Police Free to Sexually Assault? {featured news}

"Chicago State's Attorney Lets Bad Cops Slide, Prosecutes Citizens Who Record Them," reported the Huffington Post earlier this month. The article refers to the case of 20-year-old Tiawanda Moore who was arrested last summer after reporting to internal affairs investigators that an officer, who was called to her apartment on a domestic-violence complaint, groped her breast and handed her his personal phone number. Her crime? Recording her conversation with the investigators.

Explains Ms. Magazine blog today:

When Moore went in to the station to file a sexual-harassment complaint against the officer, she says Internal Affairs officers told her not to bother. They began to threaten her if she insisted on going ahead with her charges. Moore got scared so she turned on the recorder inside her Blackberry, and captured their threats with her phone’s recording device.

When the officers realized they were being recorded, they arrested Ms. Moore and dumped her into the Cook County Jail. Illinois has a very tough law against recording a conversation with any law enforcement official without their knowledge. The law protects police and DA’s from being entrapped–but also violates the First Amendment, according to the ACLU in Chicago. Now out of jail, Moore faces 15 years in prison on charges of “eavesdropping”: The same penalty for rape in Illinois. And the cop she claimed grabbed her breast? No charges were brought against him. None.

Originally scheduled for February 7th, Ms. Moore's trial date is now scheduled for June 23rd, reports Chicago Taskforce on Violence Against Girls & Young Women:

Ms. Moore has asked for her right to a speedy trial to be respected ... Instead it has continuously been continued and postponed.

You can petition to have the eavesdropping charges against Moore dropped by signing here:

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