John Kass
August 3, 2008
Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis and Cook County State's Atty. Dick Devine have asked Iowa Gov. Chet Culver for justice in the case of Chicago cop Mike Mette.
"It just seems that it's a miscarriage of justice," Weis told me late last week after writing a letter to Culver. "I just want the governor to take a look at the case and maybe he'll see the same things we saw. I just don't think justice was served. The punishment doesn't fit the crime."
If there was a crime.
It doesn't seem that it was a crime. Not in America. Maybe in some other country, but not here. When someone attacks you, you have the right to defend yourself. Even in America.
Mette, a good cop with a good record, was in Dubuque in 2005 when he and his brother and friends ran into two angry drunks.
One of them attacked Mette, repeatedly, pushing and screaming, as Mette tried to get to the safety of his brother's Iowa apartment. Mette avoided the drunk, once, then twice. The third time, when the drunk punched him in the chest, Mike punched back. Once.
And for that he was sentenced to 5 years in prison. On Sunday, he'll have been behind bars for 280 days, for the crime of self-defense, or the crime of being a Chicago cop in Iowa. The prosecutors in Dubuque whine every time I write about this, and they often exaggerate their case to their local media so it won't smell so bad. A reasonable man might think that insider politics is at play.
Unbelievable.
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