The Evanston Police Department is conducting an internal investigation to determine whether it acted lawfully by arresting a 12-year-old boy for riding on the back pegs of a bike in downtown Evanston in July.

On July 14, police arrested the child, Iain Bady, who is black, and issued him a Formal Station Adjustment — which will go on his record — for violating a city bicycling ordinance, according to documents obtained by The Daily.
EPD Chief of Police Richard Eddington said the investigation was sparked by a citizen’s complaint filed by Rob Bady, Iain’s father and a former candidate for 8th Ward alderman.

Rob Bady said he believes police acted inappropriately both at the scene and at the station.

According to a written annotation of police body camera footage regarding “downtown calls of service involving juveniles” on July 14, obtained by The Daily, police first arrived in downtown Evanston at 6:03 p.m. because of a call from an employee of the Burger King at 1740 Orrington Road. The employee claimed that a group of roughly 20 teenagers was refusing to leave.

Over the next hour and a half, EPD officer Anthony Sosa made contact with a teenager who had stolen a man’s wallet, stopped another for disrupting traffic at the intersection of Sherman Avenue and Clark Street, instructed the group of teenagers to disperse and later arrested one group member for failure to disperse, according to the annotation.
In the background of Sosa’s body camera footage for each of these incidents, Iain Bady can be seen but appears uninvolved, according to the annotation. Rob Bady said he saw the videos in a meeting last week with Eddington.

But no body camera footage exists for the incident that led to Iain Bady’s arrest, his father said. That arrest was made at 7:45 p.m. by two other EPD officers — not Sosa — according to the annotation.

The officers observed Iain Bady riding on the back wheel pegs, a female riding on the handlebars and another male riding on the seat of a bike, EPD Cmdr. Joseph Dugan said.

The male on the seat ran a red light at the Sherman-Clark intersection, causing the bike to be nearly hit by several oncoming vehicles, Dugan said. The biker then rode to the Starbucks on Sherman Avenue. After all three disembarked, officers located Bady and the female — but not the biker — and “transported (them) to the station,” Dugan said.

Iain Bady did not dispute any of those details in his description of the event, given during the public comment portion of last Monday’s City Council meeting, and said he realized both his decision to ride on the pegs and his friend’s decision to bike in front of traffic were poor.

But, Iain Bady said, he was given a strange reason for why he in particular was being arrested.

“I also asked the officer why he didn’t arrest the one who was controlling the bike, and he said, ‘He ran away into the store,’” Bady said at the council meeting. “That didn’t make much sense to me because he was the one controlling the bike, and what was I supposed to do, just get off the bike in the middle of traffic?”

After seeing the videos and reports of all that occurred in downtown Evanston that afternoon, Rob Bady told The Daily he had one clear takeaway.

“The connection for me with all of the arrests was they all happened to be African-American,” Rob Bady said. “I hate to make it that, but it’s just very obvious here.”

For the full article visit: https://dailynorthwestern.com/2017/08/20/city/evanston-police-undergoing-internal-investigation-following-arrest-black-12-year-old-cyclist/