Former Chicago police detective and her lawyer told a Cook County jury Tuesday that she was “made an example of” and given an undesirable assignment after she contradicted officers’ story of a gun arrest.
Beth Svec has sued the department for violating protections awarded by the Illinois Whistleblower Act.
According to her complaint, Svec was a detective in Area 2, assigned by her superiors to a pilot program investigating cases of unlawful gun possessions in 2015. On May 30, 2016, she was investigating a case in which two officers were pursuing felony charges against two men for unlawful possession of a firearm and for assaulting an officer.
While conducting her investigation, Svec testified that she found evidence including a video that contradicted the accounts of Officer Brandon Ternand and Officer Robert Caulfield .
Svec notified the officers, her supervisors and the assistant’s state’s attorney of her findings, she said. The Cook County state’s attorney’s office rejected the request of officers to charge the two arrested men and notified the CPD Bureau of Internal Affairs, Svec’s complaint states.
In the weeks after the arrest and investigation, Svec was transferred to the Englewood neighborhood. Later that year, she found herself reassigned to the midnight shift, which she said she hadn’t worked since her first few years as a police officer.
Through tears, she testified that she was proud to have been assigned to the pilot program. “I look at it as an honor because...
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