Violent Crime by Police Against Citizens Up in Chicago as 4 Cops Have Been Charged w/Felonies Over the Past 4 Weeks: 2 White Cops Charged w/Felony Assault on Teenager

From [HERE] Two Chicago police officers have been arrested for allegedly beating a teen boy they arrested earlier this year on the South Side, officials said.

Officers Jeffery Shafer and Victor Guebara were each charged with aggravated battery and official misconduct, both felonies, and are scheduled to appear for a bond hearing later Wednesday in the Leighton Criminal Court building, according to court records and Tandra Simonton, a spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

A third officer was accused of failing to intervene during the incident and failing to report it. A fourth failed to activate his body camera.  Sources told the Tribune that video footage of some or all of the alleged beating was captured on a nearby surveillance camera. [MORE]

The alleged victim in the case was a 17-year-old boy who Shafer and Guebara were pursuing on Jan. 10 in the Woodlawn community after, authorities said, the teen stole a car, used it to strike a police vehicle and pointed a gun at cops. Both were in custody early Wednesday, sources said.

As first reported by the Chicago Tribune in June, the confrontation was initially the subject of a police disciplinary investigation by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and among the pieces of evidence for review was surveillance video that captured the alleged beating.

Neither Chicago police nor the Cook County state’s attorney’s office could immediately provide details about the allegations against Shafer and Guebara, who were assigned to the Grand Crossing patrol district at the time of the encounter. But according to COPA records obtained by the Tribune through an open-records request, one of the two officers was accused of hitting the 17-year-old in the head or face, and pushed his head into a metal fence and into a sidewalk.