Chicago Didn't Probe Why Judge's Gun Ended Up At Crime Scene

Cook County Judge William Stewart Boyd turned over two old guns at a church in South Chicago nearly two decades ago. They were among 5,900 guns the Chicago Police Department recovered at buybacks that day — its most successful haul ever. Five years later, one of the guns Boyd gave up resurfaced at the scene of a fatal police shooting in Cicero, reports the Illinois Answers Project. The Better Government Association, which publishes the Illinois Answers Project, and the Chicago Sun-Times, reported that story in 2017, prompting a Chicago police internal investigation. After the city refused to release records from that investigation, saying it was still open, Illinois Answers sued to obtain the findings. The records show there was no attempt to determine what went wrong or how to fix the problem. Neither Boyd nor officers were officers who might have handled the gun interviewed.

“It didn’t surprise me, to tell you the truth,” Boyd says. “For me to turn in a weapon to [the police department] and it ends up in Cicero, what does that tell you?” Chicago police processed more than 3,000 guns during the first citywide buyback in 2006. The event was prompted by a series of violent deaths. Two girls had been struck by bullets fired into their homes, and a musician was gunned down in a church parking lot. The following summer, Boyd took his guns to the church, where police eventually processed 264 firearms.

Records from the investigation show a Ruger Security-Six .357-caliber revolver was destroyed. But his late father’s Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver later was found beside Cesar Munive when he was fatally shot by a Cicero police officer on July 5, 2012. Boyd signed an affidavit saying the weapon belonged to his father and had been turned over to Chicago police. Munive’s family Cicero, saying the gun had been planted on Munive. Cicero settled the case for $3.5 million.

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