Rage. Seethe. Boil.

[Content Note: Police brutality; misogynoir.]

The Chicago police officer who shot and killed Rekia Boyd in 2012 because he "thought for sure he was going to get shot," even though Boyd did not have a weapon, has been found not guilty:

In an unusual move, Judge Dennis Porter granted a defense motion for a directed verdict, meaning he found police officer Dante Servin not guilty without Servin even having to put on a defense.

Servin had been charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless conduct and reckless discharge of a firearm — but Porter, in issuing his verdict, said Servin's conduct was "beyond reckless" in the March 2012 shooting of Rekia Boyd. Therefore, "it would be improper to allow the trial to continue given the total failure" to prove recklessness, which was key to all three charges. "The evidence does not support the charges on which the defendant is being tried."

The officer's decision to discharge his firearm, Porter said, "was an intentional act."

Porter seemed to know his decision would be controversial.

"This is not a place for emotion," he said before reading his verdict. "This is a place for reasoned decisions."

Emphasis mine. A judge who just let a police officer walk because he intentionally shot someone, without even requiring that officer defend himself, is lecturing people about "reasoned decisions."

And is he seriously suggesting that "reckless" and "intentional" are mutually exclusive concepts? (He is.) Because they're not.

It appears that what he's doing here is saying that, because Servin's act was intentional, that means it doesn't meet Illinois' legal definition of reckless, which stipulates that Involuntary Manslaughter and Reckless Homicide are committed by a "person who unintentionally kills an individual without lawful justification." Basically, he's saying that a higher charge was warranted, and thus absolving him of the lesser charges.

I am without fucking words.

I am not surprised by the failure to hold a cop accountable for killing Rekia Boyd. But I am angry. Very, very angry.

And part of that anger is owed to the fact that this was so goddamned predictable.