This story was produced by Injustice Watch, a nonprofit newsroom in Chicago that investigates issues of equity and justice in the Cook County court system. Sign up here to get their weekly newsletter.
Newly released video of a December 2023 incident inside the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center has raised new questions about a judge’s decision last month to acquit one of the officers involved, experts and advocates told Injustice Watch.
The minute-and-a-half-long video, which was provided to Injustice Watch by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in response to a public records request, appears to show former detention center rapid response specialist Kevin Walker flinging a handcuffed 15-year-old boy to the floor by his shirt. Shortly after, the boy can be seen lying motionless on the floor of a holding cell.
The boy was knocked unconscious and sustained visible bruising around his left eye, according to the testimony of a doctor who treated him afterward.
Cook County Circuit Judge Kenneth J. Wadas found Walker not guilty of aggravated battery and official misconduct during a 2½-hour bench trial on Oct. 31. In handing down his verdict, Wadas questioned the strength of the evidence presented by prosecutors, including the video.
“The defendant puts his hand on [the boy] and maybe pushes him at best,” Wadas said. “There is no picking up and throwing down. I didn’t see it that way.”
But experts and advocates who viewed the video at Injustice Watch’s request said they saw it very differently than the judge had.
“It is unequivocal that that boy is being pushed from officer to officer and then swung into that cell,” said Candice Jones, former director of the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, noting that the shadows visible in the video make that sequence of events more clear.
“They swing him with such force that I couldn’t tell whether or not he hits the wall going down, because once he gets on the floor he pretty much becomes prone for the rest of the time that you can see him,” she added.
The video was “horrific,” said Stephanie Kollmann, policy director at the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University’s Bluhm Legal Clinic. Kollmann said she was especially troubled by the officers’ apparent disregard for the boy after he appeared motionless.
“He could have died,” she said.
During the trial, Wadas noted the boy had not been compliant, either in the moments leading up to the incident or during the investigation that followed.
But Jones said she doesn’t believe there was any threat to the officers present, noting that one of them appears to be smiling as he approaches the holding cell.
“I find it hard to believe someone found that there was an imminent threat of safety such that it justified a use of force,” she said. “He’s handcuffed. He’s relatively physically small. And none of these staff people look threatened.”
According to incident reports previously obtained by Injustice Watch, the boy was handcuffed and escorted to a holding cell by Walker and Michael Collins, another of the facility’s rapid response specialists known as “rovers,” for refusing to get out of bed and yelling obscenities at and threatening other employees.
The video does not have audio. But at Walker’s trial, Collins testified that once they approached the holding cell, another employee, Nsisong Ekanem, made a comment suggesting the boy looked like a police officer. The boy became agitated and threatened Ekanem while attempting to run out of the room, Collins said. Walker then attempted to restrain the boy, and together they pushed him into the cell, causing him to fall facedown on the floor, Collins testified.
During the trial, Assistant State’s Attorneys Kathryn Sodetz and Jonathan Ross also presented footage from Collins’ body-worn camera. In that video, which included audio, the boy can be seen lying facedown with his legs hanging off the holding cell bed. Collins testified that the boy appeared to be breathing heavily. He remained unresponsive even as Walker and Collins repeatedly asked him to place his hands on his head.
The state’s attorney’s office denied Injustice Watch’s request for that footage, saying it did not have the technological capability to alter or redact identifying information from the video, including people’s faces. Injustice Watch is continuing to pursue release of that video.
Injustice Watch has sought records related to this case, including the videos, since April. In June, Wadas signed an order blocking the City of Chicago from releasing any materials while the case was pending in court.
In an emailed statement, Juvenile Temporary Detention Center General Counsel Zenaida Alonzo said an internal investigation found Walker violated detention center policy and was fired.
Detention center investigator Michael Bernardini, who reviewed the case internally and testified at the trial, said Walker’s actions were not consistent with the facility’s use-of-force policy, which says force must be “justifiable and reasonable and only be used as a last resort.”
“From what I saw on the videotape and the condition of [the boy], I didn’t know what caused his condition, but it was definitely something that was out of the ordinary,” Bernardini testified.
Kollmann said she hopes the video brings attention to conditions inside the detention center, which is one of the largest juvenile jails in the country and has been plagued in recent years by allegations of sexual and physical abuse, including the use of excessive restraint.
“It’s difficult to look at the video and not see callous disregard for the health and safety of the youth at the detention center,” she said. “I hope that it inspires people to take a hard look at what’s happening there and call for change.”
This article first appeared on Injustice Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.