Pubdate: Thu, 11 Sep 2014
Source: Illinois Times (IL)
Copyright: 2014 Yesse Communications
Contact:  http://www.illinoistimes.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/206
Author: Bruce Rushton

COPS AND ROBBERS

Decatur's finest get their man

Dennis Kendall didn't finish high school, but at 32, he was a
homeowner in Decatur before his world came crashing down.

He began roofing at the age of 13, his family says, and was once
employed by the same company for nine years. He didn't have a driver's
license owing to a driving under the influence conviction. If he
couldn't catch a ride to work, he'd call a cab.

"He was early, if anything," recalls his employer, John Muehlebach,
owner of Muehlebach Roofing. "He's the type of employee you don't come
across very often in my industry."

In 1998, Kendall was convicted of burglary and sent to prison for five
years, a byproduct, his relatives say, of a problem with crack cocaine
that he ultimately overcame. Besides drunken driving convictions, he
has since had two misdemeanor convictions for damaging property and a
misdemeanor conviction for resisting police. Not a stellar record, to
be sure, but he was hardly public enemy number one. Muehlebach
remembers him as quiet. Trustworthy. Dependable. His relatives
describe Kendall as an imperfect guy who liked to work, drink beer and
smoke pot.

On Dec. 6, 2012, robbers broke down Kendall's front door, tied him up
and threatened to shoot him while demanding money and marijuana,
according to a police report taken after Kendall called 911. He
exhibited symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to at
least one expert, and he told friends and relatives that he feared the
robbers would return and kill him. He got an estimate from an alarm
company, barricaded his door with two-by-fours and filled out a FOID
card application, even though he wasn't supposed to have a gun because
he was a felon. Nonetheless, he obtained a pistol.

One month after the robbery, a snitch told police that Kendall was
armed and selling pot. As dealers go, Kendall was nickel and dime. The
gun, Det. Chad Larner testified in court last week, was the main concern.

"What was conveyed to us by a confidential source was, we had a
convicted felon, and he had a gun and he was sleeping with it at
night," Larner said.

Decatur police did what Decatur cops do in such situations. After a
judge signed a search warrant, a SWAT team headed to Kendall's house
at 6:30 a.m. on Jan. 10, 2013.

Police knocked, announced their identity, then started to break down
the door. In response, Kendall fired a single shot through the closed
door. The bullet hit at doorknob level before striking officer Jason
Hesse in the ankle. During trial in July, Kendall testified that he
aimed the way he did because he wanted to scare, not kill.

After firing, Kendall promptly called 911 to report that he was again
being robbed. When the dispatcher told Kendall that police, not
robbers, were on his porch, he opened his door and apologized. The
cops found an ounce-and-a-half of pot.

Prosecutors threw the book, charging Kendall with attempted murder,
armed criminal violence, illegal gun possession and possession of
marijuana with intent to distribute. They also asked the jury to find
that Kendall had discharged a firearm that caused "great bodily harm."
If convicted on all counts, he was facing a de facto life sentence.

Even police thought it was overkill.

"From the very beginning=C2=85of this, I had reservations about our abili
ty
to show he intended to murder a police officer," Larner testified last
week during sentencing proceedings.

The jury didn't buy it either and acquitted Kendall of attempted
murder. In a separate finding, jurors also determined that prosecutors
hadn't proven that Kendall had fired a gun that caused bodily harm,
even though he testified that he had pulled the trigger and the bullet
was found in Hesse's leg.

In short, the jury rejected the notion that Kendall had even fired a
shot, and so the defendant escaped a mandatory minimum sentence of 25
years. But the other charges stuck, and armed criminal violence
carries a minimum sentence of 15 years.

A person is guilty of armed criminal violence if he commits a felony
while armed, and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute is
a felony. If Kendall had acted like a criminal and flushed the pot
down his toilet when the cops came, he might not be in such a mess.
Instead, he opened his door, apologized and allowed police to pin him
with a felony drug charge that paved his path to prison. He got a
22-year sentence, seven years more than the mandatory minimum, but 20
years less than prosecutors requested during last week's hearing.

In pronouncing sentence, Macon County Circuit Court Judge Timothy
Steadman declared that Kendall probably was afraid of robbers, but he
might also have been trying to protect his drug dealing enterprise
when he obtained a gun.

"The point is this: It's illegal for a felon to possess a firearm
under any circumstances," Steadman said.

 From afar, it looks like a case of bad policing to Stephen Downing,
retired deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department who sits on
the board of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of former
cops and prosecutors who believe that the war against drugs is a failure.

The Los Angeles Police Department invented SWAT teams but does not
routinely use them to serve search warrants in drug cases, Downing
says. Given that Kendall didn't have a violent history, the retired
deputy chief says that the cops should have surrounded his house and
either ordered him to come out or waited until he came out on his own
and caught him unawares.

"What you're talking about isn't smart policing," Downing says. "What
you've got is a bunch of dummies that are not serving the community
well. =C2=85 I think that sometimes law enforcement is too overeager and
their common sense is replaced by this militaristic ode, this warrior
thing. The thing they forget is, their purpose is to preserve human
life. We (police) are not the military."

Los Angeles is a world away from Decatur, where police still use a
SWAT team to bust suspected dealers and make no apologies.

"That may be how Los Angeles would do it," says Decatur deputy chief
James Chervinko when asked why his department doesn't use tactics
suggested by Downing. "However, with Decatur - and I speak for us and
us alone - normally, if we receive a search warrant from a judge, we
are going to make entry into the house and try to apprehend the
subject before he can use the weapon against anybody. We've done
hundreds over the years. This is one time when he shot out through the
door."
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