CHICAGO (WLS) — A family suing the city of Chicago over a wrongful police raid is finally getting their day in court.
They say officers violated their rights and traumatized their children.
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Jury selection lasted all day Monday at the Dirksen Federal Building, after a last ditch effort to reach a pre-trial resolution between the Mendez family and the city’s attorneys failed.
A jury was seated at the end of the day Monday, and opening statements are set to begin Tuesday.
It was more than six and a half years ago when Gilbert Mendez and his attorney walked into a room filled with reporters to tell Mendez’s story publicly for the first time. Nine months earlier, in November of 2017, he, his wife and two young sons had been subjected to a wrong-house raid by seven 11th District Chicago police officers, who they claimed pointed guns at them and continued to detain them even after it became apparent they had the wrong address.
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“Peter and Jack cried and pleaded officers not to shoot and kill their father. Officers also handcuffed their father, Gilbert Mendez, and kept him handcuffed in front of this sons for over 90 minutes,” lawyer Al Hofeld Jr. said.
It’s taken all this time for the civil lawsuit filed by the Mendez family against the city of Chicago and the seven officers involved to be brought before a jury. In the interim, the Civilian Office for Police Accountability, also known as COPA, determined the officers involved in the raid among other things: failed to adequately verify information provided by a police informant prior to acquiring and executing the search warrant and failed to properly knock and announce themselves before entering the Mendez home.
COPA, however, did not find the officers guilty of pointing firearms at the family or, as the lawsuit states, continuing to search the apartment after the mistake was realized.
They did recommend the officers face suspensions ranging from five to 60 days. Those recommendations were accepted by then-Police Superintendent David Brown nearly five years after the wrongful raid took place and three years after the Illinois General Assembly passed and Gov. JB Pritzker signed the Peter Mendez Act, named after Gilbert Mendez’s then-9-year-old son. The act requires officers to receive trauma-informed training as well as training on de-escalation tactics when children are involved in a police operation.
The trial is expected to last around two weeks.
Lawyers said they will show the jury police bodycam video, which they say shows what happened.
A spokesperson for the city’s law department declined to comment Monday, pending the resolution of the trial.
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