A Chicago police officer was acquitted this week of writing a bogus report and providing false testimony about a gun arrest, but he still faces dismissal for allegedly stealing cash and drugs and lying about other firearm seizures.
Cook County Judge Ursula Walowski found Officer Daniel Fair not guilty Thursday of felony charges of official misconduct and obstruction of justice during a bench trial.
The case hinged on a street stop of a man named Rodney Westerfield on Aug. 8, 2020, in the 11800 block of South Stewart Avenue.
Fair, 35, wrote in an arrest report that Westerfield swung a satchel to the front of his body when officers approached, prosecutors previously said. Fair claimed his partner then found a Ruger MK III handgun in Westerfield’s pants before he recovered a Taurus G2c handgun and a box of ammunition in the satchel.
But prosecutors said body camera footage showed Westerfield never adjusted the satchel and that Fair actually grabbed the Taurus from Westerfield’s “closed bag,” which had been taken before the other gun was found.
Fair offered a different story at a preliminary hearing later that month, prosecutors said. He claimed Westerfield fled from the stop, leading to a chase that resulted in Fair taking Westerfield into custody and finding “a hard metal object” that fell to the ground.
Fair testified that he then recovered a Ruger MK3, the same type of gun he said his partner had found, prosecutors said. But body camera footage showed the partner pushed the Ruger out of Westerfield’s pants, and it was only discovered after Westerfield had been handcuffed and Fair had found the other gun.
Prosecutors said a review of the evidence shows Fair knew he was providing bogus accounts of the arrest and did so to obstruct Westerfield’s defense.
Fair’s attorney, Tim Grace, previously said it was “more of a case where the officers testimony should have been a little tighter.” Grace didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
On Aug. 20, 2021, over a year after the arrest, Westerfield filed a motion to quash the arrest and suppress evidence that was “unlawfully seized,” court records show.
Westerfield ultimately pleaded guilty that November to a felony count of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. He was sentenced to a year in prison, much of which he had served in the Cook County Jail while awaiting trial.
Prosecutors later filed a petition to have the conviction vacated in August 2023, citing the charges and evidence against Fair. The motion was denied months later, and the case was closed.
Fair faces firing
As the criminal case was playing out, the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability released a damning report earlier this year that accused Fair and three other Calumet District tactical officers of engaging in misconduct deemed “substantial and irrefutable.”
In one case, Fair and Officer Kevin Taylor took cash and marijuana during a vehicle search, COPA said in the report dated Jan. 26. GPS records showed they drove to Fair’s block after the search and the contraband was never inventoried.
Fair and Officer Jeffery Morrow also recovered a gun used in a slaying in Kentucky and let the suspect go — part of an alleged pattern of lying about the source of guns they took off the street without making arrests.
Had the officers searched his name in a law enforcement database, they would’ve discovered he had an active warrant for murder, COPA said.
All four officers were interviewed by the FBI last year. COPA said Fair and Morrow admitted to “seizing firearms and completing false reports,” and Taylor conceded that he was aware of his colleagues submitting bogus paperwork. Officer Rupert Collins, however, claimed he was unaware of officers covering up problematic gun seizures, COPA said.
Cook County prosecutors and the FBI both declined to prosecute, COPA said.
But COPA concluded the officers engaged in a troubling pattern of misconduct and called for their dismissal. On May 10, Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling told COPA Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten he was setting in motion the process for firing them.
Prosecutors tried to bolster their ill-fated criminal case against Fair by tying him to the broader “scheme” investigated by COPA. However, Judge Walowski shot down their bid to introduce the “other crimes evidence” in the gun case.
The judge said those accusation had little resemblance to the criminal charges and that they’d probably have an unfair “prejudicial effect” on Fair’s case.
Fair previously served as a U.S. Army specialist during Operation Enduring Freedom and joined the police department in 2017. He earns $102, 870, annually.