A 17 year veteran with the Chicago police department was seriously beaten at an accident scene because of the National focus of police shootings of Black men and black lives matter in America. According to Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, the officer had told him that she did not use her gun for fear of backlash;
"She didn’t want her family or the department to go through the scrutiny the next day on national news"
The officer had gotten into a fight with a man who was under the influence of PCP, after she had stopped near a crash site in the Austin community on the Westside on Wednesday morning.
The struggle between police officers and the man happened at near Roosevelt Road and Cicero Avenue at about 10 a.m. Police officers had seen a car crash inside a building, and saw the man walking towards the east on Roosevelt.
When officers stopped the man to talk to him, the man started struggling with them, hitting the female officer's head against the pavement till she was unconscious.
According to the police, the suspect smashed the face of the officer multiple times on the pavement, until she was unconscious.
The officer's partner, then hit the man with a Taser and pepper spray, then get him arrested. Two other officers were injured before arresting the man, and all of them are now at Lutheran General, while the suspect was sent to Loretto Hospital.
According to police Superintendent Eddie Johnson;
As I was at the hospital last night, visiting with her, she looked at me and said she thought she was gonna die, and she knew that she should shoot this guy, but she chose not to because she didn’t want her family or the department to go through the scrutiny the next day on national news.
This officer could (have) lost her life last night. He’s hospitalized right now, but she still has the spirit and the bravery that these officers and firefighters display every day — every day. We have to change the narrative of the law enforcement across this country.
Civil right activist have argued that the people no longer trust police officers in the country after decades of abuse. According to Jon Loevy, a civil rights lawyer;
Any fair-minded person acknowledges that police have a very difficult and dangerous job, and this sounds like a very unfortunate situation. The hope is that the department and the community can work to repair some of the lost trust so that officers won't always feel so second-guessed.
The suspect has three convictions of firearms arrest and one conviction, as well as another three arrests, following which he was charged by either resisting police, fleeing and eluding police or both, according to police.