A Chicago police officer is facing felony charges after he was caught on video restraining a 14-year-old Puerto Rican teenager with his knee while off-duty in Park Ridge, Illinois, police said.
Officer Michael A. Vitellaro, 49, was charged with officer misconduct and aggravated assault by the Cook County State's Attorney's Office for the incident.
Vitellaro turned himself in, police said in a statement, and was taken to the Cook County courthouse for a bond hearing.
"There can be no place in our community at all for something like this," the boy's mother said Friday during a news conference.
“This is a situation where [my son] faced something appalling.
He was the only brown child there and that is part of how we are understanding what happened as a family
, ”she added, according to a CNN report.
The incident occurred on July 1 outside a Starbucks when the boy, who is Puerto Rican, moved a bicycle on the sidewalk to pass on his own bicycle, according to Antonio Romanucci, a lawyer for the teenager's family.
In the video, the officer accuses the boy of stealing his son's bike.
The footage further shows the officer pinning the boy's arms behind his back,
turning him face down, and then kneeling on his back
.
This type of technique, which can be dangerous for the detainee, was the one that sparked protests across the country against police violence and racism in 2020 after the death of George Floyd, after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin , knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes.
Some agencies prohibit their officers from using this mechanism for more than a certain amount of time.
“Our hearts are broken by the abuse of power”: they denounce police violence against a Latino child in Chicago
July 8, 202201:40
The little boy's family denounced that he wrongly accused him and accused the police officer of abuse of power in a crime with racial profiling.
“Our hearts are broken by the abuse of power and the excessive use of force against our son,” said the father, Ángel Nieves, in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.
[The autopsy confirms that Daunte Wright was killed by a gunshot to the chest. The mayor asks for the resignation of the agent who shot him]
Vitellaro withdrew his knee when a passerby questioned him, but he followed the teenager away sad and crying, according to charging documents.
“He took advantage of our dark-haired, Afro-haired son, in a clear abuse of his position of authority.
An authority that is destined to protect, "said the teenager's father.
For a bike that he didn't steal
The indictment states that the officer filled out a report the next day describing the incident as an out-of-service arrest and stating that the "offender" did not follow his verbal commands.
Vitellaro, who has worked for the Chicago Police Department since 2000, had heard that his son's bike stolen from a library had been spotted at a nearby Starbucks.
The off-duty officer then took his son to the Starbucks where he saw his son's bicycle leaning against a pillar on the sidewalk.
And he "waited in his car to hopefully see who had stolen the bike," according to the criminal complaint.
[This Alabama town has decided to disband its police department after leaking racist messages]
Los Angeles police offer $50,000 reward to arrest store looters
Aug. 19, 202201:45
That's when the 14-year-old, identified in the complaint as JN, got off his own bike and approached Vitellaro's son's bike that was on the sidewalk.
“When JN touched the bike, the defendant, who had gotten out of his car shortly before, approached JN,
grabbed JN's forearm and pushed him to the ground
,” the complaint says.
[100th Anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre: What is the current relationship of the police with black residents there]
Video surveillance footage reveals
the boy was not the person who stole a bike from Vitellaro's son
, the criminal complaint says.
"Instead, the bike was already at that location before JN arrived while he was riding his own bike," the document says.
Days after the incident, video of what happened was shared on social media by prominent civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who said the officer's actions were "unacceptable" and that he should be "held accountable."
