Chicago cop caught choking handcuffed boy in front of training recruit on body-worn camera

The Chicago Police Department referred police to a different officer who was caught on camera choking a handcuffed boy who was affected by a mental health crisis.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the officer’s transfer got here after the town’s administrator for police civil liability asked his superiors to strip him of his official police duties.

The agency’s administrator, Andrea Kersten, said in a July 15 letter to the police superintendent that the officer used “deadly force” on the boy, who was dispatched to the scene June 27 in the 4700 block of South Cottage Grove.

According to Kersten’s letter, obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, the officer went to the scene with a brand new officer he was training. Details of the police call weren’t released to the Sun-Times, but when officers arrived, they encountered the boy and two other people.

At one point, the policeman in charge pulled out a gun and put it against the boy’s back. He stepped back when the boy told him, “Blow my brains out,” Kersten’s letter States.

The officer then pinned the boy to the bottom and, after a struggle began, pressed his fist against his neck.

According to Kersten’s letter, body camera footage of the boy shows him “making gurgling sounds, scratching the training officer’s fist and gasping for air” and telling the officer, “I can’t breathe.”

The boy later told a civilian police watchdog agency that he “heard ringing in his ears and almost fainted” throughout the scuffle.

After the boy was subdued, he was handcuffed and placed in the back of a police automobile, where he was left unattended for nearly half an hour.

At that point, he moved his handcuffed hands forward, took a pocketknife from his front pants pocket, and cut the cable to the police automobile’s camera.

He then “strangled himself with the seat belt,” Kersten wrote.

The officer who had pulled his gun on the boy eventually returned to his automobile and noticed that the boy was not responding to questions.

The footage shows the officer removing the seat belt from across the boy’s neck after which “forcibly” pulling him out of the automobile, “causing him to fall from the vehicle and hit the pavement hard,” the letter reads.

After the boy regained consciousness, one other struggle began, and the officer again placed his fist on the boy’s throat while he was still handcuffed. The officer reportedly didn’t report the quantity of pressure he applied to the boy’s neck, which Kersten called “gross negligence.”

Police launched an internal affairs investigation the day after the incident. A deputy chief reviewed body-worn camera footage and determined the officer had violated department policy.

“The fact that (the officer) did these things in the presence of a probationary police officer and while serving as a training officer in the field is particularly alarming,” Kersten wrote in her letter.

The Sun-Times didn’t name the officer who was transferred, but said he joined the force in 2014 and now earns a six-figure salary. He has filed at the least 10 use-of-force reports during his time on the force and was the topic of five complaints.

Kersten recalled a previous incident in which a police officer had left two other detainees unattended—“it looks like he committed a misdemeanor in that case.” He faced a minor disciplinary penalty for that incident.

Following the newest incident, a police spokesman said the officer had been transferred to an alternate response unit staffed by officers with disciplinary problems and those that are unable to perform full duty for health reasons.