CHICAGO — Jury deliberations began Tuesday afternoon in a whistleblower case brought against the city by a veteran Chicago police sergeant who claims he was retaliated against after voicing concern about a controversial 2017 police shooting.
Sgt. Isaac Lambert brought his lawsuit against the city in 2019, alleging that he was removed from the CPD’s Detective Division after he raised concerns about the legality of the shooting of Ricardo Hayes by off-duty CPD Sgt. Khalil Muhammad in August 2017. Hayes — an unarmed 18-year-old with autism — was reported missing from his home a few hours before he was shot.
Lambert’s reassignment to the CPD’s Patrol Division, his attorneys argue, violated the Illinois Whistleblower Act. Attorneys for the city, however, maintain that Lambert was removed from the Detective Division because he was an inattentive supervisor who demonstrated poor judgment when he assigned two rookie detectives to investigate the shooting.
In her closing argument, Lambert’s attorney Megan O’Malley asked jurors to award the sergeant between $1.75 – $2.75 million in damages, plus another $55,000 in lost overtime wages.
“The lies have to stop here,” O’Malley told the jury, “And you have the privilege of saying ‘enough is enough.’”
“This is the code of silence at work,” Torreya Hamilton, another of Lambert’s attorneys, said during her rebuttal argument. “If you keep your mouth shut, if you actually take affirmative action to help the officer or try in some way to...
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