Cop Pleads Not Guilty In Violent Arrest Captured On Video, Allegedly Struck Teen More Than 10 Times

An Oak Lawn police offi­cer plead­ed not guilty Wednesday to charges of aggra­vat­ed bat­tery and offi­cial mis­con­duct for his alleged­ly strik­ing a then 17-year-old Bridgeview teen more than 10 times in the face and head as he was lay­ing face down in the street dur­ing an arrest cap­tured on video last July. Officer Patrick O’Donnell was released on an indi­vid­ual recog­ni­zance bond, accord­ing to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. He has been with the depart­ment since December 2014. He was indict­ed by a grand jury Feb. 14. O’Donnell is one of three offi­cers involved in the July 27 arrest of the teen, caught on video, which start­ed as a traf­fic stop and end­ed with the teen run­ning from offi­cers and being chased. O’Donnell, 32, is sched­uled to appear April 6 before Cook County Associate Judge Domenica Stephenson.

On July 27, O’Donnell was on-duty work­ing in a marked squad car when he pulled over a sedan with three juve­niles that he said had a smell of burnt cannabis, accord­ing to a bond prof­fer filed Wednesday by coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors. O’Donnell searched the vehi­cle and asked a pas­sen­ger who was sit­ting in the rear seat behind the dri­ver to step out. The pas­sen­ger ran off as he was being searched by the offi­cer, accord­ing to the prof­fer. O’Donnell chased him, order­ing him to stop, while a sec­ond offi­cer, Brandon Collins, arrived and took the juve­nile to the ground, accord­ing to the fil­ing. Prosecutors say O’Donnell began hit­ting the juve­nile in the 9500 block of South McVicker Avenue in Oak Lawn, while Collins pulled at his arms. At one point, O’Donnell used his left hand to hold the juve­nile by his head and hair as he “repeat­ed­ly” used his left hand to punch the youth in the face and head, accord­ing to the prof­fer. A third offi­cer, Mark Hollingsworth arrived and “applied a pres­sure point” behind the juvenile’s ear while O’Donnell con­tin­ued to punch him, the prof­fer said. O’Donnell punched the juve­nile more than 10 times, pros­e­cu­tors alleged.

Collins then applied a Taser to the juvenile’s back, and he was placed into hand­cuffs. A pis­tol was recov­ered from the juvenile’s bag, the prof­fer said. The juve­nile was tak­en to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn and treat­ed for a bro­ken nose, cuts and bruis­es and sub­dur­al bleed­ing. Zaid Abdallah, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the teen’s fam­i­ly, said at a news con­fer­ence last month his client has one more surgery left as a result of injuries he received, and that he’s under­go­ing men­tal health treat­ment. An attor­ney for O’Donnell did not return mes­sages Wednesday seek­ing com­ment, nor did Oak Lawn offi­cials. O’Donnell, Collins and Hollingsworth are named in a fed­er­al law­suit filed Aug. 1, alleg­ing they “engaged in extreme and out­ra­geous con­duct” in the teen’s arrest. Video pro­vid­ed by police as well as video tak­en by wit­ness­es show offi­cers repeat­ed­ly punch­ing the youth as he was pinned down. The arrest and video footage sparked protests and the law­suit alleges the three offi­cers involved in the arrest con­spired among one anoth­er in a “racial­ly moti­vat­ed con­spir­a­cy” to deprive of the teen of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights because he is Arab American.

Ahmed Rehab, CAIR-Chicago exec­u­tive direc­tor, said the video showed “three big, adult males pound­ing up on a frail minor” hit­ting his head into the con­crete and caus­ing major injuries. “It’s not the way to do. In no civ­i­liza­tion, no time, no place on Earth is this kind of behav­ior accept­ed,” Rehab said. He said the pos­si­ble indict­ment is a first step. “We hope that as this goes into the court sys­tem that these charges are not down grad­ed, that jus­tice is served,” Rehab said. State police have been review­ing the arrest and those find­ings were expect­ed to be turned over to the Cook County state’s attorney’s office. Rehab said police bru­tal­i­ty occurs “over­whelm­ing­ly” when the arrestee is a per­son of col­or. Beyond race, Rehab said ego and pow­er trips also lead to some offi­cers using force against an arrestee. “Someone had to run more than they thought they should have. Someone was not lis­tened to the way that they thought they should have been. Someone was not obeyed the way that they would’ve liked to be obeyed,” Rehab said. “Those sort of things are very sub­tle but they mat­ter and they are the split sec­ond dif­fer­ence between pro­fes­sion­al­ism and police brutality.”

Police offi­cers are sup­posed to arrest indi­vid­u­als and then let the legal sys­tem deter­mine guilt or inno­cence, Rehab said. “It is not the role of the police to adju­di­cate crim­i­nal­i­ty. They appre­hend indi­vid­u­als who are sus­pect­ed of crimes, then these indi­vid­u­als go through some­thing we call the jus­tice sys­tem that involves courts,” Rehab said. “It’s not the role of police to do all of those things that belong to the jus­tice sys­tem.” The teen faces charges of aggra­vat­ed unlaw­ful use of a weapon and unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of a firearm. At a July 28 news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing a protest over the arrest, Oak Lawn police Chief Daniel Vittorio said the arrest­ing offi­cers feared for their safe­ty and sug­gest­ed they would have been in their right to use dead­ly force. Vittorio said respond­ing offi­cers feared the teen had a firearm in an “acces­so­ry bag” draped over his right shoul­der, although the firearm was not recov­ered until the teen had been handcuffed.(This sto­ry first appeared @yahoonew)