Nov. 21--Donna Moore says her son was afraid to leave home for almost a year after he and his sister were allegedly attacked by a Chicago police detective upset over an earlier altercation with his son at a Beverly neighborhood school playlot.
The two, 11 and 13 at the time, were arrested and detained for several hours but later exonerated in Juvenile Court, according to court records.
A four-year legal battle over the playground dispute ended recently in a settlement in which the city agreed to pay $100,000 to Moore's two children. In addition, U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman ordered the city to pay $447,500 in legal costs the family incurred. The city admitted no wrongdoing.
Insisting that "it was never about the money," Moore said she would have preferred that the department discipline Detective Robert Smith and three other officers involved in the dispute.
But the Independent Police Review Authority, the city agency that probes allegations of misconduct by police officers, could not substantiate the case against Smith and the other officers, spokesman Carlos Weeden said.
"I realized that the city was willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money rather than face the issue in the first place," Moore said last week as she sat with her arms folded in a crowded restaurant near the Kellogg Elementary School playground, where the incident took place.
According to the family's federal lawsuit, Moore's son, then in the fifth grade and weighing 100 pounds, argued with another boy at the playground in May 2007. Shortly after the boy left, Smith, the boy's father, showed up and chased Moore's son before attacking him and announcing he was under arrest, the suit alleged.
Smith also attacked Moore's daughter when she tried to pull the officer off her brother, according to the suit.
Other officers arrived and arrested both children. They were handcuffed behind their backs, placed in the back of a police car, transported to the Morgan Park District station and detained for eight hours, the suit alleged.
Moore declined to identify her son, still a minor, but said her daughter, Ashley, now 18, suffered from depression following the episode and often ran away from home. She and her brother were arrested after the incident for throwing food at someone at a neighborhood block party, Moore said.
"I had lost all respect for authority. Now it's a little better," said Ashley Moore, who bounced from Morgan Park High School to Youth Connection Charter School in Bronzeville and is now pursuing a GED..
As the lawsuit went through federal court, U.S. Magistrate Judge Maria Valdez ordered then-police Superintendent Jody Weis to submit a "repeater list" of officers who had accumulated at least five citizen complaints since 2002. Under the threat of contempt, Weis had initially declined to provide the list, arguing that naming the officers would threaten their safety and hurt department morale, a move defended by then-Mayor Richard Daley.
A police spokeswoman said Smith and the three other officers named in the suit are all currently on active duty. All four either could not be reached or declined to comment.
The City Council must still approve the $100,000 settlement, which was reached this month.
Donna Moore said the money will go toward her children's future, which she hopes includes college..
"When you rob (children) of their sense of safety ... emotional harm can go a lot deeper than physical," she said.
Copyright 2011 - Chicago Tribune
