Liar's Club floated a deal during a court date for bashing victims Chad Edwards and Kurt Schneider last week: Liar's Club would drop the criminal charges against the victims if the victims agreed to waive all rights to sue for damages in the beating and did "community service," as Outlines reported last week.
Having been sent to Grant Hospital with "multiple facial contusions" allegedly inflicted by bouncers at Liar's Club, Edwards rejected the offer, as did Schneider. A contingent of activists from the Chicago Anti— Bashing Network accompanied Edwards, Schneider and Alan Mills of Uptown People's Law Center at the Belmont and Western court date.
Edwards, Schneider, and Mills said they are confident that they will prevail on all charges. "We are disappointed that the state is proceeding against the people who obviously were the victims here," said attorney Mills.
CABN spokespeople pointed out that now that the criminal case against Edwards and Schneider has begun, the Cook County State's Attorney's office, with Dick Devine at its head, bears some responsibility for aiding and abetting the Liar's Club bashers, CABN said.
CABN said there is evidence of misconduct by the responding officers, not to mention their refusal to arrest the party to the conflict which, while supposedly wronged by Edwards and Schneider, sustained neither injuries nor property damage. By prosecuting Edwards and Schneider, attention is drawn away from the fact that in addition to the Liar's Club employees, the mayor's own police force behaved unjustly, CABN alleges.
CABN is organizing a picket against Liar's Club March 18; they host a planning meeting March 15, 7 p.m., Ann Sather's, 929 Belmont
