Family of teen kneeled on by off-duty Chicago police calls for charges to be filed after claims of ‘excessive force’
A Chicago police officer has been accused of racial profiling and using excessive force on a 14-year-old. A video of the encounter has the teen’s mom demanding answers saying her son’s rights were violated.
Nicole Nieves said on July 1st she got a call from her son who she said was crying after a man had accused him of stealing and taken him to the ground in front of his friends and used his knee to pin him. Nieves said “stumbling over his words through hysterical tears, saying, ‘Mom, please come pick me up” according to the Daily Beast.
The teen was scared by the man who identified himself as an off-duty police officer claimed the teen stole his son’s bike.
Video shows the unidentified man outside of Starbucks saying, “He’s taking my son’s bike.”
Teen witnesses jumped in attempting to assure the man he is mistaken. One witness said, “No he’s not.”
However, this didn’t stop the man from detaining and assaulting the teen. During an interview with FOX 32, Nieves and her husband, Angel, talked about the incident.
“We hear the broken tears and heartbreaking cries of our son saying get off me, please get off me,” Nieves says.
The mother has since hired a lawyer, Antonio Romanucci, to represent her son’s interest, and wants the law enforcement agencies to take action. The family is now demanding charges and filed a criminal complaint, according to the Park Ridge police chief Frank Kaminski.
When asked about if action being taken against the officer, the chief said, “Yes, there is the potential of charges. We have taken this very seriously, and I personally find the images in that video we got very disturbing.”
The attorney shares what seems to have happened according to his client. After the man’s son’s bike was blocking the way, the teen was just moving it off the sidewalk so that he could pass through on his own bike.
“When he tried to move that unknown bike, he was approached by a man who behaved aggressively and pinned him to the ground on his stomach and put a knee in his back. The officer used excessive force on a child. He escalated a situation where no aggression was necessary at all,” Romanucci said.
At a press conference on July 6, Nieves said, “We see the bias of an off-duty cop taking advantage of a Brown boy with Afro-hair, smaller in stature, and choosing to take the law into his own hands with physical force. A clear abuse of his position of authority, an authority meant to protect my son.”
She added, “What do we see? We see a scared, yet controlled, and eerily calm child underneath the force of a grown man pressing down on him excessively with physical force. A grown man who did not use his words before using violence.
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