panther case was not that the police had perpetrated such a slaughter. Edward V. Hanrahan (Harvard Law, '48), then State's Attorney for Cook County, had declared war on Chicago street gangs soon after he was elected in 1968. The Black P. Stone Nation on the South Side was the largest. It had several thousand members, and was turning from traditional gang activities to organizing for political and economic action. The group posed a threat to Mayor Daley's control of ghetto votes and became a prime target for Daley's machine. The Black Panthers, despite...
...Hanrahan's attempt to whitewash the incident was no more surprising than the violent behavior of the police. Hanrahan tried again and again to convince people that there had been a gun battle in which the Panthers had tried to shoot their way out. Hanrahan had his men act out their story on TV. He gave the sympathetic Chicago Tribune "exclusive information" consisting mostly of lies and ambiguous photographs. (One of the photographs showed "bullet holes" which turned out to be protruding nails.) Crime lab technicians faked lab reports. Other evidence was destroyed or misrepresented...
What was surprising, even to veteran Chicago-watchers, was that public uproar could grow strong enough to lead to a Federal grand jury investigation of the police action and, ultimately, to the trial of Hanrahan, five policemen, and several other officials on charges of obstruction of justice...
...Hanrahan and his co-defendents were acquitted, but his actions cost the Daley machine plenty. Hanrahan's defeat in last fall's election let in a Republican State's Attorney who has been prosecuting and convicting corrupt Democratic officials for the past year...
Equally important, Hanrahan so angered black Chicagoans--most of whom had always voted straight Democratic--that they split their tickets last year. The Daley machine depends on unthinking voters who pull the lever for the straight ticket; Hanrahan taught the voters to think. Few acts could hurt Mayor Daley more...