Poor Reporting

All people have to do is mention the words "police" and "lawsuit" and the media runs with whatever they can find. Cases in point - #1:

• A man who claims he had his mouth and feet duct-taped and was beaten and kicked by three Chicago police officers earlier this year is suing the unknown officers for more than $2 million.
• Marcelo Gonzalez claims in a federal lawsuit filed Monday that he was grabbed from his car and taken at gunpoint by the officers when he arrived at an apartment building at 1646 N. Bosworth Ave. on March 9.
• Tamira Smyth, the resident of the apartment where the officers took Gonzalez, had already been held in the apartment by police for "several hours" when Gonzalez arrived, the suit said. The suit did not say why police may have been looking for Gonzalez, what was his relationship with Smyth or the purpose of his visit to the apartment building.

We recall this case from an earlier blog post (here's the original Channel 2 story from 23 March).

We posted at the time we weren't sure if the officers were unidentified due to legal reasons or because they didn't exist. We noticed that the accusations made in March involving cigarette burns don't seem to have made it to the lawsuit, and we're missing the accusations about the baseball bat, too. Now that the plaintiff is demanding $2 million from unknown officers, we're going to say the officers don't exist and this is a money grab.

Then we have example #2:

• A man who died in police custody last year was strangled by police, a lawsuit filed in Cook County Circuit Court Monday claims.
• Jaime Galvan was arrested about 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 9, 2006. About two hours after his arrest, Galvan was taken from the Austin Police District to a holding cell at Harrison Area headquarters at 3340 W. Fillmore St., according to the suit.
• At approximately 11:59 p.m., Galvan was found "unresponsive and deceased in his holding cell, with his body handcuffed to the prisoner rail," the suit says. According to the suit, "autopsy reports reveal that Jaime Galvan's body contained injuries and marks consistent with having been strangled."

Another fishing expedition? Like the police have nothing better to do than plant dope and guns, strangle prisoners, and run around with duct tape kidnapping citizens?