The record of former Chicago Police Detective Dante Servin will not be expunged after a ruling by a Cook County judge on Tuesday.
Servin was acquitted on involuntary manslaughter charges in the shooting death of 22-year-old Rekia Boyd, but the charges won’t disappear from Servin’s record and law enforcement databases after the ruling from Cook County Judge LeRoy Martin Jr.
Servin had been seeking to have the case expunged from his record, citing post-traumatic stress disorder and his difficulty in finding steady employment since his acquittal in 2015.
Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx and Boyd’s family both opposed the request.
The shooting occurred in 2012 when Servin, who was off-duty at the time, approached four individuals in a park on Chicago’s West Side. Servin and the group engaged in a verbal altercation, and the off-duty detective fired his weapon, striking Boyd in the head.
Servin claimed that a member of the group had been holding a gun, but no weapon was found at the scene.
During Servin’s trial on involuntary manslaughter charges, Judge Dennis Porter acquitted him in a directed verdict, indicating that the former officer should have been charged with first-degree murder in the case.
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Ultimately, Servin resigned days before a department hearing on his job status in 2016, and the city of Chicago paid out $4.5 million to Boyd’s family.
