The Power of Bearing Witness Against Injustice
When a government officer kills an unarmed citizen, is that murder?
I’d say the correct term is lynching. It’s been going on in this country for hundreds of years. Usually, the victims are Black. Whether it’s an ICE officer or a cop doing the deed, justice very rarely is served against such a killer. These government officials have “protection,” otherwise they would not confidently commit their lynchings.
Who provides such people protection? Apparently, the government itself. But is the government really the “final” protection agent? No. Organized Crime is the name we give to the behind-the-scenes powers. (Sometimes it’s called Global Capital.)
Can anyone defeat such power? Yes: you and I can. Our voices alone can do it.
I had the life-changing experience of standing for justice against such a force, and living to write the tale.
***
On a Saturday evening in early December 2025, I was sitting with my wife Gaia on the living room sofa, when my iPhone lit up with an unfamiliar number. I generally ignore such calls, but something about the area code—815—seemed familiar, and I answered the phone, “Hello, this is Andrew Laties.”
A male voice asked, “Did you leave me a message?”
“Who are you?” I asked in return.
“My name is Michael Caldwell. I’m cleaning out an old voice-mailbox on my phone. I don’t know you, but you left me a message about the police, and a trial.”
I knew who he was! “Oh, my gosh, that must have been five years ago I tried to contact you—yes—you and I both saw those cops killing Richard Ramey in an El station, back in 1980.”
He said, “I didn’t remember his name.”
“You testified, and so did I.”
“My wife and I saw them hold him against the wall and keep on hitting him. We told the agent in the booth, but I don’t think she did anything.”
I explained, “Five years ago I wrote a book about that murder we saw way back then, and I found a court website that had all our testimony posted right there online. That’s where I saw your name. I searched around on the internet for you, and I did find a person with the right name, and a phone number—so I wanted to talk with you, for my book. I didn’t hear back from you after I left a message on your voicemail, and I went ahead and published the book. I can send you a copy.”
He said, “I haven’t thought about that all for a long time. During that trial the defense tried to throw out my testimony—they claimed I had bias or a conflict. But the judge overruled that.”
“Yeah,” I said, “That judge—his name was Arthur Cieslik. He was in the pocket of organized crime—the Outfit. Those murderer-cops were corrupt—the whole system in Chicago in 1980 was corrupt—it was all part of the mafia.”
He said, “Doesn’t surprise me.”
I said, “In 2016, my wife decided to try researching what had happened with that case—and right away she found things out which there was no way we could have known back when we were in that trial. She found a book—a memoir written by a crooked mob attorney who turned state’s evidence.”
“Was he in witness protection?”
“Exactly—he had gone to the FBI, worn a wire, gathered evidence for the Feds, then dozens of people in the criminal justice system, and also politicians got indicted, and convicted—and this lawyer had to go in witness protection.”
“And you saw a book this guy wrote?”
“Right—a Chicago journalist—actually, the publisher of that magazine Chicago Reader—did interviews with this lawyer guy and created the memoir for him. I can’t remember the title—the book was published in maybe 2005. Anyway, what happened was, according to this mob lawyer’s book, those cops who we saw killing Richard Ramey in the train station, the biggest guy, the most brutal one, he was cousins with the leader of the Chinatown Group—the part of the Outfit that ran Chinatown. So—that cop could do anything he wanted, and he knew the justice system wouldn’t touch him. Because he had family protection, through the Outfit. That cop—his name was Louis Klisz—he was just insane, and he’d harass people for fun. I saw in 2020 on a website the Chicago Police Department has—they actually have this website where you can track complaints against officers. And this database goes way back. I found a page that showed those cops we saw in July 1980 had already that year, in April 1980 they had complaints lodged against them for brutality. But they’d only received a warning, so they were still on the beat when we saw them kill Ramey. Those cops just were beating people up for fun. Nobody would stop them, and they knew it.”
“You seem to know a lot about this. I don’t like to think about what happened there.”
“Well—anyway—the tactic the mob used to get those cops off was, to request—instead of a jury trial—to have a bench trial. So, then a judge would decide the case, not a jury. The mob used that strategy because they had a lot of judges in their pocket. They’d get people into this nice job being a judge, and then the mob judges would do whatever they’re told. And this judge who the mob arranged to sit over this Richard Ramey murder trial—Arthur Cieslik—was one of those corrupt judges the mob owned. But what happened—according to the book by this mob lawyer—was that, during the trial, this mob judge Cieslik was so horrified by the detailed witness testimony—your and my testimony—about how brutal the cops were—that Cieslik couldn’t bring himself to let the cops off. And this crooked mob lawyer says in his book that he hung around in the judge’s chambers—they were acquaintances—during breaks in the testimony—and Cieslik kept saying that he felt he couldn’t let the cops go free. And, he really didn’t. They ended up with a third-degree manslaughter conviction from the judge, and spent a couple years in prison.”
