CHICAGO — Opening statements were delivered and witness testimony commenced Tuesday in the whistleblower case of Chicago Police Sgt. Isaac Lambert, the CPD supervisor who alleges that he faced retaliation after he refused to endorse criminal charges against a disabled teen who was shot by an off-duty CPD sergeant in 2017.
Lambert’s attorneys told jurors that Lambert was “dumped” to the CPD’s Patrol Division after he spoke out against bringing a felony charge against Ricardo “Ricky” Hayes in August 2017 after Hayes — who has autism — was shot by Sgt. Khalil Muhammad on the Far South Side.
“Sgt. Lambert came to his role as a whistleblower with great reluctance,” one of Lambert’s attorneys, Tom Needham, told jurors in his opening statement. “Ike Lambert loved his job. Ike Lambert was passionate about his job and he was humiliated when he was dumped.”
“This police code of silence is not a theory I’m telling you about. It’s a fact,” added Needham, who previously served as general counsel to the CPD and chief of staff to former Supt. Terry Hillard.
Attorneys representing the city, meanwhile, said Lambert was reassigned from the Detective Division to Patrol Division — more than a year after the shooting in question occurred — because he was an ineffective supervisor. Moreover, Lambert was given the option to go the CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs instead of Patrol, but he refused.
“There was no cover-up here,” Michelle Rakestraw, one of the city’s attorneys, told jurors in her...
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