After suspect escapes Chicago police custody, expert weighs in on what went wrong
CHICAGO (CBS) – It's video you'll see only on CBS 2. A man in police custody trashed part of a Chicago Police Department facility during his plot to escape.
But how was he able to do the damage in the first place? CBS 2's Tara Molina asked the experts.
A police accountability expert said policy and procedure played a roll and this should be a lesson for Chicago police, a chance to make changes so this can't and won't happen again.
Cell phone video captured the damage: a hole in the ceiling, messy piles, dust and debris covering the Chicago Police Department's Area 3 headquarters.
This is where police sources said Tajze Mullins, 23, tried to escape police custody by breaking into the ceiling of a police interrogation room Friday night.
He wasn't successful in his escape.
But how was he able to attempt it in the first place? Why wasn't he in handcuffs? Or being supervised?
That's especially when you consider why he was in the room. He was accused of hitting a police officer with a car along Dusable Lake Shore Drive, breaking that officer's leg, then leading other officers on both a car and foot chases.
Chicago police wouldn't address those questions, saying the "investigation is under the jurisdiction of COPA. We cannot provide comment."
"Why would they think it's OK just to seat the person in a room as if they were a customer in a bank?" said David Harris, a police accountability expert. "I don't get it."
CBS 2 brought those questions to Harris.
"They need to address whether their policies and procedures were complied with by the officers involved," he said.
Harris is a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and an expert on police accountability. He said it's clear something went wrong in this case.
"How a person who was accused of injuring a police officer with a car and then leading police on a high speed chase and a foot chase, and everything else, is just allowed to sit in a room without any restrictions at all?" he said. "Enough so that he ends up trying to escape through the ceiling."
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability is investigating. Chicago police wouldn't address any of CBS 2's questions on policy and procedure. They wouldn't even confirm they're conducting their own internal investigation.
"We should look at this as a relatively cheap lesson in what not to do," Harris said.
And it's a lesson he said Chicago police should be evaluating now.
"You can't guarantee that the next time something like this goes wrong, the outcome won't be a lot worse," he added.
Harris also said when something "breaks down like this it's generally a system problem. It's not just one person or two people doing something wrong. You have to ask yourself what is there in their system of rules and requirements that went wrong and how can they fix it going forward."
"Something broke down here," he said, "and it wasn't just the ceiling tiles."
Mullins is being held without bail. CBS 2 was told the injured officer is expected to make a full recovery. And standard protocol applies here: any officers involved will be placed on administrative duties for 30 days while COPA investigates.
