The day before Halloween in 2014, Joseph Baskins and his longtime girlfriend drove downtown to get married. Family and friends accompanied them for the happy occasion.
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Instead, Baskins ended up in jail. Baskins, then 28, an admitted former gang member with a criminal record that includes a felony burglary conviction, was accused of badly beating a plainclothes Chicago cop in a parking garage that day and taking his gun in a case that’s now unraveled amid questions about the actions of the officer and two other cops who were with him.
At first, the Chicago Police Department portrayed what happened as a robbery, Baskins as the culprit and Sgt. Patrick Gilmore, who suffered brain damage, as the …