On Aug. 30, 2021, a viral video surfaced showing a Chicago police officer manhandling a Black woman while she was walking her dog.
Nikkita Brown is the woman seen in the video. Attorney Keenan Saulter is representing Brown and his firm made an official statement.
“This was an obvious case of racial profiling,” Saulter’s firm said in a press release. “Ms. Brown is suffering from emotional trauma as a result of this brutal, unprovoked and unlawful attack by this Chicago Police Department officer.”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who is currently not in the good favor of CPD following the shooting of two police officers resulting in the death of 29-year-old officer Ella French, had concerns about what she saw in the latest video involving CPD.
“I saw the video. I was quite disturbed by what I saw,” Lightfoot said during an unrelated press conference Monday. “It looked like the woman was following the direction of the officer and leaving the beach.”
According to Brown’s attorney, she was leaving the area when she requested that the officer keep his distance because he was not wearing a mask.
“He ignored this request and mocked it, even as the deadly Covid-19 Delta Variant rages throughout our community,” the attorney stated in an official press release.
The officer has yet to be identified.
Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown shared that he is awaiting more information from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) before taking any other action.
“COPA’s just initiated contact with this person, have yet to interview the officer, so we don’t have the person’s full accounting of what happened, why it happened, what was said, nor do we have the full accounting of the officer’s statement,” Brown said during the press conference. “So it’s just again, I know it’s frustrating for the public to wait once you see a viral video for the conclusion to an investigation, but COPA just started. I just want to ask the public to allow COPA to complete this investigation, and allow for this process of finding out what happened, getting to the bottom of it to play out before we then are able to make any kind of next steps from my perspective, from a COPA perspective.”
COPA released a formal statement requesting that the officer be relieved of his police powers and placed on administrative duties pending a full investigation.
COPA provides update of investigation into the incident captured on video involving CPD officer and woman walking her dog on the beach. pic.twitter.com/2KOI4N3lk3
— COPA (@ChicagoCOPA) August 30, 2021
