Chicago police Superintendent David Brown has filed disciplinary charges with the Chicago Police Board against an officer who is accused of dragging a woman by her hair out of a car and kneeling on her neck in 2020.
Brown this month recommended that Officer David Laskus be fired from the Police Department and charged him with violating various rules, including disobedience of an order, maltreatment of any person, engaging in any unjustified verbal or physical altercation with any person, making a false report and unnecessary use or display of a weapon, according to police board records.
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The case will now go to the board, which will decide whether Laskus should be fired. An attorney for the officer could not immediately be reached late Wednesday.
Around 3 p.m. May 31, 2020, Laskus detained Mia Wright near the Brickyard Mall, 2600 N. Narragansett Ave., without probable cause, according to the records. He used “unreasonable force” by grabbing her hair, pulling her to the ground and kneeling on her neck while she was on the ground. He also damaged the car she was in by breaking its windows with his baton.
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A relative who was with Wright took a video of the arrest. Wright was charged with disorderly conduct, though the charge was later dropped.
In March, the Chicago City Council authorized a $1,675,000 taxpayer-funded settlement to be shared by Wright and four others who were with her that day after they sued the city in 2020, alleging excessive force by police.
Wright and family members had said when they arrived at the mall, they discovered that it was closed due to civil unrest that occurred across the city in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer.
Officers said they thought some members of Wright’s group were attempting to break into a store at the mall to steal goods, according to city lawyer Caroline Fronczak, but the officers also acknowledged nobody in the group matched the descriptions of the suspected looters.
pfry@chicagotribune.com
