Who Is Lowell Houser? Chicago Police Officer Murdered Jose Nieves, Unarmed Man, Officials Say

Cook County prosecutors charged a veteran Chicago police officer with first-degree murder Wednesday, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Transit officer Lowell Houser shot 38-year-old Jose Nieves on Jan. 2, the prosecutor's office said. Few details of the incident have been released, according to the Tribune, but police told the newspaper that Nieves was unarmed. Houser, who was in custody and expected to appear in court Thursday, was off-duty at the time of the shooting. The 28-year veteran of the department was "stripped of his police powers a day after the shooting," according to the local CBS affiliate.

A federal lawsuit against Houser, 57, and the city was filed by Nieves' family after the shooting on Jan. 6. The lawsuit said Houser "illegally detained and threatened to arrest and physically harm" Nieves. CPD's Independent Police Review Authority will continue to investigate the shooting, the Tribune said.

The station also reported that Angelica Nieves, the victim's sister, said Houser had pulled a gun on Nieves previously. Houser had been the focus of 20 disciplinary investigations since the 1990s, the Tribune reported.

The charges were filed less than a week after the Obama Justice Department published the results of its investigation into the Chicago Police Department, which was the largest investigation of a police department in DOJ history. The investigation found that "CPD officers use unnecessary and unreasonable force in violation of the Constitution with frequency, and that unconstitutional force has been historically tolerated by CPD."

At the press conference announcing the results of the investigation, the Justice Department announced it was entering into consent decree negotiations with the city of Chicago. A consent decree is a legally binding, court-monitored plan to bring a police department into compliance with the Constitution. More than 20 cities are currently engaged in consent decrees with the Justice Department.