Wallace Davis was in his west-side restaurant on June 27 when he heard a woman calling for help. He says he ran outside and the woman told him a man with a butcher’s knife had been trying to hold her up. Davis says he never imagined that when the police arrived he’d be the one they pummeled, arrested, and charged with battery.
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Davis won, but within a few years he’d been indicted in two cases. In 1986 he was charged by the Cook County state’s attorney, Richard M. Daley, with pistol-whipping one of his secretaries. Davis swears he didn’t do it, and a jury acquitted him. He still hasn’t forgiven Daley.
In 1987 he got ensnared in Operation Incubator, a federal sting in which FBI mole Michael Raymond bribed several aldermen to help an out-of-town contractor win a parking-ticket-collection contract. Davis admits he took money from Raymond, but he says it was only a campaign contribution and he reported it on his taxes. “I was stupid to even be near Michael Raymond,” he says. “But, man, let me tell you, Michael Raymond was the smoothest cat I’ve ever seen–and I came up on the west side, where I’ve seen some smooth, smooth talkers. How smooth was Raymond? Let me tell you, he took us to this high-class restaurant–I forget the name–and I picked up the tab!”
Davis says he asked one employee to bring him a broom and another to call the police. For a while there was a standoff, as Davis, brandishing the broom, and his employees surrounded the robber. When a policewoman arrived he was relieved. “I thought, ‘Good–some help,’” he says. “But this policewoman–who I didn’t know, though she knows me–said, ‘Wallace, put down the broom.’ I want you to think about this for a minute. We’re standing on Madison. I got a broom. The other guy’s got a knife–and she tells me to put down the broom! I said, ‘Bitch, are you crazy–what about the knife?’ She told me–and I’m not making this up–it wasn’t her concern. Wasn’t her concern? The guy has a motherfucking butcher’s knife!”
But Davis isn’t dropping the issue. He’s filed a complaint with the department’s Office of Professional Standards, and he says he plans to file a suit against the police department. “They say I pushed that policewoman–I never touched her,” he says. “I have many witnesses who will testify to what happened. I have witnesses who saw the man holding the knife. I don’t want to give out her name right now, but the woman who was robbed was in the courtroom ready to testify that I told the policewoman about the attempted robbery but the policewoman didn’t pay attention. I also have footage of what happened taken by the security cameras on the restaurant, and I have pictures of the wounds I suffered, a report from the hospital regarding my dislocated shoulder. I can’t believe that 30 years after getting shot I’m going through this. They ain’t getting away with this.” As he tells this story his employees stand around him nodding their heads.
