A Chicago police officer was still in training when he found himself on the wrong side of the law.
As a probationary officer, he was arrested in late 2018 after his wife accused him of threatening her life at their Auburn Gresham home. A misdemeanor assault charge was quickly dropped, and he was offered leniency from the police department after initially facing dismissal.
The troubling episode ultimately resulted in a six-month suspension.
After the officer returned to active duty, the wife showed up at the Gresham District station on Aug. 18 and accused him of punching her in the eye and pointing a gun at her.
“You scared now?” he allegedly asked her.
Those new details were laid bare in a letter the Civilian Office of Police Accountability sent to former interim Police Supt. Fred Waller on Sept. 11, urging him to remove the officer from the street — again.
The officer’s “behavior has escalated from verbal threats to physical attacks,” COPA Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten wrote. “Based upon the nature of the allegations and [the officer’s] documented history of domestic violence, COPA recommends that CPD evaluate the current assignment of [the officer] and relieve him of his police powers.”
As of Thursday, that hadn’t happened, according to a police spokesperson. The officer is actively working in the Englewood district. The Sun-Times isn’t naming him because he hasn’t formally been accused of wrongdoing in the new investigation.
Kersten noted in her letter that the wife hadn’t agreed to provide a statement to COPA, marking the second time she pulled back after her alarming claims.
The wife also recanted her earlier allegations as witnesses failed to cooperate with investigators in that case, stalling the police department’s effort to fire the officer and pushing former Supt. David Brown to reach an agreement that resulted in the suspension.
‘I’m going to shoot the whole house up’
When officers showed up at officer’s home on the evening of Nov. 6, 2018, he was armed with his service weapon, Kersten said.
The wife reported he had flown off the handle because she was talking to his sister’s ex-husband, according to an arrest report. The wife said he had threatened to kill her, putting her “in fear for her life.”
Charges Brown filed with the Chicago Police Board alleged the officer had made “numerous threats to harm [the woman] and members of her family.”
“If it comes down to it, I will kill you,” he allegedly said. “I’m going to shoot the whole house up.”
The officers took the weapon he was carrying and found a Glock handgun under a mattress that his 1-year-old child was sleeping on, Kersten said. The Glock was unregistered and unsecured, according to the police board charges.
The officer was taken to the Gresham District and charged with a misdemeanor count of simple assault, which was dropped during his first court hearing two weeks later. It’s unclear why.
It wasn’t until January 2021 that Brown brought the officer’s case to the police board, calling for the young officer’s dismissal for making the threats, drinking while carrying a firearm, and mishandling and failing to register the Glock.
Seven months later, Brown moved to withdraw the charges after striking a deal to suspend the officer for 180 days. The board rejected the effort, questioning whether “the proposed settlement is an appropriate resolution to this case or that the interest of justice is served in so agreeing.”
The officer later filed a motion to enforce the agreement, and Brown asked the board to reconsider, citing serious issues with the investigation. He noted the department would likely be “unable to prove the more serious allegations of the charges without the cooperation from any of the occurrence witnesses.”
“Acknowledging the problems in this case, including witness unresponsiveness and lack of cooperation, and a recantation from the primary witness, the parties now wish to avoid the expense, uncertainty and burden of a hearing on the charges,” Brown wrote.
The appeal came a day after a Cook County judge granted Brown’s request to compel testimony from the victim’s sister, who was living in California. Judge Anna Helen Demacopoulos ordered Cook County Clerk Iris Martinez to send a letter to authorities in California requesting they issue a subpoena ordering her to talk.
The board denied the officer’s motion in January 2022 but accepted Brown’s argument, finding that his concerns were “convincing and that the proposed settlement is an appropriate resolution to the case.”
The officer began his suspension the following month and was reinstated in February 2022, more than three years after he was initially stripped of his police powers in the wake of the incident.
Another probe
While the new allegations reported to police are more serious, the officer hasn’t been criminally charged or taken off the street.
When his accuser arrived at the Gresham District last month, she had “a laceration and redness near her ear” and told officers her husband attacked her during an argument over house keys, Kersten wrote in her letter to Waller.
He allegedly punched his wife on the left side of her face, grabbed an Apple Watch from her wrist and pushed her down, according to the letter. That’s when she alleged he menacingly pointed a gun at her before running upstairs and locking himself in a bedroom.
As Kersten urged Waller to strip the office of his police powers, she acknowledged the wife hadn’t yet cooperated with COPA’s ongoing investigation.
The police spokesperson didn’t respond to questions about why the officer remained on active duty more than month after the alleged abuse.
Rosemary Sobol contributed
