A Cook County jury on Friday awarded a former Chicago police detective more than $4.3 million in damages after deciding the city violated the Illinois Whistleblower act.
Former Chicago police detective Beth Svec alleged in a 2017 lawsuit that the department retaliated against her after she brought forward evidence contradicting two officers’ narrative of an arrest the year before.
Svec’s lawyer, Torreya Hamilton, said the verdict should motivate “good police officers to come forward” when they witness wrongdoing.
“If the department doesn’t have your back, a jury will,” Hamilton wrote in an email to the Chicago Sun-Times.
City representatives didn’t immediately return requests for comment.
Svec was involved in a pilot program on the South Side investigating gun cases in CPD’s Area South detective regions, according to the initial complaint filed in Cook County circuit court. In May 2016, she was assigned to investigate a case involving the arrest of two men by two CPD officers.
The officers told Svec they arrested two men — one who was sitting on top of a gun on a barstool on a front porch, and one who allegedly punched an officer in the head when they approached the first man, the suit said.
That series of events was documented from the officers’ point of view in a police report at the time, according to the suit. The men were to be charged with unlawful possession of a weapon and aggravated battery to a police officer, the complaint said.
The two men who were arrested...
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