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Family Of Officer Killed By Sniper Says Anti-Police Rhetoric Is Dangerous

By Heather Cherone | August 9, 2016 6:34am | Updated on August 10, 2016 1:57pm
 Jennifer Cali, left, Neva Cali and Carolyn Cali-Brick outside the post office in Norwood Park set to be renamed for Officer Joseph Cali,  who was slain in 1975 by a sniper.
Jennifer Cali, left, Neva Cali and Carolyn Cali-Brick outside the post office in Norwood Park set to be renamed for Officer Joseph Cali, who was slain in 1975 by a sniper.
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DNAinfo/Heather Cherone

NORWOOD PARK — For the Cali family, it has been difficult to watch the news lately.

At every mention of the eight officers in Baton Rouge, La., and Dallas who died in July after being targeted because of the uniforms they wore, Neva Cali remembers hearing the doorbell ring on May 20, 1975, and knowing that something terrible had happened to her husband, Joseph Cali, a Chicago Police officer assigned to patrol the Henry Horner Homes on the Near West Side.

"That moment is frozen in time for me," Neva Cali said, struggling to hold back tears. "The fallen officers bring it all back. I always feel what that widow feels."

Cali, 31, an Edison Park resident, died after being shot in his head by a sniper. A veteran of the Vietnam War, Cali had been a police officer for two years.

DNAinfo/Heather Cherone; Chicago Police Memorial Foundation (inset)

A measure introduced by U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Chicago) is working its way through Congress to rename the post office at 6300 N. Northwest Hwy. in Cali's honor.

Neva Cali said she hopes the bill becomes law — and boosts the morale of Chicago officers, which police union leaders have said is at an all-time low in the wake of the release of a dashcam video showing a police officer fatally shoot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times.

Tensions flared again last week after an officer shot and killed Paul O'Neal, 18, on July 28 in South Shore after a stolen Jaguar he was in smashed into a squad car and O'Neal ran off into the neighborhood. Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said the officers involved may have violated the department's rules.

"It is good to show honor to police officers," Neva Cali said. "It is not like an everyday job."

Renaming the post office also will show families of officers who are killed in the line of duty that the promises of never forgetting that echo after every death are honored, no matter how much time has passed, said Carolyn Cali-Brick, who was almost 2 years old when her father was killed.

"We've never felt forgotten," Cali-Brick said, recounting the determination of her father's friends on the force to help her know her father and making sure she never wanted for anything. "Without them, I would have no memories of my father. The love never stopped."

Jennifer Cali was 4 when her father was shot in his head by a bullet fired from the third floor of the West Side housing project while he wrote a parking ticket.

James Clark, then 17, was convicted of Cali's murder after telling friends and relatives that he wanted to shoot a police officer and bragging about it after Cali died.

Like the five Dallas officers and three Baton Rouge officers slain in July, Cali was targeted just because he was a police officer, a similarity Neva Cali said was "unsettling."

But Cali's widow and daughters said they drew comfort from the fact that Clark was convicted because of the testimony of residents who lived in the Henry Horner Homes.

"That is a testament to how he was loved," Cali-Brick said. "He loved the neighborhood and the people who lived there."

Clark was paroled in 1986, after serving 11 years of a 20-25 year sentence. He has never reached out to the Cali family, nor would such contact be welcomed, Neva Cali said.

"He ruined our lives," Neva Cali said. "He took everything from us, snap, just like that."

Even as a teenager, Cali-Brick said she thought it was unfair that Clark was released from prison without serving his entire sentence.

"Our sentence was eternal," Neva Cali said. "His should have been."

Despite their lingering anger, the Cali family prefers to concentrate on their memories of Joseph Cali as a husband and a father who would come home from his shift and head straight into the dining room for his favorite rocking chair, one daughter in his arms, the other next to him.

"He was the best husband and father," Cali-Brick said. "He was just a person who was loved."

Cali-Brick hopes that one day the post office will be part of her father's "beautiful legacy," which also includes a street sign naming the 6400 block of Oxford Avenue "Officer Joseph Cali Way."

"We wouldn't have chosen it," Cali-Brick said. "But we are grateful nonetheless."

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