Uncle Says He Watched Cops Tape Antlers To His Nephew's Head In Racist Photo

Family members of the black man wearing antlers on his head and posing in a degrading photo as the bagged hunting prey of two white, rifle-toting Chicago cops, is their son and nephew.

Robert Smith told the Chicago Sun-Times that the man in the photo is his late nephew, Michael Spann, who was a student at Orr High School when the Polaroid photo was taken at a West Side police station in 2003.

Robert Smith, now 50, said that police busted into his Humboldt Park home and arrested his teenage nephew. Spann’s uncle said he was there in the Harrison police station when police forced Michael Spann to pose in the racially charged photos that were published last month in the Sun-Times.

The officers in the Polaroid seen worldwide, Jerome Finnegan and Tim McDermott, are no longer employed by the Chicago Police Department. McDermott lost his job over the photo, a firing upheld by a judge earlier this week. Finnegan is serving a prison term for leading a crew of rogue cops in kidnapping drug dealers.

Spann’s uncle said he watched as Finnegan taped antlers on to his nephew’s head and then forced him to crawl on the floor with his tongue hanging out.

“They were all laughing, telling him to crawl around, stick his tongue out,” Robert Smith told the paper. “He wouldn’t have done it if he wasn’t terrified.”

Spann’s uncle also said there more photos, where a total of four white officers, including Finnegan and McDermott, were pointing guns at his nephew’s head. Robert Smith said in a press conference he could identify the other officers in a photo lineup.

The police department says that it hasn’t been able to identify the black man in the photo, nor the person who took it.

Michael Smith said that his family is planning to file a lawsuit against the police department. They are also calling for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to conduct a full investigation.

Read the full story on the Sun-Times