Family of teen killed by CPD officer fights to reopen his case
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Calvin Cross was shot and killed by Chicago police in 2011 and the officers who shot him cleared by investigators, but now his family is fighting to get his case re-opened.
Calvin Cross's only run in with police, his mother says, was for violating curfew when he was 15-years-old. With no criminal record, his family believes the night he died he saw officers approaching him - one with an assault rifle - and ran.
Three cops chased him, documents show. Claiming he had a gun, they fired more than 40 rounds. Five bullets hit Cross; the fatal wound was a shot to the head.
The revolver police say 19-year-old Cross pointed at three officers and fired is a Smith and Wesson. Evidence photos show the gun was rusty, discarded on a sidewalk dozens of feet from where Cross died.
His family has always insisted it was planted.
"No fingerprints on the weapon, the gun had never been fired and could be fired it was so old," says Dana Cross, the victim's mother.
But in an interview with the Independent Police Review Authority, one officer said, "I saw him bring the weapon towards us. And I saw a muzzle light, shooting out at least three times."
But state police would determine the gun couldn't even fire, concluding in the report that the gun couldn't even fire.
More than two years after the shooting, IPRA determined the officers were justified in their actions.
Cross's mother says she believes police murdered her son, and says none of the officers involved have ever been disciplined.
"They've been working. And they're still working. And I don't think that's right because my son didn't do anything to deserve what they did to him," she says.
The city of Chicago settled the case for $2 million. That money is in a trust for Calvin Cross, Jr., who was born months after his father was killed.
Late Friday night a Cross family attorney said the Department of Justice is now reviewing their case, and he believes the State's Attorney will also reopen it.