“They did time? I didn’t hear that part.”
“Yeah, it was unheard of. No Chicago cop ever goes to jail for brutality—and yet those cops did.”
“Well, they did a couple of years, you said?”
“Right—of course it should have been a first degree murder conviction, and life in prison, but they got off with just two years. I guess, it wasn’t as if Cieslik went all the way to doing the right thing. But—the Outfit did pay Cieslik back for betraying them—they arranged for him to lose his next election—they ginned up a corruption case against him: he was accused of making sexist comments to lady lawyers, and this was all over the newspapers, and he lost his reelection.”
“What was the name of that book?”
“I can’t remember—but oh, one other thing. The author—that crooked lawyer—he says in his book that it was his experience during the Richard Ramey trial that affected his outlook: he was inspired by Arthur Cieslik—and this ultimately led to him switching sides, and becoming an FBI informant, to take all those inside crooks down. So—our testimony in that case really made a difference! I’ll find the name of the book. If you give me your address I can send you a copy of the book I wrote, too, about the case.”
“Well—I need to get off the phone—wasn’t expecting to talk for this long. Send me a text message. I’ll write back with an address. Interesting talking with you.”
***
Sources:
Andrew Laties, The Music Thief (Easton, PA: Mythoprint Publishing, 2020) 93-96.
***
Selected Endnotes from The Music Thief:
Page 93. Eyewitness testimony, now posted online:
Michael Caldwell testified that he was with his wife Blenda in the concourse area of the station when two white men on either side of a black man came down the stairs toward him. One of the white men was thin with dark hair and the other had long red hair, an earring in his left ear, a bushy red beard, and a moustache. After they passed, he stopped and watched the two white men throw or shove the black man against the wall several times. The man with the beard then held the black man with his back to a cement post, and the thin man kicked him above the knees and below the chest. At that point, he (Caldwell) went to the ticket agent and, after speaking with her, she made a phone call. On his way back toward his wife, he saw the black man's head being held on the floor by the man with the red beard, and he heard the black man yell, "Murder, murder." He did not see any other person kick or strike the black man, but he did see a pool of blood under his head and neck. He (Caldwell) identified Klisz in a lineup and in court as the man with the beard.”
Donnie Reynolds, also in the station, saw a black man lying on the floor with one white man standing over him and a fat white man with his right knee on the neck of the black man, who was handcuffed and was hollering, "Get him off of me, help me." When he asked what was wrong, one of the white men said it was police business. He saw blood on the ground and blood coming from the right side of the black man's head and, as he walked toward the stairway, he saw the man who had been kneeling strike the black man in the head four times.
Fritz Knaak was in the station after the White Sox baseball game and saw a black man lying on the floor with a white man sitting on top of him. When the black man hollered for help, the white man told him to "shut up" and hit his head on the cement floor at least five times.
Andrew Laties was walking through the concourse of the station when he heard repeated cries for help and saw a black man lying on his stomach, with a stocky-built white man with a dark moustache next to him and a larger white man with light-colored sideburns squatting on the black man's buttocks. The larger man leaned over the black man and hit him twice with his right hand at the base of the skull and top of the neck. When he told the other white man "to stop that" the man replied, "Keep walking, this is police business." The black man was hit a third time by the same white man, and he (Laties) saw a pool of blood at the black man's head. The black man at that time was prone and was not moving.—People v. Earullo, 113 Ill. App. 3d 774, 779 (Ill. App. Ct. 1983). http://casetext.com/case/people-v-earullo
Page 96. “mob payback”
For several years, Judge Cieslik’s daughter Debra attempted to restore her father’s reputation, utilizing a blog. After her death in 2012, this blog was taken down.
Consider the following two article excerpts through the lens of the profound corruption in Chicago courts, and you can recognize the mob’s fingerprints: punishing Cieslik for the Ramey case’s verdict and jail sentences.
“The Illinois Courts Commission has reprimanded Cook County Circuit Court Judge Arthur Cieslik for ‘disparaging, intemperate, injudicious and rude remarks’ that he made to three women attorneys.”—Debra Cassens Moss, “Judge Says He’s Sorry,” ABA Journal, October 1, 1987.
“Chief Judge Harry Comerford and all but one Cook County judge seeking retention kept their jobs in an election marked both by the failure of minority groups to oust Comerford and concern that lingering bitterness could affect the nation’s largest court system.
Only Arthur Cieslik, who was uniformly targeted by major bar associations and newspapers for abrasive conduct toward women in his courtroom, failed to win the required 60 percent vote necessary to retain his Circuit Court seat.”—James Warren and Joseph R. Tybor, “Chief Judge Comerford Retained, Cieslik Ousted,” Chicago Tribune, November 10, 1988.
