Task force chief disputes value of Lurry video

The head of the task force that investigated the Eric Lurry case said Friday that the missing video showed “absolutely nothing,” a claim disputed by the attorney for Lurry’s widow.

A report done by a law firm hired by the city of Joliet to look into the missing video has faulted the Will Grundy Major Crimes Task Force and the Joliet Police Department for not ensuring that the video from cameras outside the police station on the day of Lurry’s arrest was preserved.

“We 100% did request all of their video,” task force Executive Director Dan Jungles said.

The task force is called in to investigate all cases of police-involved deaths and obtained video from Lurry’s arrest and subsequent coma from Joliet police.

Jungles also said “numerous members of the task force” from various police departments viewed all the video from Lurry’s arrest at the Joliet police station, including what was available then from the outside cameras.

Video from a squad car parked behind the transport car that brought Lurry to the police station depicts police and ambulance activity around Lurry in the parking lot, Jungles said.

“The video they’re saying we should have taken shows absolutely nothing,” he said. “The outside video didn’t show anything. It was blocked by two cars.”

Jungles said the outdoor camera video was of poor quality and showed “the top of some squad cars from a distance” and “the top of some heads from a distnace.”

“The other video is much closer and shows everything,” he said.

Jungles said the task force had video from the Joliet Police Department that depicted the scene of Lurry’s arrest, his transport to the police station parking lot, the scene at the parking lot and his subsequent transport to the hospital.

The video from the outside cameras was overwritten after 60 days, which is the usual practice of the city because of limited storage space and the costs of keeping video, according to the report by attorney Sean Connolly and investigator Martin P. Walsh.

Connolly would not discuss the report, noting it was done for a case that remains in litigation.

But the report does state that the outdoor camera video should have been preserved and would have provided more footage from the scene providing some depiction of police and ambulance activity.

The report was made available this week by Lurry’s widow, Nicole Lurry, who has filed a federal lawsuit against the city and who recently obtained the document.

“We have no idea what the video showed,” Lurry’s attorney Abby Bakos said, adding that she did not accept the police version of what was depicted by the outdoor cameras. “We have no idea whether that’s true, because they destroyed it.”

Bakos said the Joliet Police Department has preserved video from the outdoor cameras for less crucial cases.

“It was routine for them to save and preserve those videos,” Bakos said. “They did it in all sorts of investigations. For them not to do it in a case that involves an in-custody death is absurd.”

According to the Connolly-Walsh report, Joliet police Lt. John Rosado said that the task force commander leading the investigation specifically asked for the squad car video but “did not ask for all the video to be saved to a DVD.”

Connolly and Walsh interviewed Rosado and task force Cmdr. John Arizzi in their investigation.

According to the report, Arizzi determined that the outdoor camera video “had no evidentiary value” but believed it had been included with video provided by Joliet police until learning otherwise after the 60-day period had passed and it had been overwritten.