Loose Cannon

"While the police were talking to the guy, his car started drifting back, and then the guy started going forward, and I saw the cop just shot right into the driver's window," Carlock told investigators. "When the car came around the corner, the police officer continued to shoot, and he was shooting in the direction where we were at, so we just hit the ground."

Summers' statement is summarized by the detective who wrote it down: ". . . She observed the white auto drift backwards, then start to go forward. At this time she observed the police officer shoot inside the driver's side window of the white auto. The white auto drove away at a high rate of speed, and the police officer continued to shoot at the car."

Neither indicates that the cops were defending themselves from an onrushing car. Both say the officers continued to shoot as the car was speeding away and didn't pose a threat -- a practice that has since been banned at the Justice Department's behest.

The witness whose account seems to be the basis of Watson's ruling is Tate. He was quoted as saying Stephon "slapped the car in drive." In response to a question about whether the officers could have been run over, Tate was quoted as saying "Yes."

Yet when Scene called Tate, his account differed markedly from the one in investigative files. According to Tate, the police asked the driver to pull over. "He attempted to do that by putting the car in reverse. It rolled back, and they claim he was trying to roll them over, but never did he accelerate in reverse. When he rolled back, they opened fire on him."

Asked if the officers had reason to fear for their lives, Tate says, "At no time were they ever in danger." When told of the account attributed to him by the police, Tate renders his own verdict: "They full of shit. The way they wrote my statement down is not true at all."

So the interview at the heart of Watson's ruling is at the very least suspect, and quite possibly fictional. Of course, Watson couldn't have known this at the time of the ruling, for at no time during the eight months of meticulous investigation did he bother to contact the witness on whom his ruling hinges.

"I never met him," Tate says of Watson. "Never called me. The only one that I was interviewed by was the detective."

On the basis of this evidence, Jopek and Rudin were put back on the street. John Martin, a lawyer for the Moore family, is calling for the city to reopen the investigation. "They owe it to the family, and not only the family, but the community, to take another look at this."

The city is stubbornly refusing to do so. But even if the city did take another look, it would be too late for Stanley Strnad.

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Nine months after Watson's ruling, Strnad answered his cell phone. It was his fiancé, Nicole, calling to tell him the pizza was ready.

Soon after he hung up, he crossed paths with Jopek and Rudin. According to the account the officers gave to investigators, they were at a stoplight next to the Taurus that Strnad was driving. When the light turned green, Strnad stomped the gas and swerved into their lane, cutting them off.

The officers turned on their siren and pulled Strnad over. Jopek approached the car with his gun drawn and told the driver to keep his hands up. Strnad threw the car into drive, Jopek told investigators. "As he pulled out, the back end of his car almost clipped me."

Running from the police wasn't unusual for Strnad. Nicole Tomazic explains that when he was 19 or 20, he called from jail claiming that the cops had squirted him in the mouth with pepper spray, then refused to give him water to flush it out. Whatever the truth, Strnad was spooked, Tomazic says, and "from there, he was a little leery" of police.

After Strnad took off, Jopek and Rudin radioed dispatch to report that they were now pursuing a suspect wanted "in connection with an attempted assault on a police officer." They chased him into Euclid, then had to back off because they were out of their jurisdiction. But when a report came in that Strnad had exited I-90 at East 156th Street, the chase was back on.

The officers caught up with the Taurus and saw it crash into a parked car at East 156th and Parkgrove. The driver took off on foot; Jopek and Rudin jumped out to give chase. Strnad dashed down a driveway between a hair salon and an apartment building. Jopek followed. Rudin went down the driveway next door.