Kevin Jackson was released from prison last month, more than two decades after he was convicted of murder in the fatal shooting of a man at a West Englewood gas station.
Now 43, Jackson has always maintained his innocence. Police and prosecutors said several witnesses identified him as the shooter, but each recanted at Jackson’s 2003 trial while claiming threatening, intimidating and coercive efforts by the two lead Chicago police detectives assigned to the case.
One of those detectives retired from the Chicago Police Department last year amid growing scrutiny of his past casework.
But the other has continued to rise through the ranks of CPD, earning praise and promotions along the way.
John Foster, a CPD veteran of more than 30 years, is now commander of Area 5 detectives, overseeing the investigations of the most serious crimes reported across Chicago’s Northwest Side, everywhere north of Division Street and west of the Chicago River.
Jackson has yet to petition for a certificate of innocence, but Cook County prosecutors have signaled they will drop the case. That decision comes in the wake of a special prosecutors’ report into Jackson’s conviction that declared, “Action is required because the conviction that keeps Jackson in prison lacks any reliable evidentiary support, resting exclusively on now-disavowed witness statements that were obtained by police coercion and misconduct.”
Defense lawyers also challenged the police.
“It’s a prime example of policing tactics that don’t keep Chicago communities safe,” Elizabeth Bacon, one of Jackson’s attorneys, told the Tribune in a recent interview. “They’re manufacturing evidence against, in this case, an innocent person. It not only ruins his life, but it also leaves the actual violent criminals in the streets free to continue terrorizing these communities.”
In response to the special report, a panel of appellate court justices fell on Jackson’s side. His defense was clear, they wrote. Any reasonable review of the case would determine “these convictions resulted solely from coerced and false statements,” the panel said.
The clear slap-down of Foster’s work leaves open questions around a highly decorated officer who is by many accounts a sharp department leader who has enjoyed a great career. Foster and the CPD leaders who have promoted him were not made available by the department for this story.
Highest clearance rate
Eric Winstrom, the chief of police in Grand Rapids, Michigan, since 2022, was commander of Area 5 detectives before Foster.
In fact, he recruited Foster, who until that point had spent his career on the South Side, to Area 5 in 2020. After Winstrom left CPD for Michigan, he called Foster “the best investigator in the Chicago Police Department.”
And data suggest Foster has found success.
CPD records obtained by the Tribune via the Freedom of Information Act show Area 5 has the highest homicide clearance rate of any of the CPD’s five areas in 2024.
To be sure, Area 5 is not known as a high-crime zone, with 26 recorded homicides through late October. That is the fewest killings among the department’s areas, with Area 5 being home to scores of municipal employees and many well-heeled Chicagoans.
But in that same time, 22 of the homicides that occurred in Area 5 were cleared, bringing the area’s clearance rate to 85%. Citywide, CPD’s homicide clearance rate this year and last year is 51%, CPD officials have said.
Boosting the clearance rate and supporting detectives have remained oft-stated goals of Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration. Last year, as part of the latest contract between the city and the Fraternal Order of Police, CPD restructured the schedules of homicide detectives in an effort to give them more ownership over their cases.
Interim CPD Superintendent Fred Waller promoted Foster to commander of Area 5 in June 2023, city records show. CPD declined to make Foster, Waller and Antoinette Ursitti, the department’s chief of detectives, available for interviews. Further, a CPD spokesperson did not respond when asked if and when the department was made aware of the special prosecutors’ report on the Kevin Jackson case.
Foster’s early career
Early during his time with the department, records show, Foster faced several accusations of racist behavior, though none of those allegations were sustained by internal CPD investigators.
Before becoming a detective in 2000, Foster took a leave of absence from CPD in the hopes of joining the Drug Enforcement Agency, but he was kicked out after just a few months for using a racist term to refer to a Black recruit in his same class, records show. He faced a monthlong suspension when he returned to CPD in 1998.
The tainted prosecution of Kevin Jackson stemmed from a 2001 shooting at a West Englewood gas station that left 54-year-old Ernest Jenkins dead and another man injured. Foster and fellow detective Brian Forberg were assigned to investigate.
In the weeks that followed, Jackson’s lawyers say, the detectives ratcheted up efforts to close the case.
Jackson’s lawyers say the detectives threatened to bring charges against witnesses with outstanding warrants who, at first, refused to say Jackson was the shooter.
Polygraph examination results were misrepresented, according to the special prosecutors’ report. Lawyers also alleged detectives threatened that the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services would take custody of some witnesses’ children unless they cooperated, which the same report noted.
“Rather than intimidating the suspect, they intimidate the witnesses. And why do that? Well, because witnesses don’t have any particular recourse,” Bacon, the Jackson lawyer, said. “They’re not represented by counsel. They’re very unlikely after an episode of intimidation or coercion to seek redress. They’re just trying to, frankly, get out of the police detention and the police station and get on with their lives.”
Forberg and Foster have come under scrutiny in the past year with other defendants also accusing them of coercing and manipulating witnesses in order to close cases. Forberg was married to an assistant state’s attorney who worked closely with the conviction integrity unit (now called the conviction review unit), which reviews potential wrongful convictions.
‘Not how John operates’
Foster remained a homicide detective in Area 1 on the South Side until 2012, when he was promoted to sergeant and assigned to the South Chicago District (4th), according to records from the city’s Human Resources Department. The following year, Foster returned to the bureau of detectives when he was assigned as a sergeant in Area South.
“The fact that he’s now in a position of leadership to promulgate and promote this type of approach, and the fact that he’s been promoted based on results he achieved using this type of approach, is an indictment of the Chicago Police Department as far as I’m concerned,” Bacon said.
Promoted to lieutenant in 2019, Foster returned to patrol, overseeing beat cops assigned to the Calumet District (5th). Then, in 2020, Winstrom asked Foster to come to the Northwest Side to serve as the homicide lieutenant.
“Of anybody that I could have gotten, John was the one person that I wanted to get,” Winstrom told the Tribune earlier this month.
Winstrom says there were three main reasons he tapped Foster — who he described as “a workaholic” and “the most tenacious guy you’ve ever met” — to become the Area 5 homicide lieutenant.
“That he actually cares about people, that he will work a 48-hour day if it’s required, and, not only is he a very smart guy, but he’s kept up with all the changes in technology,” Winstrom said. “I mean, he was perfect. Those were all the reasons I brought him (to Area 5).”
“I first started working with John in 2005,” Winstrom added. “In an era where it was still kind of like a ‘Tough guy, us against them’ mentality, he didn’t have that. He had the compassion. He cared about the victims.”
In 2005, the Illinois legislature passed a law requiring that all interrogations of homicide or sexual assault suspects be electronically recorded. Winstrom noted that there likely exists “hundreds if not thousands of hours” of footage of Foster conducting interrogations.
Having known Foster for nearly two decades, Winstrom raised doubts over the allegations of coercion.
“Since 2005, since we’ve worked together, you can demonstrably show John Foster’s style is not coercion,” Winstrom said. “That’s not how John operates. He’s an extremely effective investigator and, like I said, all of his interviews have been recorded since 2005 and he’s maintained that effective level.”
Tribune reporter Madeline Buckley contributed.
