By Jeremy GornerTribune
reporter
The 13-year-old boy had been
singled out last month for hitting a Chicago police officer with a snowball
about a block from his West Side elementary school.
“I thought he was going to
drive me around the corner and say, ‘Don’t do it again” or “Don’t let me see
you back around here making trouble,’” the boy said. But the officer fired
questions at him for about half an hour while he sat in the back of the squad
car with his hands cuffed, according to the boy.
He was then taken home briefly
before being hustled to a police station, arrested for aggravated battery to a
police officer and released to his mother after about six hours in a lockup,
his family said.
The incident drew media
attention and sparked questions about whether a juvenile with no previous
arrests should face a felony charge for throwing a snowball, even at a cop.
Experts contacted by the Tribune expressed surprise at how police handled the
case.
“I can understand why police
officers can feel the need to ensure that their authority is respected, but I
do think that just looking at the nature of the charge, it sounds pretty
extreme,” said Bruce Boyer, director of Loyola University Chicago’s Civitas
ChildLaw Center.
The Cook County state’s
attorney’s office apparently agrees. Office spokeswoman Sally Daly told the
Tribune that prosecutors don’t plan to press charges against the boy.
“We just don’t believe the
matter rises to any level of a criminal charge based on our review,” said Daly,
who indicated that prosecutors would let the boy know he won’t have to appear
for a scheduled court appearance next week at the county Juvenile Justice
Center.
Adam Collins, the spokesman for
police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, said the boy’s conduct could have been
“extremely dangerous” since the officer was driving at the time. But since the
officer was not injured, Collins acknowledged, “the incident could probably
have been handled in a different manner.”
The police officer who made the
arrest, a nine-year veteran, declined to comment to a reporter who tried to
talk to him by phone about his reasons for making the arrest.
During a recent interview at
their Austin neighborhood home, the 13-year-old boy and his mother said they
were baffled by the arrest. The newspaper is not identifying the family because
the boy is only a juvenile. The lanky eighth grader denied he threw the
snowball and said it didn’t even hit the officer, striking his police car
instead. He said he was with a group of about 15 students near George Leland
Elementary School after classes on Feb. 19 and that he didn’t see who threw the
snowball.
Police officers have discretion
on whether to arrest minors or release them to their parents. Often juveniles
are given a “station adjustment” – in which police make a record of an arrest
but release the minor to their parents without referring the case to juvenile
court. If the minor goes to court, however, a point system -- based on the
severity of the charge and criminal history -- determines if a juvenile should
be held in the detention facility. Juveniles who don’t score high are sent home
with new court dates.
For more than a century, Cook
County’s juvenile court has operated on the understanding that children
possessed great potential for rehabilitation. As a result, the court often
tries to find an alternative to incarceration such as community service or
simple apologies, said Elizabeth Clarke, a former Cook County assistant public
defender who represented juveniles.
The 13-year-old boy was
suspended from school for five days and fears the arrest and discipline could
mar his chances at getting accepted into Whitney M. Young Magnet High School,
regarded as one of the city’s best schools. The boy said he gets Bs, Cs and a couple
of As in school, enjoys reading but is struggling with algebra. While on
suspension, he said he sat around his apartment listening to rap music,
watching movies and playing “NBA 2K 2014“ on his Xbox 360.
According to a police report,
the school’s dean of students identified the boy to the officer as the one who
threw the snowball. Police said the snowball hit the officer on his arm while
he was driving by in his car. The boy said the dean had gotten angry at him
earlier that same day and admitted he had talked back to him.
Leland, located in the 4900
block of West Congress Parkway, is one of more than 50 Chicago public schools
part of the Safe Passage program – a security initiative that requires a police
presence at the school before and after classes.
The boy denied he belongs to a
gang in his crime-ridden neighborhood. He thinks he was targeted because he was
the only one in the group of about 15 youths who had his hair in dreadlocks.
Police, he said, often harass teens in his neighborhood with dreads, assuming
they’re up to no good.
The boy’s mother, who is
raising him and his sister on her own, also expressed concern that the incident
could hurt her son’s chances of qualifying for Whitney Young. A manager at a
Popeye’s chicken restaurant, she said she’s never been happy with life on the
West Side because of the violence and bad schools.
“I want to move far out. I want
to do better. I’m trying,” she said in a somber tone. “It’s upsetting. It’s
stressful.”
Rosemary
Regina Sobol contributed.
